Sounds like me and cars.

Cut my mechanical teeth on aircooled Boltswagens and a series of British cars, Spits and Minis mostly. Bought cheap & broken, fixed them up and drove. Some of us went further; fixed them up and raced.

Many of us poor-boys bought these things tired with blown engines. Then, the insurance was the cheapest you could get and be street legal. Maintenance was on you personally, but you knew every bolt because you had built the dam thing.

Today, you don't have that option. So much is computer controlled a car can't be made to run under a shade-tree. Even then, they are designed so you are forced to the dealer network for maintenance. The 2010 Mini I had was notorious; even changing a battery required a dealer to "register" the battery to the car's computer. A poor teenager or twenty-something hasn't a chance of driving on the cheap by his own hand any more.

The petrolhead world is much the poorer for the white-goods with wheels that are the norm today.