The title is somewhat misleading as this is intended to be a brag about my wife's '95 Rodeo.
It is the all manual 4cyl edition. I bought if for her used in 2003 or before. Slept since then. It had well over 100k on it then. She has driven the crap out of it and the only thing I have done to it is put a quart of oil in it about every 3 months or so. It doesn't smoke but does drip some. It has been wreaked 3 times, (not her fault) and has paid off in insurance claims 4 times what I gave for it. I never repaired it other than replacing one headlight assembly and one front end alignment. It just kept on going.
Well, the other night the fan belt popped and she drove it about 25 miles and that was that. It must have had some stop leak added to the coolant at some time because that stuff had welded the inlet port on the overflow reservoir closed so well that I had to use a power drill to open it back up. Due to this the pressure build up in the system blew a chunk out of the plastic radiator top. I repaired the hole by plastic welding and refilled the system. I started the engine and after a short time the water began bubbling out of the radiator and the engine wasn't even hot yet. This is a sure sign of a blown head gasket. The age and condition of the vehicle make repairing not cost efficient. I may attempt it myself at some point but that is another story.
The point of this post is to talk about the total lack of problems in 12+ years of hard driving. I just remembered that it did have the typical lighting problem in that the tail lights stopped working so I ran a wire from a fuse that is on only when running to the tail light circuit so that they are on if the car is on. I understand this is due to a failure of the switch inside the steering column and it must first be removed to determine the correct one to order. I have never had time to have the car down that long, so I just bypassed it.
Other than that, I can't think of another thing that had to be done to it in all this time.
I believe it is due to the simplicity of this model. There are no power options to fail. It is a manual transmission which seems fairly bullet proof. Like I mentioned, she drove it hard. It also handled very well before it was wreaked and only a little more play in the wheel after. It has a 4 cylinder but has pretty good power with the 5 speed gearing. It would get up to 80 on the interstate before you knew it.
Oh well, if I could buy a new one just like it I would be there now.

Just remembered the lack of acceleration thing. That turned out to be the breather cap was loose and had allowed dust to collect on the mass air flow sensor. I cleaned it with a little carb spray and good to go again.