Interesting that the Honda Accord and Honda Civic are (or rather, were) the two most stolen cars. Is that because Hondas are more reliable (so there's more old Hondas on the road) or because they're easier to steal?
It was stolen twice in a week. It was dumped and towed the first time. We'd just got through dealing with it all and I'd added a chain and padlock which would require bolt cutters to allow the shifter to be moved into R...... and it was stolen again, this time written off when the driver tried to evade the police.
The police officer who came and took our statement informed us that this model was the most stolen vehicle in the US for a number of reasons, the crucial one being that you can use a "jiggle key" (take any key for a 95 - 98 honda accord and file it down a little) to both unluck the doors and start the ignition.
I always buy second-hand parts whenever it makes sense. It doesn't work that well with less popular cars, obviously. Either there aren't second-hand replacements that are easy to find or they're still too expensive (because of said scarcity...) so it makes sense to buy a new replacement part with warranty.
If you're looking to steal a car built before 1997 (17 years ago), there are relatively few other makes that are still on the road. Cars from American automakers rarely make it past 100,000 miles (about 10 years of normal driving) in workable condition; there are simply fewer cars out there to steal.
Generally cars will go through their first big part replacement cycle between 60-100k, these are wearing parts that come to an end at that age. That can cost a couple of thousands but that's just part of normal maintenance and will be 10x cheaper than buying a new car. These Hondas and Corollas sure as hell go through this phase and the next replacement cycle happens maybe another 100k later.
It's my impression that even these cheap little cars in Europe (such as Fiat Punto) can easily go 200,000 miles if only serviced so 100k sounds a bit odd. I've also assumed that the appeal to American cars with their big blocks is because they're built to last and eat hundreds of thousands of miles; this assumption might be outdated, however.
I remember reading somewhere that this was driven by accounting improvements that arose from the Enron scandal but I can't find the source now.
[1] http://www.leftlanenews.com/ford-reduces-warranty-costs-by-1...
The age of a model can make a difference too when breaking for parts: newer cars will be covered by warranty, those not long past warranty are likely to be more reliable than those a couple of years older. After a few more years the value drops off because people will start to replace more than repair, so demand for parts falls.
I'm not sure why though. Maybe because they're easy to steal? Maybe they're cheap to buy/insure and are still high performance enough to be fun while also having a cheap enough after market for modifications.
(Which was largely deliberate; Honda had an image problem where they were seen as an "old man car". Now they're a "boy racer car", which I'm not sure was the intention)