This is just not true. Cars are waaay more durable than your assumption.

I've never had an issue buying used (2-4 years old) cars from dealers. They've always been essentially like new. On top of that I have failed to do routine maintenance as scheduled. I usually do oil changes about every 10k because you really don't need to do it as often as they say.

That said... I've now had 3 cars that I bought around 30,000 miles and put over 100k miles on without any major maintenance. Just tires, brakes filters, and fluids. Maybe some weird one off thing, for example a little plastic gear in my steering system on my 2010 Hyundai recently broke and cost $500 to replace (@ 140,000 miles on the odo).