Yes there’s definitely some very reliable turbo engines. But at the end of the day, a turbo charger still introduces an added point of failure. Even the most reliable turbocharged engine can’t possibly last as long as its naturally aspirated counterpart. The great thing about some of the legendary bulletproof engines from the last half century or so is that they just keep on going for ages. Even if you neglect them, even if you don’t change your oil… they’ll just keep on firing. And even when something does break, they’re so simple that it’s not that expensive to fix. Catastrophic engine failure generally doesn’t happen on jeeps 4.0 L straight 6’s and fords 4.6L V8’s and well… virtually any Toyota engine from the last few decades. That’s largely because of their simplicity. There’s just not that much in there that can break. But when we start introducing turbos, and variable valve timing and all these fancy features that improve performance and gas mileage… it comes with the consequence of those thing breaking and leading to repairs potentially so expensive that it can cause the whole vehicle to just be scrapped.

I have a 1998 toyota Corolla that my uncle bought brand new, and honestly didn’t even take that great of care of it. His son drove it when he was in high school, then it sat in their driveway for a few years and finally I bought it from them a couple years ago. The thing just refuses to die. It’s almost 30 years old and just keeps going and going and going. It’s got 350,000 miles on it, has driven across the country 3 times and I’d take it across the country again tomorrow. And this is all with minimal maintenance or repairs. I don’t think you can expect that kind of longevity out of most modern cars.