Yes, cars from the 1900-2000’s era seem to be pretty easy to work on. There is actually a ton of room to work under the hood of a Geo Metro for being such a tiny car. Everything is right there and easy to access. You can change the timing belt in an hour on the side of a road if you have to. I know this because of personal experience of course.
If you like older cars like this, find one in decent shape for a decent price and figure out how to work on it yourself. That is most of the fun as long as the car is reliable and you can count on it.
You might look for a really common model or model series where parts are shared and get one of those as parts will be easy to find. I have always been a fan of the GM 3800. Lots of things were built on that platform and parts should be easy to come by.
If you get something more quirky like the Geo Metro or some Saturns you won’t be able to get parts on a whim. You will have to wait for them to come in but you can pretty much get any part these days online.
Then you will find yourself with a “parts car” or “spare car” for the older model car of your choice. The parts car is just a cheap junker hulk you get that serves as a parts donor for your running car. The spare car is more or less the same but runs. It can be a backup car or you can borrow parts from it as needed.