My dad had a good collection of tools, and I bought a Chilton's manual from the shop. Between the two of them, I basically had a years-long shop class with illustrated instructions on doing basically any repair to a car. It was a great way to learn some engineering skills, too: once you learned how a part was meant to work, you could better reason about how to repair or replace it. Jalopy though it was, I loved learning how to fix it.

That said, although the barrier to learning is much higher now, I appreciate that our Toyota never needs any repairs of any kind. It just boringly starts and drives, every day, in all conditions.