Electric cars eliminate most of those things.
And add new problems - long refill time, limited battery life (the gas tank in my car is as old as the car - will the batteries in an electric car last 30 years?), huge cost. Now, all new cars also are built very weak (just drive on a gravel road a few times and the car will be full of dents), not to mention that they use aluminium for the chassis (good luck straightening that out if it gets bent driving over potholes). Also, all new cars (electric or gasoline) look bad - the manufacturers put too much effort into making the car aerodynamically efficient that now almost all new cars look exactly the same no matter what manufacturer. Again, I do not care that much about fuel cost that I would sacrifice everything else just to get that fuel consumption down 1%.
More to the point, you argue from your specific case - someone who drives a very old car and does his own repairs
Well, yes, I arguing from my point of view. I repair my own car (mostly) or my radio or tape deck. As such, I appreciate when I can find the schematics for it and if the hardware in question is not overly complex. You know, kinda like a lot of open source advocates here or on other forums, who say that closed source is bad because only the company that created the software can modify it etc. This is the same, except for hardware. While I may never need to patch a PC operating system myself (or be able to do it anyway), I know that my car or other mechanical devices can and will fail over time and I will need to repair them. No matter how good something was built, it will wear out and need repairs over time.
As for reliability - I have noticed that other cars (newer ones especially) are very reliable, but if something fails (and you are away from home) then you're stuck. With my car, something could be not working right more often (then again, I repair that and it will be working right for the next 10 years or so) but complete failures (I cannot go home) happen much less often and are usually the result of some oxidized connection somewhere - that can be fixed by a piece of wire bypassing the affected system (maybe the car won't run as well but it will get me home where I can repair the problem properly).