Eh. I've repaired a few modern appliances, worked on a 2003, 2001, model cars.
Washer was a cinch, thanks to the repair manual (found online). The only difficult bit is diagnosing the car [1] was the makers assumed I'd have a diagnostic computer to plug into the port and read off whatever the car thought was the problem.
Capitalism to the rescue! Any parts store (O'Reilly, Autozone, etc) will cheerfully plug their diagnostic computer in and _tell_ you what the problem is.
[1] For non-obvious faults. When my Explorer threw a rod, that was painfully obvious.
An interesting exception to the "everything is going to crap" thesis is cars. These are way more reliable that old cars.