EEC-IV and EEC-V (Ford) ECUs haven't yet found the "late" stage of the bathtub curve and they're 15-35yo give or take. I'm not familiar with other brands of EC

EEC-IV and EEC-V (Ford) ECUs haven't yet found the "late" stage of the bathtub curve and they're 15-35yo give or take. I'm not familiar with other brands of ECU but I suspect that they tend to be similar. If you look at all brands there's probably some that don't last because they were subject to the capacitor plague but they're clearly so few and far between that no brand has developed a reputation for ECUs crapping out. I wouldn't personally be worried about electronics failures. Physical failures of the electronic systems are far more likely. Because this is a decently upscale crowd on HN everyone is going to tell you Toyota/Honda. I'm not going to write the mini-novel it takes to explain why but it suffices to say that is one filter bubble's opinion and other bubbles will have other opinions. As someone who has fairly extensive experience with vehicles that most here would consider far beyond end of life I assure you the badge on the grill matters far far less than what you use the vehicle for and how you treat it. Anything will "last" 25yr if you're willing to baby it there, put a bunch of money into it or just deal with it having all sorts of NVH issues in years 20-25. Trying to predict what vehicle and configuration will last 25yr with the least work (the unstated assumption in these discussions) is a complete and total fools errand because the equation is dominated by variables outside, or mostly outside your control.