Old v. New Designs

This past weekend i replaced the head gaskets on my truck. I would not say that i am mechanically
inclined but i do know how to figure things out with time and research. The reason i decided to do it myself was because the shop wanted $1200 to do it. There was no way i was going to pay that much for something that's worth $2400. So i went to the auto store grabbed a shop manual and a gasket kit for a 2000 ford ranger which in total costed me $260. The 2000 ranger has a very basic engine bay and most of everything is in plain site after popping open the hood. It has a very basic push rod motor design that has been used for a long time due to its reliability. After 2004 or so a lot of car manufactures started cramming a larger overhead cam designed engine into cars making it much more difficult to do work on it yourself. The whole process took me around 30 hours to do. The designs that new cars have now a days are cheaper and probably have a better use of materials but older designs are proven and allow the average person to figure them out and work on them.