I think that era of affordable, compact, throw away cars has past now. The K car platform ran its course hopefully never to return. It was a good run for Chrysler.
They had a good following and probably still do to some extent but it's pretty rare to see one on the road anymore. The early ones used a Volkswagen 2.2 and it was a strong engine. Then Chrysler developed their own engine. It didn't take long before there were Chrysler performance upgrades offered, engine, trans ect. Carroll Shelby even got onboard with some pretty impressive upgrades.
I've owned two and they were easy to work on and they really weren't known for any major problems. If they were properly maintained you got your 100k miles out of them, maybe more. But the majority of them were crushed not long after reaching that milage and replaced with the new generation of Chrysler products or even something else.
RIP K car