The Workhorse

"It's not flashy. It's not the cutting edge. It just keeps coming."

— Triad Technologies' marketing slogan for the STK-3F "Stalker", Battletech

A Workhorse is a type of vehicle, weapon or other type of equipment, that is so reliable, resilient or cost-effective that it's kept in service for decades, outlasting other more flashy and advanced types. While the Workhorse might receive some modifications and upgrades during its lifetime, it is never as advanced as its newer cousins.

Likely an example of Boring, but Practical. The Workhorse might be slower, have fewer functions, and other drawbacks, but it develops a loyal following amongst on-the-ground users, who value its strengths.

Compare Damage-Proof Vehicle, Older Is Better, Break Out the Museum Piece, and Simple, yet Awesome. For character types, see The Reliable One.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Being a Long Runner, the original UC Gundam series has a few examples.
  • The mass-produced Federation Mobile Suit Jegan, first introduced in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack is still in service in Mobile Suit Gundam F91 three decades later, though this has more to do with the fact that there were few major conflicts in the intervening years.
  • The Salamis class cruiser debuted in the original Mobile Suit Gundam and turns up in nearly every sequel and spinoff since, right up to Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, taking place 74 years later.
  • The Zeons have the Zaku, which is one of the first mobile suits to be fielded in the war. It and its successors have been used in almost every battle the Zeon have fought through out the war.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars:
  • The Imperial-class Star Destroyer is introduced two decades before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope and serves for decades after. Super Star Destroyers are more powerful, superweapons like the Death Star are flashier, but the Imperial Star Destroyer brings just enough overkill to intimidate in true Imperial fashion while being economical and standardized enough to form the backbone of the fleet.
  • When it comes to starfighters, the bog-standard TIE fighter is fragile, undergunned, and not nearly as flashy or intimidating as the dagger-shaped TIE Interceptor or Vader's TIE Advanced prototype, but throw enough of them at a problem and they'll get the job done.
  • In the Rebel starfighter corps, the Y-Wing is seen as this, in contrast to the newer, faster, shinier X-Wing. X-Wings are generally held to be superior fighters and fighter-bombers (although they aren't quite the Y-Wings' match in the dedicated bomber role thanks to the latter's heavier maximum payload), but there are never enough of them to go around. In Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, General Rieekan (who provides the vehicle descriptions) even calls it by the trope name.
• Fury (2014) focuses on the crew of the titular M4 Sherman Tank, which is the standard tank for the United States Armed Forces during World War II. However, while the Sherman is established early-on as reliable and great against enemy infantry, it becomes outmatched by its late war German counterparts, particularly the Tiger.

Literature

• Knight's & Magic: The kingdom's mainstay Silhouette Knight, the Kaldatoah, has been in service for over a century, and some even earlier designs still see limited use. Ernesti's groundbreaking new Telestale boasts heavier armour, more than double the power, and a pair of Backpack Cannons... but due to its high cost, low fuel efficiency and swingy controls, it's rejected as Awesome, but Impractical. Instead, the king orders Ernesti to share the Telestale plans with his most experienced engineers, who refine them into the kingdom's new workhorse, the Kaldatoah Darsch - a unit with a still-impressive 30% performance increase over the base Kaldatoah (plus Telestale-style cannons) but zero drawbacks. Interestingly, The Empire soon starts using an Evil Knockoff of the original Telestale to fill out the bulk of its army, as their different power technology allows them to better compensate for the design's flaws.
• Star Wars Legends (formerly the Star Wars Expanded Universe):
  • While not much seen in the films, in the books, the Victory-class Star Destroyer fits the trope better than the Imperial class. Smaller and not as powerful, but cheap and reliable and just as useful in mass quantities.
  • On the New Republic side, the X-Wing becomes the workhorse of the fleet. Many hotshot pilots prefer the Difficult, but Awesome A-Wing, the B-Wing is a much better dedicated bomber, and later on, anyone who has the option would likely rather hop aboard the powerful but expensive and finicky E-Wing, but the X-Wing's versatility, ubiquity, and perfect balance between cost and utility mean that they continue to see service long after just about any contemporary craft you can name has been phased out.
  • For anyone without the resources of a major government backing them, the Z-95 Headhunter is a solid budget choice, especially in works set relatively early in the timeline. A favorite of smugglers, gangsters, and criminals, they're commonplace enough that it's easy to find parts to keep in good repair, and you won't get better bang for your buck if your wallet is light.
  • The Corellian YT-1300 light freighter— the most famous being the Millennium Falcon— was designed to be easily customizable, making it useful for any number of roles with the right modifications. Those who don't push things quite as far as the souped-up but notoriously finicky Falcon tend to find them incredibly reliable, too.

Live-Action TV

• Halt and Catch Fire: Deconstructed. At the last second before its exhibition, Joe decides that the Cardiff Giant will work best marketed as a computer with this type of performance (a "station wagon", in his words) and orders his team to remove all of the fancy parts of the operating system to achieve this. The unfortunate result is that it just cannot compete with the fancy stuff that IBM is showcasing and the following season begins with the CEO of Cardiff Electric deciding the computer division (to make a long and dreary story short) was a busted gamble and shuts it down.
• Star Trek:
  • The Miranda-class frigate is another one, entering service at least as early as Khan Noonien Singh's reappearance and serving at least as late as the Dominion War, 90 years later.
  • The Excelsior-class starship was introduced during the 2280s. Its design was so versatile that it was still in service during the 2370s, nearly a century later. Many Excelsior-class ships filled the Federation ranks during the Dominion War.
  • And for the trifecta of Starfleet ships appearing in the 2280s and continuing to serve into the last third of the 24th century, there's the Oberth-class scout/science ship.
  • And before all of these was the Constitution-class, which included the original U.S.S. Enterprise. First introduced in the mid-23rd century, they received enough upgrades and refits to keep them going into the 24th century.
  • The Klingon Bird of Prey was introduced during the same decade as the Excelsior-class and it too served during the Dominion War of the 2370s.
  • The K't'inga-class Klingon Battlecruiser had roughly the same operational length as the Bird of Prey, even being used alongside newer ships in the Dominion War, over 100 years since they entered service.
• Firefly: It's noted by a starship-jacker that a Firefly-class freighter is a collection of parts that are all, by themselves, commonplace and worth very little... except that if you put them all together, you've got yourself a Firefly. Not the largest cargo-hauler, and nobody's idea of a warship, but with the right mechanic to keep her flying, she'll take you anywhere you need to go. Mal's Serenity is already outdated by the time he buys her, but it's love at first sight, and she proves a remarkably resilient little ship with enough TLC.

Tabletop Games

• The Warhammer 40,000 universe is filled with long-service vehicles and tech. Some maintenance is required, but most gear used by the Imperium of Man dates back decades if not thousands of years. These can range anywhere from regular bolter firearms to power fists, imperial star ships and Dreadnought chassis, which in turn house some of the oldest living members of the Space Marine chapters.
  • Probably the crowning example is the Rhino transport, a converted tractor (really) that serves the Space Marines not just as an Awesome Personnel Carrier, but as a tank (as the Predator) and an artillery platform (the Whirlwind), and is also used by the Adepta Sororitas (including in flamethrower and anti-tank heat gun configurations). It's even used by the Adeptus Arbites (Imperial police) as a riot vehicle. Like most of the other Imperial examples, it's a Standard Template Construct, which means automated factories on thousands of worlds produced them during humanity's golden age, and while the factories have fallen out of repair, enough of them retained their blueprint data that STCs are ubiquitous.
  • Crossing over with Real Life is the heavy stubber, a weapon manufactured by the billion which is just an M2 Browning.
• There are numerous examples of this in Traveller. Probably the most iconic is the Beowulf class Free Trader.
• BattleTech:
  • Many BattleMech models have seen service for centuries of warfare (and sometimes, the individual mechs have seen centuries of combat). The Atlas is one of the most recognizable mechs, and has seen continued use and upgrades for almost four hundred years. On the other hands, most of the modernized workhorses are only externally similar to their originals; an original production AS7-D Atlas (2755), for example, shares very few internal components with the more modern AS7-K Atlas (3050), which carries a completely different fusion reactor design and weapons (dropping the short-ranged Autocannon in favor of a long-ranged Gauss Rifle, for example), though it does share the same combat roles - frontline command and intimidation. And that four hundred year service history? That's pretty unimpressive compared to a few other mechs like the Banshee or Wasp, which have both been in continual use (and in the case of the Wasp, continual production) for close to 700 years.
  • The Torrent bomber is of note for being in use for close to a thousand years; designed by the United States in 2093, operated on the front lines of the various Great Houses until the 22nd century, and used by militias until Aerospace Fighters began to show up in the 24th century, where it then became a warbird used by civilians in firefighting operations. After the Word of Blake Jihad in 3067, the Capellan Confederation began to bring the planes back into active service.
  • The STK-3F Stalker is noted to be one In-Universe, with even its marketing campaign based on the fact. With an almost 600-year old production history in the Inner Sphere and consisting entirely of low-tech, easy-to-replicate technologies that made it extremely easy to maintain and repair damaged Stalkers. By the numbers, Stalkers were most likely the single most common assault-class 'mech in the Inner Sphere at the end of the Third Succession War, with some numbers suggesting Stalker models made up over a third of the total number of Inner Sphere assaults on its own.
• Shadowrun: The Ares Predator, Ares Alpha and the AK-97 are considered this In-Universe, and are present in every edition of the game. The Predator is a heavy pistol with built-in Smart Gun abilities that is considered the trademark sidearm of Shadowrunners (in part because Ares markets the gun as such). The Alpha is the military assault rifle equivalent of the Predator, and most Street Samurai with a taste for automatics will tote one once they get the budget. The AK-97, finally, is a third-generation AK (see the Real Life section) and still omnipresent on the streets in 2080. It's not nearly as flashy or fancy as the Alpha, but costs less than half on the black market, is street legal with a license in the UCAS, and is the go-to automatic for gangers and aspiring Shadowrunners on a budget.

Video Games

• Advance Wars has the humble Tank. Although each game introduces a flashier and more powerful version of it, the Medium Tank in the first game, the Neotank in the second, and the Megatank in the third, the regular Tank remains the frontline workhorse of your main force owing to it's all-around good balance of firepower, mobility, vision, fuel, and cost.
• E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy has the Rotten Mound and KA93 assault rifles, both of which are centuries old (dating back to the Dark Ages) and extremely simple, but are used heavily by all factions due to their heavy stopping power, low cost, and high accuracy. In-game, they're some of the most common weapons used by enemies, and the preferred weapons for many players due to their versatility.
• The TX1 Repeater in PlanetSide 2 has been the standard issue pistol in the Terran Republic military for over 300 years - despite its small size, it has surprising stopping power due to its 3-shot burst (which is effectively fully automatic with a quick finger) and large magazine. Newer derivatives like the TX2 Emperor (200 years old, semi-automatic) and TS2 Inquisitor (New, semi-automatic, huge magazine) have failed to eclipse the Repeater's popularity.
• In the X-Universe, various ship designs have been in service for decades, but the Argon Elite Space Fighter takes the cake. It was in service with the Argon Federation navy when the Earth State test pilot Kyle Brennan is marooned in the X-universe in 2912, though it was retired sometime before 2932 and replace with the Nova. In 2935 it was brought back into service, with reworked internals and reclassified as a heavy interceptor, and was used til at least 2947 with the jump gate network shutting down.
• StarCraft: The humble Terran Marine, and by extension their standard-issue Impaler gauss rifle and Powered Armor, were already pretty old during the Guild Wars and certainly haven't gotten any younger over the span of the franchise — in contrast to the huge leaps in development of pretty much every other sector of military technology. Nonetheless, they're the first line of defense for any human settlement. Indeed, this carries over to gameplay; as one of the few Terran units that doesn't Require More Vespene Gas, the Marine is a part of virtually every Terran strategy.
• In Elite, most Faulcon DeLacy ships have been in near continuous production for centuries, with minimal aesthetic changes. Elite Dangerous takes place in 3300 AD and beyond, yet pilots are flying ships first designed in the 2800s. However, functionally the ships of yore worked completely differently, using overpowered thrusters for direct flight between planets, while by 3300 thrusters have been toned down in favor of the Frameshift Drive Faster-Than-Light Travel for interplanetary travel.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series: The Obelisk of Light, the Brotherhood of Nod's iconic defensive laser emplacement, first created in the 1990s, the same curved spire-like design served Nod as an effective defense against GDI's main battle tanks, and a slight annoyance to it's various Mammoth Tanks all the way to 2077. Unlike typical Workhorses, the Obelisk tends to be on the bleeding edge of Nod laser weaponry, with most every other laser weapon being based on the Obelisk itself, making it pull double duty as a testbed for any innovations the Brotherhood comes up with.
  • Through the wars Nod always have four vehicles that are present in every conflict. The attack buggy, the bike, the flame tank, and stealth tank. Each one has a different form in every era, but preform similar functions to them.
• In MechWarrior Living Legends - a BattleTech adaptation - the Catapult Prime, Warhammer Prime, and Atlas D are centuries old Humongous Mecha variants still in service. While they get outgunned and outran by more modern designs, their archaic standard fusion reactor and simple weapons make them exceptionally cheap - they can be had for about the same price as mechs 20 tons lighter - and durable, tanking damage beyond their weight class.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • In many games, the venerable "Gespenst Mk-II, Mass Production Type" fills out the bulk of Earth's Real Robot forces. This is especially true in the long-running Original Generation continuity, where the majority of characters start their careers in Gespensts or their derivatives, and Super Prototype Gespents (with extra weapons like Plasma Stakes and the Gespenst Kick) are initially a serious threat. Various attempts are made over the years to replace them, but all were scrapped for various reasons (the Gespenst Mk-III prototype was too hard to control, while the Huckebein series suffered from resource shortages even after its MP units were redesigned to reuse Gespenst frames); in the end, the military settles for simply producing upgrade kits that can be used to turn old Gespensts into Ace Customs.
  • The Lion fits this role for the Divine Crusaders and their remnants; being essentially a modified plane, it's less effective than the Gespenst (which descends from Powered Armor), but also cheaper and able to be piloted by airforce veterans. One of its derived units, the Guarlion, also provides excellent performance, with many characters still using Ace Custom variations years after the DC's fall.

Visual Novels

• Muv-Luv Alternative: Variants of the F-4 Phantom, a venerable first-generation TSF initially deployed in the 1970s, continue to form the bulk of many nations' TSF forces in the early 2000s despite the Phantom's increasing technological and doctrinal obsolescence.

Real Life

Automobiles

The automotive industry, while phasing out individual cars and sometimes entire brands, often continues to use parts originally designed decades prior.

• The AMC I6 engine was first produced in 1964 and outlived the company that made it, its final application being the Jeep Wrangler in 2006 (in itself a workhorse, being visually unchanged for decades). However, the old parts are often modified beyond their original design, such as the aforementioned engine being upgraded to use fuel injection rather than a carburetor.
• The Chevrolet Generation I small-block V8 was first used in 1955, and was used to power cars and trucks from every brand in General Motors' lineup except Saturn, a brand created specifically to be separate from the rest of GM's corporate structure. It wasn't until 1992 when GM replaced it with the Generation II small-block, and even then, enough parts were interchangeable with the Gen I that a Gen II engine could easily be dropped into a vehicle built for a Gen I. Variants on the Gen I and Gen II small-blocks remained in production until 2003. Similarly, the Buick V6 engine proved to be a fuel-efficient Long Runner from the 1960s right through to the Turn of the Millennium.
• Ford created the Fox platform in 1978 to underpin a number of vehicles, most notably the third-generation Mustang, itself a workhorse that went without significant redesigns until 1993. While most of the cars in Ford's lineup switched over to new platforms in The '90s, a modified version of the Fox platform was used for the fourth-generation Mustang until 2004.
• The original Volkswagen Beetle is the most prominent automotive example. A triumph of German engineering, its design is, well... "dorky" would be a kind descriptor. But the fact that you can still occasionally see Beetles on the road almost eighty years after the car was first designed is testament enough to its longevity and popularity. While emissions regulations ended its run in North America and Europe in 1978, it was still in production in Mexico as late as 2003, where it was finally killed by a new law requiring taxicabs (the main market for the car) to have four doors.
• The Morris Oxford Series III was in production in its home country of Britain from 1956 to '59. In India, however, a locally-built clone called the Hindustan Ambassador entered production in 1958 and kept going, without any significant redesign, until 2014.
• Similarly, an Indian company bought a license to manufacture several motorcycles designed by British company Royal Enfield in the 1960s, and has carried on making them ever since. In an example of selling coals to Newcastle, they're now being exported back to the UK for classic bike enthusiasts who can't afford an original model.
• The Checker A sedan, best known as the archetypal New York yellow taxi, retained roughly the same styling from 1956 until its discontinuation in 1982, the only significant exterior changes being the addition of quad headlights in 1958, amber parking/directional lights in 1963, round side marker lights in 1968, and impact bumpers in 1973. Some Checker cabs remained in service as New York taxis until 1999.
• The original Land Rover, a 4x4 designed to replace the original Jeep in 1948. Equally if not more successful as a civilian utility vehicle, it would stay in production with relatively minor external revisions until 2018, when it was reluctantly phased out due to a lack of safety features. Licensed production continues overseas, and hundreds of thousands of all marks of Landy are still running decades later. A new generation, dubbed the Defender series, went on the market in 2020.
• The Volvo 200 series entered production in 1974 and ended production in 1993, a total of nineteen years — and it remained in such demand for all that time that it outlived the car that was supposed to be its replacement, the Volvo 700 series, by one year.

Weapons and military vehicles

• The AK-47 (aka Kalashnikov), the most popular assault rifle of all time, has been around since 1949 and is still in use with several dozen countries. Around 75 million AK-47s have been built, and that's not counting various modernized models such as AKM, AK-74 and AK-12.
• The AR-15 can effectively be called the American AK-47 in terms of the length and depth of its record. First built by ArmaLite in 1959, first adopted by the US military in 1964, and still serving in that capacity (in both the US and in countless other countries) to this day, in both the original M16 rifle and shorter M4 carbine variants. It is the longest continuously serving rifle in the history of the US military. Semi-automatic variants are also extraordinarily popular in the American civilian market.
• The Mosin-Nagant rifle, designed in 1891, was continuously produced until The '60s, and was the Soviet Union's standard weapon until the end of World War II. It was used for even longer as a specialist weapon (generally a sniper), and is still sometimes used by Russian police forces. Seventeen million of them have been made and exported, making them one of the cheapest high-powered weapons available.
• As the name implies, the Colt M1911 was introduced in 1911. While it's been phased out as the US Military's standard issue pistol, it's still in use with the FBI, the US Marine Corps, and about two dozen other militaries.
• The Douglas DC-3/C-47 Skytrain (commonly nicknamed the Douglas Dakota) first flew in 1935, and as of 2019, over 80 years since the type first flew, there's no sign of it leaving our skies just yet. Thousands of DC-3s and C-47s were built from the mid-30's to 1950, and over 2,000 of these aircraft are still in the air today, carrying out roles ranging from rugged short-haul airliners, to skydiving aircraft, to firefighting planes, and much more. Some C-47s are still in service with militaries around the world, with Greece's Hellenic Air Force being perhaps the most prominent example.
• The B-52 Stratofortress was introduced as one of the first bombers made by the United States following World War II, entering service in 1952. Not only is it in service today, it's expected to stay in service (with upgrades) into the 2040s.
• The M2 Browning .50 cal machine gun was designed in the 1920s, and is still being used as the M2 HBAR (Heavy Barrel) in the U.S. Armed Forces, almost 100 (!) years after it was first introduced, and there are still no plans for a replacement. Well, there were plans—but they failed.
• The C-130 Hercules cargo plane entered service only four years after the aforementioned B-52, and is not only still in service, it's still in production, marking a record for military aircraft. Having already survived one attempt to replace it, it's currently to be replaced sometime in the 2030s, alongside the near forty years younger C-17 - in the US, at least. Given that over 60 countries operate the plane, it's going to be sticking around for a long time past that date.
• The Mitsubishi A6m "Zero" was the most commonly used fighter plane the in the Japanese Airforce, with at least 10,900 being built through out the war, and have served in many battles, such as Pearl Harbor. In the early stages of the war it had a good performance in terms of speed and fire power. But gradually became obsolete as the American were able to develop newer aircraft that were better armed and armored than the Zero. With their numbers dwindling, some were reworked to preform Kamikaze strikes.
• The German Type VII U-boat was the workhorse of the Kriegsmarine U-boat Force. Out of 1171 submarines, 770 were Type VIIs and the most common class was the Type VIIC, of which 568 were built (the workhorse of the workhorse). A few captured boats remained in service for years after, with one, U-573, being used in the Spanish Navy until 1970.
• The Panzerkampfwagen IV medium tank was developed by Germany in the late 1930s, alongside the Panzer III medium. The Panzer III was to be the main anti-armor weapon of the panzer divisions, while the Mark IV would be a support tank: it carried mostly high explosive and smoke rounds, and its short 7.5 cm KwK 37 L/24 gun was mainly to be used against enemy anti-tank guns, fortifications, and the like. However, after the Germans ran into the T-34 and KV-1 during 1941's Operation Barbarosa they needed to get a more powerful gun into the field, and recognized that the Panzer IV had more room to be up-gunned because of its larger turret ring. From the Ausf.F2 onwards, the Panzer IV had the long 7.5 KwK 40 with much-improved anti-armor performance. The chassis was reliable and versatile, spawning variants such as self-propelled artillery, anti-aircraft vehicles, and armored recovery vehicles. It was the most-produced German tank and the second most-produced German fully-tracked AFV, as well as the only tank Germany had at the start of the war which it was still producing by the end of it.
• The Sturmgeschütz III or StuG III assault gun was Germany's most-produced fully-tracked armored fighting vehicle in World War II, based on the chassis of the Panzer III medium tank. Originally the StuG mounted a low-velocity 7.5 cm StuK 37 gun for shooting high-explosive shells; it was controlled by the artillery, and used as an infantry support weapon. During the War with the Soviets the Germans changed its emphasis towards being a tank destroyer, up-gunning it with the high-velocity 7.5 cm StuK 40. It was cheap and easy to manufacture because of its turretless design, and it enabled the Germans to keep using the production lines for the Panzer III chassis even after the Panzer III tank was phased out. The Stug III remained reliable and effective all the way to the war's end.
• The American M4 Sherman medium tank was first introduced in 1942 with the British Eigth Army in North Africa. From then on, it became the standard medium tank for the US and British Armies in Europe and the Pacific, with several other militaries such as China and the USSR also using it under the Lend-Lease program. When the Germans began introducing more heavily armed and armored vehicles, the Allies responded by upgunning and upgrading the Sherman, with the M4A3(76)(W) and Sherman Firefly being prominent examples. In addition, it also spawned several variants, from open-top tank destroyers, to self-propelled artillery pieces, to mobile rocket launching platorm. Following the war, it would also be exported to a number of US allies such as Israel, where it would be upgraded further.
• The Soviet T-34 tank was first introduced in 1940 alongside the KV-1 as replacements for the aging BT-7 and T-26 designs. When the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, it was the only tank aside from the KV-1 capable of fighting German tanks head-on. When the KV-1 turned out to be Awesome, but Impractical in terms of maintenance and cost, the T-34 was chosen to be the new standard medium tank of the Red Army. By late 1942, factories located in the USSR were producing the tank by the thousands, with some factories near the frontline were still churning a few out despite lacking gunsights or paint. Once the Germans began introducing more heavily armed and armored tanks to counter it, the Soviets responded by simply upgunning the T-34 with a more powerful 85mm gun. Like the Sherman, the T-34 also received several variants, most notably the SU-100, a tank destroyer armed with a more powerful 100mm anti-tank gun. Following the end of hostilies, it too would be exported to a number of countries, such as Red China and North Korea.
• The Antonov An-2 is a Soviet-era utility plane, a simple, large biplane pulled by a single radial engine. Its primitive design looks like something that flew straight out of World War II, which isn't far from the truth, given that it first entered production in 1947. The last year of active production for this aircraft? 2001. Literally thousands of the planes are still flying today, in use all around the world. Its versatility and ruggedness has allowed the An-2 to be used for everything from crop dusting to passenger service to scientific research. It also saw military service as a transport aircraft, a light bomber, and, more recently, even an unmanned drone. Its most common use today is as a small passenger transport and bush plane, roles in which it still excels. The Soviets made attempts to replace the An-2 with more modern aircraft, but it has outlasted them all.

Other

• The humble Linksys WRT54G router, with its unassuming blue exterior and familiar double-antenna design, is the wireless-router answer to this trope. It's cheap, reliable, so ubiquitous that answers to troubleshooting questions are easy to find, and has a dedicated homebrew community that supports it with custom firmware that gives it features usually only found on much newer and more expensive routers long after Linksys has more or less moved on.
• The British Rail Class 43 High Speed Train. Designed in 1975, the last new unit was produced in 1982 and the type has been in continuous service ever since, with only three power cars being taken out of service after being written off in accidents. No diesel locomotive has yet surpassed the top speed of 148mph achieved in trials. It was initially intended as a stopgap due to delays in development in the tilting Advanced Passenger Train - which never entered full service due to not working properly and loss of political support.
• The Atari 2600 was the first home console video game system to be a major success, and, despite gradually being outdone in terms of power and sales by newer consoles, it was supported and sold from 1977 to 1992, about 15 years. The 2600 even managed to live longer than systems that Atari intended as its successors such as the Atari 7800 and their 8-bit computer line. One major factor is that being the first successful game console meant that the concept of a "console generation" cycle (where a console is sold and supported for roughly 5-7 years before getting phased out in favor of newer hardware) had yet to take hold in the minds of developers or consumers.
• The Commodore 64, known as "the computer for the masses, not the classes." In its day, it was essentially a gaming PC, work PC, game console, and even Raspberry Pi, all rolled into one. It was simple, it was effective, it was affordable, it could go online (including online gaming and social media), it was easy to repair, it was impossible to brick, it could be easily modified by consumers and companies alike, it could do pretty much anything, it had something for the whole family, and it had a veritable potluck of add-ons, software, and the like. So much so that the good ol' familiar "bread bin" sold 17 million units in it's 1982 to 1994 lifespan, and is still so popular in the retro gaming community that new hardware and software are still being produced for it — it's gotten gotten numerous clones and re-releases akin to the Nintendo Classic, tons of new hardware like Flash-compatible hard drives and ethernet cards, and receives enough new software even to this day that a user made a top 10 list just of the games released in 2022.
• Sony introduced the Dual Analog controller for the original PlayStation in April 1997, and refined it into the more famous DualShock in November of that year, which added force feedback (i.e. vibration). Since then, the DualShock has served as the main PlayStation controller through twenty-five years and five separate console generations and counting, with only a brief interlude at the start of the PlayStation 3's run due to a patent dispute with the Immersion Corporation involving the force feedback technology.^note Due to this dispute, the PS3 launched with a controller known as the Sixaxis, which was effectively identical to the later DualShock 3 barring the lack of vibration. The DualShock 3 would be released in 2008 after Sony settled the lawsuit and entered a business relationship with Immersion. The only changes made at all since 1997 were the addition of pressure-sensitive analog buttons on the DualShock 2, the addition of wireless connectivity and (rarely-used) motion sensors on the DualShock 3, turning the L2 and R2 buttons into triggers and the Select button into a touchpad on the DualShock 4, and adding adaptive triggers and a slightly more rounded and ergonomic design to the DualSense (a DualShock 5 in all but name). Otherwise, the basic form factor and button/analog stick placement of the DualShock have not only not changed at all, they have informed the design of almost every game controller (barring Nintendo's Wiimote, a throwback to the original NES controller) to follow in its wake.
  • On the same note, the design of the Xbox controller has been mostly unchanged since the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 (and even that was just a mild change to the Controller S design for the original Xbox that was released in 2002). The only notable changes have been the addition of "impulse triggers" (essentially giving the triggers their own rumble), switching from a circular D-pad to a cross-shaped one (until they went back to the circular design), renaming the Start and Back buttons to Menu and View respectively, and adding a share button to the middle of the controller. Microsoft has even de-coupled them from the console generation cycle starting with the Xbox One, instead just calling it the "Xbox Wireless Controller" and releasing new revisions of them every few years with some minor tweaks and added features (such as Bluetooth for non-Xbox users).
• The RL-10 rocket engine family, used as an upper stage engine for space vehicles. There have been upgrades, but the same general design has been in use since 1962, and is still fling today. It's engine cycle probably explains why: in a so called expander cycle engine, hydrogen fuel is used to cool the rocket nozzle, and the heated and evaporated hydrogen drives the turbines that pump fuel into the rocket. This type of cycle with this type of fuel, under the right conditions, has a lot of engineering advantages that are hard to beat, so the same basic design can last a long time. (above a certain thrust, expander cycles don't produce enough power to pump enough fuel, so other fuel cycles are used instead which require better technology and more work to develop.)

---