No. I am not kidding. Tuneups to replace points and plugs and set the valves was common. We also had to see to it that the brakes were kept adjusted. Gas station usually got $1.50-$2 for a brake adjustment which most people gladly paid since most of us couldn't afford a jack and the bumper jacks in most cars was a good device to get you killed. Performance was noticeably degraded after about 2k miles. Many folks pushed them to the 10-12K mile range before getting a tueup and were always amazed by how much better it ran after a tuneup. Nowadays, you hardly notice the difference after a 60K tuneup.
Actually, it is not a problem. My current CV (bought well used and moderately abused at a deep discount) uses a qt about every 5-600 miles and has for the last 100k. It passes emissions on the low end of the range and gets decent fuel mileage doing it. Oil is still a hell of a lot cheaper than any alternative plan and the car is in otherwise good condition and reliable. It doesn't bother me to throw in a couple of spare qts to be used as needed and it has bee a lifelong habit to at least look under the hood every few days. The usual oil consumption fixes have been done and the engine has good compression and oil pressure - it does not leak. It'll take many qts of oil to cover the cost of an engine rebuild or replacement and it does not foul plugs or eat cats. As a matter of fact, the only cats I have ever had to replace were on a couple of clean running Olds with very little oil consumption.
Younger drivers have no idea how much better cars are today with respect to maintenance than they were just 20 years ago. Enjoy the ride and kwitchurbitchn' - it ain't half bad nowadays.
As far as new cars using oil, I think a friend of mine hit on the right idea about new cars and break-in years ago. He said the best thing to do was make sure it was all in one piece and drive it like you stole it. I am not that rough on them but, I tend to drive a new car as I intend to drive it in the future. Never had a catastrophic engine failure or a oil consumption problem with a vehicle broken in that way.
Regards Lugnut