I find myself using some very old (>50 yrs?) Snap-On and Craftsman tools left me by my wife's grandfather, Grandpa Howard, who was a mechanic all his life. He worked only on American cars, so the tools are all in inch sizes, but come in very useful for wrenching a variety of a/c connections on my MBs, many of which seem to be non-metric.

Are these better than their modern counterparts from a purely engineering perspective? Hard to say. The finishes tend to be less polished than on some of the new tools. Then again, I prefer the matt finish adopted by Hazet and Stahlwille on their tools. (I wouldn't be surprised if these were made in China, branded 'Germany' and suitably marked-up, BTW).

What does make them infinitely better, however, is the knowledge that every time I pick one up I know it has given some 50 years or more of hard work and quality results to someone who did this for a living. That make me a better mechanic.