This is anecdotal, hearsay and probably not true, but a digger driver once told me that the reason theres so many chinese diggers and other heavy equipment over here these days is that if you are a chinese company and want to buy 1 western machine, you need to buy 10 locally manufactured ones and keep them for x amount of years.
So according to this dude the chinese companies would buy like a 100 local diggers and 10 western ones, park the locally produced ones in a storage until the x amount of years have passed and then sell them to the west.
Again, this was according to just some dude who digs holes in the ground. No idea if its actually true, if anyone knows I'd be interested to hear whats the reality.
I have started many cars that have sat multiple years. It depends how they were stored. Outside with no maintanence? Yeah good luck with that. Inside with regural turn overs and other maintanence? No problems.