Drink the Kool-Aid, Buy Japanese.

The BBQ Pit
1

I have to point out the obvious contradiction in that statement. Here we have discribed an early (< 100Kmile) complete failure of a very expensive driveline component, and yet this Honda scores a “very reliable” rating, I can only guess, because it’s a “reliable Japanese car.”

Geeze. The transmission in my “crappy american” Ford Bronco-II needed rebuilding at 140Kmiles. That would be the crappy american transmission manufactured byMitsubishi .

One co-worker was faced with expensive replacement of the rear axle on his Toyota T-100, due to a bad weld that finally failed out of warranty. He elected to buy a newer Toyota, because “Toyotas have great quality, and are reliable.” He declined my offer to repair it for him. Apparently, if someone who doesn’t worship Japanese craftsmanship works on one of these, the reliabilty is distroyed.

Another co-worker is on his 3rd Toyota (1 PU, two 4runners) in the five years I’ve been here. Yet he still feels intitled to give me crap over the “piece of crap” Ford I’ve been driving (with only one failed turn signal switch, and one rusted out muffler repaired ) that entire time.

Time after time I see people turning a blind eye to expensive repairs, and undiagnosable (apparently) problems with thier “reliable japanese cars”. What sort of kool-aid are the dealers serving these folks?

Another thing I notice is that none of these folks (that I know) do thier own maintainance or repairs. Pretty sure I know why. I’ve worked on my GF’s toyota truck (90, so they didn’t call them Tacomas yet) and my B-II. Both ~3litre V-6s, both 4WD, both standard transmission, both owned since new.

By coincidence, both required new starters within a few months. It took ~15 minutes to R&R the <$20 B-II starter. About 3 hours to swap the ~$180 toyota starter. The B-II starter had 186Kmiles on it. The Toy starter ~110Kmiles.

Lubing the front wheel bearings was a similar revilation, but only about a 2:1 labor savings in favor of the Ford.

The Toyota, I swear, has twice the parts. Each of them carefully shaped to fit around all the other parts. The ford intake “system” is one moulded rubber hose. The toyota system is three hoses, connected by custom shaped plastic elbows, for a total of 6 clamps, which NO professional mechanic has ever succeeded in getting all of them re-sealed.

All of those freaking clamps are between the MAF sensor and the intake manifold, so it runs like crap untill I fix it after the mechanic has worked on it.

Those clamps have to come off because the intake manifold has to come off to adjust the valve lash every so often, and I refuse to do this because it is just plain stupid design to put that sort of roadblock for a routine maintanice item. The valves require adjustment, because this is a SOHC design…so the timing belt needs replacing every so often as well.

The Bronco-II has hydraulic lifters, never had the valve covers off. Push rods seem to work fine. Makes for a much more open engine bay.

So what did Toyota provide for the extra complexity and service needs?

The Toyota engine is rated at 5 more HP, or less than 3%, which makes sense as it is 3l v. 2.9. It gets this HP at higher RPM though, which is an “interesting” design decision for a truck engine.

The B-II has more torque though, and feels (according to my girlfriend) like it has noticeably more power. It gets better fuel economy. It starts quicker…and it cost something like $10,000 less. Too bad it’s not Japanese and good.

2

After you drink the Kool-Aid you are dead, and cannot buy anything.

3

And since you’re dead, get buried in a Ford, since you ain’t be going anywhere anytime soon…

Heh, the movie “Used Cars” comes to mind.

4

You do have a point. I knew three girls in college that had late 1980’s Volkswagon Jettas. One of them belonged to my now wife. Those things were complete pieces of crap. My wife’s car even had the complete door handle assemblies yank out on both sides of the car. Repairs were needed all the time. I asked one of them why she kept getting the thing fixed and she replied: “Volkwagons are reliable cars so I want to hang on to this one”. :smack:

5

I used to notice this a lot back in the 90s. Magazines would review the car, give stellar ratings for the import vs the US build, and then list “common maintenance item costs.”

Changing a headlight used to be about 50 bucks for a US car, and 150 for a japanese. I’m sure the japanese car headlights only went out about a third as often, though.

Same thing for stuff like brakes, alternators, starters, etc…way moer to repair on the imports vs the American cars.

Nowadays, though, not so much. Auto mfrs are doing things like mounting the battery in the wheel well, or putting the MAP sensor right over the spark plugs, or making it nearly impossible to change out most parts without some special dealer tools.

Your Bronco II is a thing of the past, my friend. New designs dictate that just about EVERYTHING should be a pain in the butt for a driveway mechanic to work on, and if you work on it successfully, they will try to blame that on other failures and not honor your warranty.

That japanese business model really educated the Americans :slight_smile:

6

I get these searing moments of mental clarity while washing the spaniel.

7

Don’t you hate it when the facts get in the way of your jingoism? I’ll agree about the krautburners, however.

8

Wow, my first Pitting! That was me who started the GQ thread, and I admit I don’t know the first thing about fixing a car if it has any trouble. I’m completely at the mercy of a mechanic. But this car is ten years old, and the transmission was the first time I ever had the slightest problem with it. An expensive problem sure, but I won my car in an auction for so cheap that even factoring in that repair cost, I still came out way ahead. The car has saved my life more than once, including in a blowout when I lost control and veered off the highway at high speed but miraculously didn’t crash into anything. It gets great gas mileage, a blessing with gas prices so high these days and all the commuting I do.

So yes, I am completely unequipped to deal with any sort of car problems at all, but I still contend I’m doing okay with my Civic, or at least I have up until now. I learned how to drive in 1995, on a 1977 Toyota Corolla that my mother bought new – a car older than I am. It ran fine until they day they got rid of it because the body was rusting apart, over 20 years after they bought it. So far my family has been pretty lucky with Toyotas and Hondas, so that’s why I consider them reliable. And when my Civic eventually dies, I’ll look into getting another one. I’m sorry if I put you out with my post for help in GQ, but I’d rather worry about keeping my car running than about you somehow getting offended and Pitting me.

9

Oh, and Kevbo, since it’s clear you have me at a disadvantage because you know a lot about cars, can you think of what might be wrong with mine? It would be easier to give me some advice at this point than to hold me up as an example of everything that’s wrong with car buyers.

10

If Kevbo’s theory is correct, those self-reported data could be incorrect or biased as well. I’d want to see how the questions were asked, too.

11

I would also like to point out that Anerican made trucks have always had a pretty good reputation for durability and reliability.

However, the econocars made by American manufacturers that correspond to the Toyota Camrys of the world have been utter crap for a long time now (they have gotten better recently, but over the past 30 years they have mostly been dreadful in comparison to Honda/Toyota).

Do you really want to defend the quality and workmanship of the departed, unlamented http://auto.consumerguide.com/Auto/Used/reviews/full/index.cfm/id/2160/act/usedcarreviewreliability]Ford Festiva? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

12

Well, I started that pitting in your thread, though better of kicking you when you were down, did take it to the pit, and strip your name from it. Not much of a pittng really. Just find it very annoying hearing of Japanese reliability in one breath, and evidence to the contrary in the next.

I did post my best guess over there…(noisy intake leak)

But it is just a guess. This is one of the reasons I do my own automotive work whenever possible (and I find it is nearly always possible) . Every time I have ever discribed an undiagnosed problem to a mechanic or service manager they jumped to the assumption that is must be whatever fixed another vehicle that had possibly one symptom margionally in common with the current patient. They have NEVER EVER been correct the first time, nor the second…by the third time I’ve been fed up enough to figure it out and fix it myself.

I’ve gone down some blind alleys on my own, but since it costs me time and money to guess wrong, instead of making money for the mechanic when he flails to no effect, I like to be very sure of the diagnosis.

I’ll post some more WAGs over there.

13

Musta got yourself a mighty fine Ford Bronc there, pardner. I’m happy for you.

I’ve always been a Toyota or Nissan guy myself. I’ve watched friends try & get through life in a 72 Pinto, a 85 Mustang and a 90 Ranger. These are reasonably mechanically inclined folks, as I am. My cars at the time? 76 Celica (Died a horrible death in a collision), 90 Nissan P/U (timing chain broke at 160k, it was a learning experience for me) an 89 Camry (died in a collision at 190k) 88 Celica (died in a collision at 145k) and currently rolling a 95 Pathfinder & 83 Corolla. The Corolla has 140k miles and still gets 35MPG despite my not rebuilding the carbureator which it desperately needs. Repairs? Camry got a couple CV axles & struts at 180k, and I did the Corolla’s timing belt in a couple hours with tools on hand.

I guess we all just form opinions based on what we experience, but I’ll never buy a Ford solely because I think it’s dependable. Because that’s not been my experience.

14

What’s motivating the VW owners to shit all over their beloved Jettas, then? I know many Jetta owners, and these people are worse than Apple owners.

15

My OP is about the irrational loyalty displayed by Japanese car owners who have first hand negative experiences, yet blow them off to bad luck, etc…

I got on this rant when I read (my paraphrasing)

" I have this really reliable car, well except for that blown tranny a while back, and now its making bad noises, sucking fuel, and has a substantial power loss…could someone please tell me what is wrong with my highly reliable car"
From your linked article:

my bolding. They are asking the choir about the quality of the parson. I don’t dispute that owners of Japanese cars think they are reliable.

The second quote tells me a lot. I know some hybrid owners, and while I think hybrids have thier place, the owners are IN LOVE with the cars. At this point, purchasing one is nothing short of an act of faith.

Apparently none of the Prius owners who responded were concerned about thier cars suddenly shutting down for no reason at all (software problem), nor over leaking fuel bladders, or malfunctioning brae lights. And the HCH owners apparently didn’t consider a trip to the dealer for a software patch much of an inconvienience…but when it hurt the fuel economy, that was worth bitching about.

16

If you’re just going to assume all respondants are lying, I guess there’s little point in providing cites. Again, no one seems to be able to explain why VW owners, who are at least as fervent about their vehicles as anyone on the road, somehow distinguish themselves en masse with their integrity in consumer reporting. Your objection is specious.

17

Oy. And my brother had a Ford Taurus that blew a transmission at 80000 miles. So what? The plural of anecdote is not data.

American cars have, overall, gotten better. Many cars are now hard to work on because of emission controls or just retarded design, but I’m not sure that’s limited to foreign cars. In general, reviews of foreign cars always read something like, “reliable, but repairs can be expensive”.

Is there any point to the OP besides “Buy American”?

18

Blake, is that you?

I have a Ranger that will be over 100,000 next month, and it’s still running great. I also have a Subaru with 40K that blows the doors off of all the Mustangs. You pick you vehicle for waht it needs to do. Speed kills…others!

19

Seems to me that they’d have a better idea of the quality than anyone else. “Ask the man who owns one” was good enough for Packard, so why not Consumer Reports?

20

Jesus, Inigo! Are you a really bad driver or do you have hordes of aliens running you off the road trying to have access to your butt with their probes? :eek:

From what I can tell (and no, it’s not a sincere conspiracy theory) it all started in the '70’s.

My first car that I bought with my own money while in high school was a 1969 Ford LTD with a 390c.i. 6.2L V-8. (I still think Hummers are for pussies) :smiley: This thing was as close to a tank as you could get without armored door panels and a gun-turret. Sure, it yielded about 3 gallons per mile, but to my knowledge the only major repairs in its 20 year existence was a radiator repair and a carb rebuild. Pretty good track record. For all I know it’s still out there. Fucking Carrie in the ass!

Anyway. when the gas crisis hit, people started looking for smaller more efficient cars. (Do I really need a cite for this?) Detroit figured they’d ride out the storm. An American car built before, say, 1975 or 6, was still a pretty good product. Excepting the value of mileage.

Lo and behold, Japan was kicking our asses in fuel economy. Add to that, whether perceived or actual, an attitude that Japanese car builders were more diciplined and dedicated to their work.

NOTE: I’m not bashing unions here. I’m saying based on popular opinion of tactics used then, maybe people saw an automaker in Detroit as less concerned about quality and more about the paycheck. This could just as easily be attributed to racism of whatever sort that the Japanese are solely concerned with builing cars and electronics. (Anyone see Gung Ho? The whole movie was based on these stereotypes) But, again, that’s all a WAG on my part. Don’t think I’m offering that as gospel.

So, where are we now? Japanese cars are kicking the shit out of American cars in fuel economy. And winning big time after being in the US market for over 10 years. Detroit, after noticing stock isn’t keeping pace with union costs and lack of sales thinks, “Hmmm, maybe we should build a few small cars to compete with this competitor.”

And the scramble to catch up has begun. Of course, about 8 nanoseconds later the battle is over. Can you say Pinto? Chevette? I can’t even continue after those two. I wonder why people started pointing out deficiencies in American cars compared to Japanese models. The American counterpart was hurriedly designed in an attempt to match fuel performance the Japanese have spent decades working on. And they tried to do this in a few short years.

Any wonder why a 1979 Corrola is thought of as more reliable than a '79 Pinto? The Japanese had a long running plan on these economy cars. Detroit just slapped together a Mustang with a half-assed attempt at MPG. I’ll offer up the '79 Corvette. Much more reliable than most Chevy’s built then, save for the trucks. I’ll take a '79 Suburban cross-country before a '90 Ranger. The 'Vette’s repair prices were (as now) much higher due to limited production. You just don’t have the parts available in sufficient quantities to keep repairs low. And the repair/replacement parts have to match a quality standard. Increasing the price. On top of that, there’s much more limited “platform-exchange”. A tie rod for a Camaro can be replaced with one from a Trans-Am. That alone doubles the amount of available parts.

To further the parts price angle, the Big3 cars that needed repairs in the late '70’s and early '80’s were relatively cheap, considering again that the volume of parts was larger. The starter for an '84 Corolla was higher than that of a Cutlass. A big part of that was you could replace the tranny with one from a Grand Prix. Or a Monte Carlo. They were mostly the same. And just about all were mounted the same.

That said, a big thing from what I see from the past is this. You have the Japanese building more efficient cars, the Americans catching up by putting shit on the market. The lack of parts for imports raising prices on repairs. The lack of trained mechanics for imports earning higher wages due to lack of a pool of skilled workers. (Increasing the cost of import repairs and hence the beleif imports are inherently more expensive.) The fact that imports were the way to go to decrease day-to-day driving cost. Imports are more reliable due to the crap Detroit foisted on us for years.

And may as well add this. Further the above with the end of the oil embargo and cheap gas. Leading Detroit to build bigger cars and trucks. Once that happened, the economy aspect was abandoned. (For the most part). Oh sure, they threw us the occasional bone. Festiva? You want to talk about a national embarrasment? Just reinforced the idea American cars are shit.

Well, for the most part they aren’t. Just as reliable overall as imports. (Save for really high-end imports, that still cost a shitload of money to repair.)

It’s true an American counterpart needed more repairs, but abill of $100 for brake pads and a control arm was easier to justify then $130 for a starter.

Enough rambling. I’ve even lost myself in all this. :frowning: