I’ve only owned 3 cars, I don’t tend to trade them. One GM, one Toyota that was made by NUMMI so partially GM. I’d consider a Ranger in the future, no interest in Stellantis these days.
I’ve driven all 3 (old smaller Ford Ranger, Chevrolet S10, and Dodge RAM before it was RAM) for work, but definitely weren’t mine. Parents had I think it was a Reliant.
I’ve owned a Toyota and a VW but nothing from GM so no I can’t complete the Big Three.
I have owned other vehicles by smaller manufacturers like Ford.
Good one!
It’s interesting to look at the car / light truck brands they each encompass:
Toyota: Toyota, Lexus, Century, Daihatsu, & Hino. (Hino being mostly larger trucks with a smidgen of quasi-pickup trucks)
VW: Volkwagen, Audi, Bentley, Cupra, Jetta, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, & Skoda.
Hyundai: Hyundai, Kia, & Genesis.
This will be interesting to watch. I wonder when a Chinese manufacturer will become part of the World Big Three. The highest ranking is No. 6 now.
Yes it is, but not a large part. Labeling “Chrysler” as Big 3 might be historically accurate but certainly isn’t currently accurate. Neither are Chrysler’s legacy brands taken collectively anywhere near the current Big 6. Not meaning to quibble; just adding more info to the pile.
Numbers 4, 5, & 6 consist of:
Of all six, it’s interesting to me that Ford is the least conglomerate of the bunch. Yes, Lincoln was once a separate car company too, but that was over 100 years ago.
Depending on whose list you look at for which year, the largest Chinese outfit, BYD, needs to roughly double in production to displace the current #3 Hyundai. Easy enough to do if they go the conglomerate route and buy up a bunch of their lesser Chinese competitors.
The large wildcard IMO is that China is embracing EVs in a big way. If / when / as the rest of the world gets aboard, all the sales growth will be of Chinese brands, while the rest of the world’s entrenched ICE-centric manufacturers will be left squabbling over an ever-shrinking pie. Like a flock of vultures fighting over a single carcass being rapidly consumed.
Probably not long. They’re putting a lot of resources into EV technology, and BYD electric cars are stylish and reported to be quite good, if still imperfect. As a result of a recent trade deal with China, they’ll soon be available in Canada. I haven’t seen any confirmed pricing, but rumour is that they’ll be priced very competitively, perhaps the lowest-cost EVs around.
Would I trust them enough to buy one? Not yet. But I’m old enough to remember when “Made in Japan” meant “junk”. And then they took over global automotive and electronics markets and became renowned for the kind of high quality that North American automakers just couldn’t match.
Never a Chrysler and only one GM (a Pontiac Fiero). More Fords than I can count. A couple VWs when I was younger and mostly Hondas now that I’m wiser.
First car I bought was an old beater of a 59 Plymouth, then had a Plymouth wagon, a Ford wagon, another Plymouth, a few Jeeps, then went with mostly foreign makes. Oh, and I briefly owned a Saturn, so I guess that covers all three.
Yes, I’ve had multiple versions of all the big 3, trucks, cars, and minivans. Also a Rambler, and an International Harvester.
This mirrors my results. The Rams surprised me by being much more reliable than any other brand. Zero major work on any of the three I’ve owned. The only reason I’ve replaced them is needing different capabilities, or losing one in an accident. IME they rival, or even beat Toyota for reliability. I realize this doesn’t match a lot of surveys and articles, but it’s my personal experience.
I’ve had 3 Ford trucks, and all were absolutely awful. One had a broken valve, another went through 3 transmissions before reaching 100K, one (the Diesel) had an actual failed block (Navistar folks came and got that one to examine it. To their credit, I got a new 7.3 Diesel under warranty).
I’ve had two Ford cars, one went through 2 transmissions before I gave up, and one had something fail noisily in the engine and I just limped to a dealer and traded it on a Corolla.
I’ve had a Camaro, and a few Oldsmobiles that were OK (for the 70s, anyway). My Chevy truck was OK, but not great. Lots of niggling failures in fuel pumps, vacuum stuff, smog stuff. It spent a lot of time in the shop, but no major engine/tran failures.
I’ve never owned a Ford that lasted 50K without major engine/drive-train failures.
After my first experience with a Toyota, I’ve never bought any other car brand. The only reason I’m buying Big-3 is that Toyota doesn’t make a pickup with the capability I need. They only make half-tons (in the “civilian” market, anyway).
I guess my new Kia is the first time I’ve owned a big 3 car. Although i wonder if the Oldsmobile that was handed down to me by my grandparents was big 3 at the time.
Good bet.
Olds was GM since before you or I were born. in our youth GM was #1 by a hefty margin.
Both GMs I got as handmedowns from the parents were Olds too. Olds was a real popular brand through the 1960s.
Oh, it was certainly GM. I was just thinking that GM was probably one of the world’s big the auto makers at the time.
Yep. Ford Escort was mostly ok, but underpowered and leaked a little oil. Olds Starfire always started but needed frequent tuneups. Dodge Colt may not count, since it was made by Mitsubishi. I sold it after a couple of years because I moved to NYC. Saturn was reliable, but underpowered. We had a Pontiac Vibe for several years, and it was a great car.
First car was a 1978 Chevrolet Monza Spyder 305 V8. Traded it in for an 84 VW GTI. Never bought an American passenger car again
1989 Chevy Astro van, very truck like, was a cargo van we eventually converted to cargo/ passenger
1995 Ford Econoline van aka Vanna White
2002 Chevy s10 bought used mint condition added a topper. Sadly totaled
Dodge was never part of GM. They were part of Chrysler. So you had 5 Chrysler vehicles.
Oh yeah, and then some! Over the past 50 years I have owned, in order of oldest to newest:
Buick Electra 225 (GM)
Chevy Vega (GM)
Mustang (Ford)
Celica GT (Toyota)
Mustang (Ford)
F150 (Ford)
Chevy Nova (GM)
F150 (Ford)
F250 (Ford)
Tercel (Toyota)
Hilux (Toyota)
Civic (Honda)
Explorer (Ford)
F350 (Ford)
Dodge Grand Caravan (Chrysler)
Ranger (Ford)
Frontier (Nissan)
Titan (Nissan)
I know a designer for a major Japanese car manufacturer and he is extremely frustrated with his company’s policies concerning EVs.
It’s the elephant in the room in his department.
I’ve been driving for 30 years this summer and have been with my wife for 26 years this summer. In that time either I’ve owned or we’ve owned together:
Chrysler: we’ve owned a Chrysler Town and Country, a Chrysler LeBaron, a Dodge Dakota, and a Jeep Cherokee.
GM: a Chevy HHR, a Suburban, two different Pontiac Grand Prixs, and a GMC Terrain (currently my wife’s daily driver).
Ford: an F-150 and a Mustang. Both are currently my two kids’ respective cars/daily drivers but I own them so I’ll count them for the purposes of this poll.
Additionally, I or we have owned cars from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, IH, Mercedes, VW, and Kia (my current daily). My wife had an Eagle (a Chrysler brand) Summit (a rebadged Mitsubishi Mirage) when we met and we had that for the first 3 or 4 years of our relationship. It was replaced by the Cherokee.
The Toyotas (a 1989 passenger van and a 1984 4wd Tercel) were by far the most reliable vehicles we’ve owned (knock on wood) and we put combined over half a million miles on them – and of course we got them used – with neither one ever needing major mechanical work save the Tercel, which blew through CV axles for some reason that I could never diagnose. Thankfully the repair was cheap and rather easy to do.
That van is long gone but it would be a smokin’ hot collector’s item today.
The Chyslers were the most unreliable, and that piece-of-shit LeBaron was without question the worst vehicle I’ve ever owned and likely the worst thing to be sold as actual human transportation in the history of forever. Its been 20 years since I got rid of it and I still seethe when I think about that godawful car.
Oh. And we once rented this crappy little trailer home out in the country and the previous tenants had left behind an early 1970’s GMC pickup parked on the property. Rather than coming to get it they signed over the title to the landlord who then simply gave it to me and thus made it my problem. Thanks, I guess? The damn thing barely ran so I gave it to my brother just to get it off the property. I don’t know what he did with it. Traded of for a bag of weed, most likely. So I guess I once owned, for about 10 days, a classic GMC pickup.
Never owned a Lancia, unfortunately.
No Fords, but Chrysler and GM were well represented
Chevy Laguna, Chevy Astro, Chevy Traverse, Chevy Colorado x 2, Saturn (forget model), Buick Rendezvous, Buick Encore GX.
Plymouth Horizon, Plymouth Voyager, Dodge Omni, Dodge Caravan
In addition, one from AMC, a 1973 Gremlin X.
My Ford was a lemon. Like, a co-worker who previously worked for Ford told me i should have triggered my state’s lemon law. My best, favorite, and most reliable cars were the two Hondas. I’ve been disappointed by the Subaru, because it’s needed more repairs than i had hoped, but i like driving it. The Kia is too new to know for sure. It has lots of annoying little interface glitches, but nothing important has gone wrong.
I had the GM cars ages ago, when cars were less reliable. They were terrible by modern standards, but okay for their time, i think.