And, to throw in my 2¢ – If money is not an issue, I’ll go with a high-end German car every time.
Good god guys! The people who are mentioning model years they’ve got problems with are twenty years old!
I’ll humbly submit that vehicle quality no longer matters as a manufacturer won’t be able to STAY in business if they don’t have a good grip on ISO9000 levels of quality (kia? hello?)
Face it: There are no statistically valid distinctions in vehicle quality anymore. I’ve got a 2001 PT cruiser with two in warrantee issues, a 2003 Avalanche with 0 issues, and a 98 Corvette with a good dozen issues.
Why does the vette have a higher repair record? Because it sells an order of magnitude fewer vehicles and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Honda builds more Accords in two years than Corvettes have ever been produced.
The user satisfaction surveys last year had Mercedes about 2 points above average.
The lowest vehicle on the list (with 212 problems per 100 vehicles sold) was the Hummer H2. A Great Many of those complaints centered around getting less gas mileage than expected. Um, hello? It’s the biggest thing on the planet and you’re surprised the mileage is bad?
Buy whatever you like, your impression of it being mechanically reliable will be purely based on your predisposed impression of reliability.
Yep, and my WWII Jap rifle is more effective than my American Revolutionary rifle.
Stupid unfair comparisons can make about anything look lame.
Like the new Nissan full size pick up, has the most power of anything IN ITS CLASS. 8500GVW, so the F-250’s and CK2500’s do not count :rolleyes: , there are other factors that somehow even exclude the, or some, 1/2 ton domestics.
Easy there, B&I. To each his own.
I remember way back in the '70s when Datsun (now Nissan) pretty much dumped a ton of whup-ass on the american 1/2 tons. Everbody lusted after them. Farmers, contractors, studmuffins, and fleet owners to name a few.
Why? Value, that’s why. They were reliable, #1. And they did more than advertised. Farmers knew you could easily tote a ton of hay in one.
I know. I serviced them.
I don’t know much about pickups now, 'cause I’m not interested in owning one. The Tundra is a nice looking package, though. Clean design.
Oh yeah, baby. So, you can feel my pain when the air ride system in our 1993 Mark VIII went out and had to be replaced… holy flurcking schmidt. As I recall, it was in the mid-4 digits.
We didn’t buy our Lincoln, I inherited it from my grandpa when he died. Damn, but that was a lot of car for an 80 year old guy. Fastest thing I’ve ever driven (excluding a Porsche 911) and the pickup was better between 70 and 90 than it was from 30 to 50! I was disappointed when somebody crashed into it.
that’s a new one by me mangeorge. I remember noticing them falling apart and LOL
The only car in the world that appreciates after you drive it off the lot is the Chevrolet Corvette.
Very many cars are superior to American cars, but not when it comes to price or durability. I ran two Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras over 200K miles and sold them for enough to buy my next car.
My first car was a 1985 Ford Tempo. I bought it for two hundred dollars. I put fourteen dollars worth of mantenance into it in two years- new wiper blades and the materials for the oil change I did myself. When I got rearended in the Bronx, the insurance company sent me a check for a little under nine bills. THAT is value.
I know a lot of guys who crow to high heaven about the reliability of their low-end imports. The odd thing is, these are the same clowns who run to the junkyard for this part or that part. Sorry, but my cars have never NEEDED wear-replacements.
Granted, I work for the UAW. But that means that I have seen what goes into making the cars I’ve driven. And I will tell you this: All that BS about union workers making shoddy product is just that. The automotive unions in the USA are the weakest such unions in the world. Germany is in the 90% of union density in the auto industry, as is Italy, as is Britain. The United States is at less than 50%. I know. We worry about that number every day. We can’t organize a factory to save our fucking lives. So it’s not union workers that are making the cars you hate so much. And if you want to know for sure, you send me the VIN of your American car and I’ll tell you not only where it was assembled, but where every goddamn part came from. ANd I will bet you dollars to donuts that your shitty car wasn’t assembled by a union man, and if it was, then it was a parts problem and not an assembly one.
The US undersells imports in terms of models and popularity because the foreign design houses churn ideas out faster than the domestics do. And the on-demand shops and the kaizen philosophy allow for lesser lag between drafting table and showroom floor. Look- Nissan revamped the entire front end of every model it makes, introduced the Murano, and created an entire new design/sales philosophy in two years. Meanwhile, Chevrolet has been struggling for four years to get the SSR to market.
Imports are flashier because they have to be. Daimler/Chrysler was just overtaken this year as the third-biggest automaker in the US, and that was a statistical fluke based on corporate numbers. In order to get ahead, you have to innovate, which means taking chances. The southeast-Asian companies have gotten away with it because they had nowhere to go but up in terms of design. But the mainstream import manufacturers are feeling the same hurt that the USA is: that free-trade policy prompts the exodus of auto jobs to lesser-prepared populations. And that’s where you get your garbage cars. Check your VIN.
Don’t buy a Chevy Metro. It’s entirely made in China- assembled by ill-trained provincials out of poorly-machined parts.
Spend the money on the Malibu. Assembled in Wilmington, DE by craftsmen who are held to specific standards, and made of parts that are overwhelmingly US-made by craftsmen whose work is held to equally specific standards.
You want a car that will outlive the life of its warranty twice over? Buy American. Buy UAW.
There you will find a list of what is made here, by us, to standard. You will not go wrong.
“As far as good old-fashioned steel goes, my first car was a 1957 Nash Metropolitan.”
!!! Wow, a real Lois Lane car.
The Japanese apparently know how to do some things right…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/prog25/toyota.shtml
Err, after that lot they parked it on the top of a towerblock and…
blew up the building. My memory is that it still started even after that, but I may mis-remember, can anyone with a better memory confirm?
As to the OP all in all I’d have to vote for Germany. I’ll have a Merc’ please.
Howyadoin,
“Makes”? If that means where the cars become, well, cars… I’d have to say the US. Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Isuzu all assemble their vehicles here in the US, at least the bulk of their mainstream cars (Camry, Accord, etc.). Mercedes and BMW also have assembly plants here in the US, although from what I gather their results haven’t been as good. Of course, this could be due to the reduction in snob-appeal.
The weird part is, while the Japanese are bringing their assembly to the US, the Big Three are farming out to Mexico and Canada. Could that be the reason why GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler still lag in quality? If you look at Cadillac, they are riding high in quality, even compared to the European and Asian nameplates. Bear in mind that Cadillacs are assembled in the US.
From my personal experience, I’ve owned an '84 Chevy Celebrity that was built in Framingham, Mass., just a few miles from where I live. I bought the car with 140K in '92 for $400, and it lasted me four years and 40K, at which point I gave it to my brother-in-law, who got another two years out of it. I replaced a gas tank and fixed a transmission leak, and that was all the work it required. The car outlived the factory it was built in, as a matter of fact…
The Koreans are coming to eat everyone’s lunch though… It’s the Wal-Mart mentality, lotsa content at a cheap price. Their quality is improving steadily, too. It’s not at the point that I’d cross-shop a Kia Spectra with a Civic or Corolla, but I’d look at a Elantra or Sonata…
-Rav
Speaking of quality;
I can’t help but notice that BMW, on the 325i I think it is, has this cheap looking muffler with two skinny cheap looking pipes sticking out under the car.
I’m sure it has no detrimental effect on performance, but it just hangs down there, not even tucked up next to the chassis. I want to see if the M5 is the same, but I keep forgetting to look.
Some have tips, but I suspect these are after-market add-ons.
Any BMW apologists (;)) out there who are willing to explain?
Peace,
mangeorge (Proud Audi owner)
They also make an M3. (shit).
Well, I saw that fairly recently, lemme think…
They ran it into lots of stuff, threw lots of stuff on it, dropped it a few times, tied it to a pier and let it drift out to sea (the ropes nearly snapped I believe), then lit it on fire. And it still ran, go fig. (Although, they did have to tinker with the engine after the being submerged in water bit)
A friend of mine had a crappy little Toyota truck for a flat-bed farm truck and I will vouch for it. It was indestructable.
We beat the holy hell out of that truck and nothing ever went wrong with it. It didn’t even use oil between changes.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never seen this and I spend a lot of time looking at BMWs.
So they can offer better looking ones on the higher models. Or sell the nice tips to the base model purchasers as dealer add-ons.
Well, collinsc, I’ve seen it plenty. I’ll endeavor to get more accurate information and report back to you. It is pretty obvious, though. One muffler with two skinny pipes poking out, not supported by straps.
Stay tuned. 
Things change over time and best means a lot of things to different people.
During the 60’s the Japanese vehicles had a dreadful reputation. Now (justifiably) they are rated very highly At the same time British cars- apart from high end- were often a bit of a joke often due to poor quality control.
However, I can’t remember Italy ever having trouble making stylish, well thought of cars.
(France made that really ugly Citroen and Germany had the Beetle so they are out automatically).
Germany: Porsche, Mercedes, BMW (which stands for Best Motorcycles in the World), Audi, and Volkswagen. Great handling cars that drive with passion.
For set-and-forget, run forever reliability cars that don’t stir the soul, then that’s Japan.
I ride a BMW motorcycle, BTW, and have for over 20 years. Best Motorcycles in the World.
Best cars? Depends on what you value in a car. German cars are generally good-but cost a lot of $$ to maintain, once they hit 75,000 miles or so. The Japanese build very reliable (if boring) cars…the Koreans are coming up. What you DON’T see in the USA market (one of the most demanding in the world) are the great unknowns-Italy, France, Sweden (OK, Volvo is here). The reason? Limited factory support, “me too” products, and no spare parts availability.The American brands are hard to generalize about-they usually have problems with new models, but after a few years, the cars are generally good (the last years of Oldsmobile, Saturn, Pontiac produced some great cars). One trend I do predict: modern cars (post 1990 or so, will have great difficulty surviving into old age-the reason is electronic modules (which control the engine, transmission, ABS, etc.) These modules are not repairable, and once the car goes out of production, almost no aftermarket suppliers.
That is why there will be very few 2000 Audi A4s on the road, in 2030. It will simply be impossible to fix them.
I work at various auto auctions and BMW stands for Broke My Wallet, Badly Made Wheels, Broken Many Ways, plus a few more I can’t remember right now…none of them good.
But probably just indicative of the BMW’s that end up at auction.