Cool. Thanks. The Dope never disappoints.
Heh. I had to look that one up. 
The one guy calling the OP a fool is me. Canada builds a hefty number of good cars too.
I voted Japan by a nose.
Japan I think is the best “all around.” They have something for everyone and all across the major lines from economy to luxury to sports cars Honda, Nissan, and Toyota all have strong general reliability and performance.
I have a special place in my heart for a nice Italian sports car or a BMW or Benz, but on some level I can’t look past the “daily driver” issue. While my understanding is VW has improved its reliability numbers in the past 3-4 model years, the rest of the German automakers are still infamous for requiring tons of regular maintenance.
I owned a BMW when I first retired from the Army because I had driven them when stationed in Germany and really liked them, but basically unless you are a true aficionado and really super interested in being ultra-rigid on regular maintenance they are more trouble than they’re worth. I recently was looking at buying a new car and briefly considered another BMW, but what really pushed me away from that was a quote from one of the biggest BMW enthusiast boards:
“BMWs are great cars but you can’t expect to just treat them however you want and have them run for 200,000 miles, they aren’t Hondas.”
To me that’s a decisive endorsement of Honda…not of BMW (the guy saying it probably felt the other way.)
For the budget-conscious the other big issue is most Japanese cars you buy are assembled here and the parts are cheaply available here. If your Camry or Civic breaks down it will cost far less to repair than an equivalently priced BMW, Benz, or VW. Factor in the German cars will need repaired more often and will cost more to repair, and that can become a decisive factor. This isn’t just a reflection of the higher price tag on German cars, it’s a reflection of the fact that the parts for many Japanese cars are manufactured here in the U.S. and are heavily stocked. A $35,000 MRSP Toyota will cost markedly less to repair than a $35,000 VW or Audi.
You will also find when you buy one of these cars that insurance companies know this and adjust accordingly, if you have equal MSRP German and Japanese cars, the Japanese car will cost less for the same level of insurance coverage.
I will briefly mention that for commercial vans or trucks, I have always loved Ford and continue to love them for that purpose. Additionally I’m very aware that in the past 3-4 years Ford has dramatically improved in quality across the board, and the reviews back this up. Their sales are a reflection of the genuine improvement in quality. Fords should also be ranked up there with the Japanese cars because they are reliable, very cheap to maintain, and will usually cost a little bit less for equivalent class cars.
The unfortunate news I’m hearing from Edmunds and others though, is that as Ford has dramatically increased sales their quality has started to go down again in the 2012 model year so that is something to watch out for (Mercedes had a similar problem when it significantly increased the number of cars sold some 15 years ago–they were not able to scale up their quality control.)
BMW is probably the best out of all the German marques when it comes to general quality. VW/Audi probably the worst. Here is the thing - none of the German marques have ever been very good in this respect. Anyone pining for the “good old days” of German quality is just looking back at the past with rose tinted glasses. About the most charitable thing you can say is that back in the 1970s and 80s, a German car that cost faaaar more than an equivalent US or Japanese car (the cheapest, slowest, most badly equipped Mercedes still cost more than the biggest, most loaded up Cadillac) might last more than 100,000 miles IF you followed the rigorous factory R&R schedule. Being marginally better built than Jaguar, Maserati or malaise-era Cadillac might have been tolerable in the 1970s, but the Germans never really got much better than this. When Lexus and Acura came ashore in the late 80s/early 90s and combined luxury with actual, modern reliability, the Germans looked laughable by comparison.
Here’s a good article.
So no, Mercedes quality never went down because they increased volume, or because they merged with Chrysler, or any of that other apologist crap. They were always garbage.
It’s easy to stay alive when the car is in the shop getting the brakes replaced and the tranny rebuilt. 
Actually, I have a friend who swears that his Volvo saved his life in a head-on collision with a truck. He got a broken toe out of the mess, and the car was totalled.
You have to go for sheer utility here. Japan gets the nod.
Another vote for Japan, although the quality/reliability of the newest Hyundai’s is supposed to be just amazing. Were I in the market for a new car, I’d give serious thought to a new Genesis.
I’m not disagreeing with that, I’ve always felt German cars were reliability nightmares. When I did buy a BMW it was essentially because I thought at that point in my life it’d be nice to have a really nice car and I wouldn’t mind being really diligent about keeping it running. For the first two years I was very diligent about following maintenance schedule and had several major problems in spite of that. Since I felt I wasn’t really being rewarded for following maintenance schedules I got pretty lax after that and while I still had problems I didn’t actually notice having any more problems after the fact. But yeah, it was a nice car but I will never have a BMW as my daily driver again.
Anyway, the comment about Mercedes was just based on an Edmunds article I read which compared Ford’s early signs of decreased quality in the 2012 model year with similar declines they have see in Mercedes. Edmunds was only talking about “decreases in reliability” which isn’t saying that Mercedes had high reliability before only saying it had decreased after their sales increased.
If you notice my entire post was essentially an argument that German cars are known for not being highly reliable. I don’t really think it is fair or accurate to respond to it as though I was “pining for the golden days of higher reliability”, when I quite frankly never did anything like that in my post.
Despite nightmarish memories off all the f$&(@//;$:;@ing repairs done to my dear old dad’s 84 SL-380, I voted for German cars. Even though I’m Italian. The right kind of Bimmer or Benz, it has the same status symbol and commodity fetishism as an Italian car, but rather than being overstated, it’s understated. I like that. It feels more dignified, refined…classy than a flashy red Ferrari. I say this without irony, as I look at the framed poster of a Ferrari Testa Rosa in my room, which my dad put in my nursery before I was born…
Lotus doesn’t currently make anything that costs $100k-plus.
The model range tops out at about $75,000.
Well I certainly voted for the United States, because the Expedition isn’t made anywhere else, and isn’t marketed outside North America. But then I’m torn, because the Fiesta is an awesome car, but it was designed by both the Japanese and the Germans, but built in Mexico and China and Germany. So I guess my answer would change to China if they had Expeditions there (they don’t).
Oh, and I’m moving to China to work in the field, so pretty soon Chinese cars will be the absolute best once I’m on board. 
You also forgot North Korea:
It’s a trick question, but not for the reasons you think. Of the top 95% of auto manufacturers (to rule out the oddball India air-compressor cars and things like Tesla) ALL of them are fine. Here’s why:
-You cannot have a fiscally solvent automobile company if your cars have significant quality or safety issues.
-Many many subsystems are built by sub-contractors and shared across many manufacturers. My Vette has a Nissan A/C compressor, and the same brakes a Ford Mustang Cobra has. Lots of smaller manufacturers build their cars around GM small-blocks and BMW mills
-The things that make a car expensive (Mercedes) are frequently due to inflation due to transport or brand. A $250,000 Ferrari is not $220,000 better than a $30,000 economy car, but it WILL be more flakey, if only because a year’s production of Ferraris is one DAYS production of civics.
Most automotive opinions are based on anecdotes and outdated information. American cars were crap…in the 1970’s…that’s THIRTY years ago. “Daddy had a POS <whatever>” usually means it was only twenty years ago.
Folks create a perception that brand A is better than brand Y because they want to feel they made a better, more educated, decision. When you look at things like J.D. powers awards, they’re skewed in weird and subtle ways.
So, buy what you can afford and what stirs your loins, it IS a purely emotional decision.
The Expedition is sold in the Middle East and Central Asia.
http://www.me.ford.com/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1137384662397&pagename=FME%2FDFYPage%2FFord-Default&c=DFYPage&site=FME
As an aside, I understand that the 6 speed auto in the Expedition is the same ZF unit used in the last generation BMW 7 series and Jaguar XJ. On those cars the trans is plagued with problems, but I never hear of any problems with their application on the Expedition/Navigator. Have you heard of any problems, or is it just another case of everything German being crap?