yes this is a zombie thread, but the little green dot says you’re logged in so here I go.
Your Accord had every single interior piece in place except the ones which fell off?
if you drove from Ohio to Florida you spent most of the time at highway speeds, and at those speeds the “ram air” is doing far more to cool the engine than the fans.
Because they were crap?
Seems to me that American cars only got sold because of the “buy American” sentiment.
Jeremy Clarkson had some scathing opinions on American cars.
If people actually wanted to buy them, it wouldn’t have been necessary for the CEOs of US car companies to fly to washington in their private airplanes to beg for government ( ie taxpayer ) handouts. Didn’t Ford not need a handout? Perhaps they were making cars people actually wanted.
I don’t know what happened to those. They were gone when I got it.
And yes, I managed to get it all the way there by popping the hood (but not pulling the handle, obviously) and driving really quickly. The head gasket blew because I was in stop-and-go traffic for the last 50 miles or so.
Plus, vide Ogre above they didn’t appreciate a car exploding without the help of an improvised explosive device.
We had an 81 Mustang which was ugly and just sucked.
My first new car was an 85 Sentra. It was pretty damn good. Much better than that mustang.
How about 5-digit odometers?
Detroit cars rarely made it past 50,000 miles and t one making it to 100,000 was not really expected.
GM’s first attempt at front wheel drive used CHAIN drive.
To get a diesel engine, GM replaced spark plugs on a gas engine with injectors.
While Detroit was screwing up the first round of emission regs, Honda’s engines were already there.
Junk is as junk does.
The worst car I ever owned was a 1986 Chevy Cavalier. Just about everything that could break on it did at some point. I lost count of the times it left me stranded on the side of the highway. The alternator had to be replaced numerous times. No one could figure out why they kept failing and would just replace the alternator and it would die again a few months later.
The best car I ever owned was a 1994 Honda Civic. I bought it used and drove it for over 10 years and only got rid of it after I got married because my wife can’t drive a manual transmission. We’ve only bought Hondas for years.
1980s American cars were nothing but horrendous pieces of shit. I owned an 86 Buick LeSabre and an 89 Ford Escort. Both were nightmares. Transmission problems, rust problems, you name it problems. Both in the junk yard before 10 years/ 100k miles.
I am impressed with my 2003 Ford F-150. It is still running strong; no break downs and only regular maintenance (I just jinxed it. 
)
Japanese cars have had the worst reputation of all car makers in the past several years:
Toyota had more vehicles involved in recalls than any other maker in the U.S. in 2010 and came just short of achieving that dubious distinction again in 2011. A large recall late in the year, however, put Honda at the top of the list. Indeed, Honda recalled 1.7 million vehicles as part of three separate service actions last week – while NHTSA launched an investigation into potential problems involving another 600,000 vehicles.
While there have been scores of recalls announced this year involving every brand from Chevrolet to Ferrari, with today’s announcement, it appears that both Toyota and Honda are again in an unwanted race to lead the recall list again for 2012.
Meanwhile, 7 out of 10 of JD Powers best rated cars were Ford, GM and Chrysler:
Total Quality Index (TQI) says “more domestics than imports” at top of their list for quality in 2013
http://www.strategicvision.com/press_release.php?pr=45
Strategic Vision’s categories are bizarre, so I’m not sure what to make of that. The Hyundai Genesis is a “near-luxury” car? The Mini Cooper hardtop is a “coupe”? The FJ Cruiser is an entry-level SUV? It starts at $27 grand!
ETA: Also, if you click on the segments, it looks like there are only two or three vehicles ranked in any category, which makes the whole thing kind of pointless. For example, the Chrysler 200 convertible seems to be one of two cars in the segment.
Ford does seem to be the best of the big three these days (and they seem to know it, as their prices are sky high), but the main reason they didn’t need a govt handout was that they had plenty of cash on hand. Not so GM & Chrysler.
Unlike GM, Ford was smart enough to sell off most of its foreign acquisitions (Jag, Aston, Land Rover) just before the market crash, which gave it a nice cushion. Not sure if they made money on Volvo.
Jeremy Clarkson says a lot of things, and I get really depressed when people quote him as an authority. Watching Top Gear doesn’t make you an expert. nevermind the curiosity of a British guy talking about crap cars…
People were buying their vehicles; GM was still trading places with Toyota for #1 in sales even as they were headed to BK. You can sit there and parrot pithy one-liners, but saying “no one wanted their cars” when all three still had sales volumes in the millions (in the US alone) makes you look ignorant.
The biggest factor leading to the collapse of GM and Chrysler (and the near collapse of Ford) was their huge legacy costs. Agreeing to labor contracts that might be sustainable when you have 100% of your domestic marketshare don’t work when you now only have maybe 40%. It’s the same reason the City of Detroit is headed for bankruptcy; you can’t support pension and other obligations you signed up to when you had a tax base of 2 million if you only have 700,000 now.
Ford Motor Co. got over $20 billion in private financing in 2006 before the availability of credit vanished. Had Don LeClair not brokered those loans, Ford would have been in BK too.
Alan Mulally, in his first meeting with upper management, asked the question “We’re projecting to lose 17 billion dollars this year, and everyone’s acting like there’s no problem?”
It wasn’t that nobody was buying their vehicles. People were. The problem is they weren’t making any money selling those vehicles.
So? you’re OK with chains keeping your pistons from smashing your valves to bits.
the 5.7 diesel was a lot more than “just a gas engine with injectors instead of spark plugs.” The entire engine was re-designed. (in fact, drag racers used to use diesel blocks because they were so much more robust than the 5.7 gas block.)
the over-arching problem with the diesel cars was that GM omitted a water trap in the fuel system. without that, contaminated fuel would lead to short injection pump life and occasional misfires which would lead to excessive cylinder pressures, compromising the head gasket(s.)
it might bake your noodle to know that the Navistar 6.9/7.3 diesels used in medium duty trucks (and Ford pickups) descended from an International Harvester gas V8. Somehow those engines managed to do OK.
Go look at the vacuum diagram for a CVCC engine and tell me how awesome Honda is. Here, I’ll even link you to the rat’s nest :
great reply JZ
Oh yeah. I went through a '76 Plymouth Arrow and a '78 Chevy Nova. The dashes and seats suffered horrible sun-fading, cracking, and general disintegration after only a couple of years. Whatever foam padding material was used would first harden and then start to crack and crumble.
This was typical of American cars of the time, the only way to mitigate this was, on the purchase of any American car, you also had to budget in preventative dash covers, carpets, and seat covers. Otherwise, your car would look like a family of cats lived inside after only a year. I worked in an auto parts store at the time, and the sub-market of cosmetic “hide the cracks and rust” cover accessories was huge.
Conversely, VW, Toyota, Datsun (Nissan) had interiors, seats, and panels that aged incredibly well.
This thread is talking about American makes from the 70s and 80s, not today’s cars, which most will agree are on equal footing, quality-wise with Japanese brands.
I am not sure how much stock one can put in the J.D. Powers survey.
Michael Karesh - ““Long term” for J.D. Power continues to mean “the third year of ownership.” It used to mean the fifth year, but manufacturers have little use for fifth-year data, and this survey primarily exists to serve manufacturers willing to pay large sums for detailed results.”
Consumer Reports appears to be a less-biased indicator. Anyway, back to the OP.
IMHO people who learned to drive and had their first car from that era, if it was an American make, have sworn off domestic car brands based on that experience. The new generation of drivers has no such reservations.
This too. My 2003 Ford looks like it could have just rolled off of the showroom floor. In 1992, my 1989 Ford Escort looked like a gaggle of drunken homeless prostitutes had spent the night in it. Cracks running down the dashboard, broken instrument indicators, door panels falling off…after 3 years!
The '76 Plymouth Arrow was made in Japan by Mitsubishi.
'70’s and 80’s American cars . . .
Aside from the mechanical problems, the fit and finish was horrible. They would put a car on the showroom floor with panels that were off by 1/4 inch. A trunk lid might have an 1/8th inch gap at one end and almost a 1/2 inch gap at the other end. Cars came off the assembly line with noticeable orange peel in the paint. It was like they were just slapped together. Chrysler was the worst but GM and Ford weren’t much better.
Rust? Forget it. Chrysler got sued because the Dodge Aspen and the Plymouth Volare were rusting out before they were even sold and they became unsafe vehicles due to rust.
The Chevy Vega was a nightmare. The Ford Pinto was a fire trap.
American cars have come a long way and now do compete in the market but quality wise, that wasn’t the case 40 years ago.