Different Cars

You argue just like my late mother in law. Name any subject in the world and she was the worlds greatest expert on that subject. How very boorish. The simple fact is that you made a statement about Americans and their cars that was totaly off the wall and based on nothing but your own presumed expertise. It was not only opinionated, but steriotyping, rude and just plain ignorant. I caught it, Linda did, and I'm sure others did as well. By the way are your remarks to Linda typical of British gentlemen?

You've been holding court here for a long time, my mother in law would have loved you although the two of you eventually would have devoured one another with your egos. You got caught with your foot in your mouth and couldn't handle the consequences. Is that wordy enough for you? I still think bullshit says it a lot better.

There you go. That's the Andy we all know and love and have grown to tolerate, however there are limits.

Freddie

P.S. In case it has not hit you yet, your done. I have better things to do so you just continue making an ass of yourself.

You seem to equate performance and features with 'quality'; if Japanese manufacturers have taught us anything it is that volume products have to be reliable and dependable to sell, and to reduce warranty costs. Thus small cars - driven by the Japanese competition - generally have high 'quality', where quality means fitness for purpose (or similar).

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Until you need to get some spare parts, motor-bike/car doesn't matter, Japanese manufacturer rip you off over here (Germany).

So, let's have a look if reality backs up Andy's statement:

Top Selling Vehicles in US in 2002

This list was gathered by

1: Ford F-350 2: Chevrolet Silverado 1500 3: Toyota Camry Solera 4: Ford Explorer 5: Honda Accord 6: Dodge Ram Van 1500 7: Ford Taurus 8: Honda Civic 9: Chevrolet Trailblazer 10: Dodge Caravan

Lot's of SUV among them, couldn't find any stats for the UK, perhaps someone has an URL?

Care to define "lots"? Maybe you can name the lots of SUVs on your list; it won't take long ;-)

Freddie

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In alt.autos.ford.focus Freddie the Crook Finder suggested:

Sure you will tell us?

It's not the 2nd or 3rd choice of car - he meant the second or third car in the family...And yes I do expect decent quality for the money I pay for my cars...Ford doesn't mean cheap - it means reasonable. And I also don't "let" my husband pick my cars so that's not an option...I don't pick his either but he did pick a Ford...

I'm talking about personal cars - not something a company would give you. I do know my percent is correct. Most carmakers realize that and ask women for input for their preferences.

Before I wouldn't have done that - at least now I have an option...and choose to use it. Kind of like answering back to you..and others. Linda

Oh heck, your no fun at all. Just in case, number 4, Ford Explorer and number 9, Chevrolet Trailblazer are the only SUVs, but you already knew that. It's the reasoning that concludes that 2 out of 10 constitutes, "Lots of SUV among them", that I was hoping to see.

I'm not a big fan of statistics anyway; I always think of the line, "Lies, dam lies and statistics". The Ford F 350, for those who may not know, is enough truck to pull down a house, two houses if you spring for the 6.8 L V10. This was the best selling vehicle in the U.S. in '02? I don't think so.

Freddie

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In alt.autos.ford.focus Freddie the Crook Finder suggested:

Ah well, thought the Ford F 350 would be an SUV in addition, might have confused it with Ford F-150, don't know the Ford US models that well. You only see them over here once a year if you are lucky, looking at the fuel consumption, only idiots drive them here (Germany). So, there are after all 2 SUV among them. Don't like any stats I haven't faked myself too. Thought the discussion could benefit from some "facts", only insulting each other is rather cheap and doesn't help anyone.;)

Fair point Chris but when you look closely at Japanese small cars the real price is not apparent until you try to do things to repair them. Spares prices are stupidly high compared with say Ford or GM parts (at least this is the case here in the UK) Also Japanese small cars also tend to be more expensive than say the Ford equivelent (again here in the UK) not by a huge amount but when you consider the difference in cost to say use higher quality plastics in the cabin is not that much at the production stage you have to wonder if Fords penny pinching is doing them any favours in the quality stakes.

I have never claimed to be an expert on the Ford Focus and if you look at my posts you will see that most of them are based on my personal experience with driving Focii for the last 5 years.

So where did you pop up from Freddie if you think I've been holding court in here such a long time then. Care to point out how many posts I have made in here over say the past 4 years. To save you the trouble it's around 170 not a lot. Whereas you have posted What 21 times in less time than it takes you to decide which shoes goes on which foot in the morning

well surprise surprise it was opinionated of me to hold an opinion. What was rude about it please point it out. I responded to the original question with a set of possible answers as to why the American Focus was apparantly not as well built as its European counterpart. No where did I state that any of them were fact but lets look at each of them in turn.

1 Better workforce It is common knowledge that a lot of quality problems with the early NA focus were because they were built in Mexico where the workforce was very inexperienced compared to the say the Workforce in Germany who have been building cars for longer that I have been alive. This is not disimilar to the case where the cars made in Spain are also not as good because again the workforce was new. 2 Better Parts. As has been stated by other posters in this thread the American Focus has had supplier quality issues from before the first day of production this is not to say that this does not happen else where but it certainly did contribute to the problems with the early Focus models. 3 This is obviously related to 2 in that the list price for a European Focus is a lot higher than the NA Focus hence the percieved quality has to be higher to maintain customer satisfaction. 4 This is the one that got up your nose I suppose. I tried to say that to the Average American the Focus is just a little fun can that doesn't cost a whole lot compared with your mainstream choice of cars so why should Ford raise expectation of mainstream percieved quality? after all I wouldn't expect the same levels of build quality in my Focus as what I would expect from say a Mercedes C class costing more that twice as much. As to the comments that the car is driven by the other half and the expectations are not as high, well all I can go by is my own experiences here in the UK where most couples who have 2 cars the wife generally drives a little runabout to do things like the shopping etc etc this is not normally a new car and is regarded as just a usefull little tool to make life easier. Ok in better off classes this may not be entirely the case but it's fair to say that in general this second card does not have particularly high expectations of quality surrounding it. If this came accross as offensive why not just say so instead of using abuse. I'm prepared to apologise as much as the next guy but not to somebody who's line in reasoned argument seems to consist of insulting someone they don't agree with. 3

Which remarks are you on about. The only comment I have made recently to Linda in this thread were complementing her on at least arguing her case. You on the other hand.....

Hey I'm entitled to post to this group at least as much as you are bud if you don't like what I post fine I don't have a problem with that but if your only argument is a series of 1 line insults then don't expect me to enter into reasoned debate with you.

So in the short time you have been here makes you an expert on all things Andy now does it? So I don't like American TV. So what I don't much like English TV either, most TV is mindless crap designed to passify the masses.

Feel free to do what you please, but don't expect your little outburst do anything other that reinforce my negative image of you either.

suggested:

...

You have a good eye...

His list came from a site whose claim to fame is that everything is hand-entered. (!) It was way up on Google, for some reason.

Anyway, I caught it because they painfully misspelled "Solara," which happens to be marginally different than the base Camry. I started to post earlier and thought better of feeding this thread, but nonethelees, for the real list (same idea, but a bit more comprehensive):

It also has numbers.

You'll see that the groupings are a bit painful (#1 was _every_ Ford F-series truck, for example). Roughly 680K units of SUV sold versus

1.9M trucks, 1.4M cars, and 250K vans in the top 10.

The Ford F series is all truck. All of them. The F-150 is a light truck, the F-350 is a heavy truck. From my German friends I'm inclined to agree it would take a nut to drive a truck _or_ full-sized SUV there; you'd never be able to park! :) My friend with the van had enough trouble.

I know you didn't mess up your duplication of the list; that site did a painfully poor job of typing it in. Fortunately for the discussion Edmunds had it (as well as the lists for 2000, 2001, and 2003) for easy access.

I will say for my part, the Focus is our primary car (US, 2002), my wife drives it, and I drive the early-90s clunkers that are our secondaries. I suspect I'm average for Focus owners here (central North Carolina), based on the others I've seen around. I'm not sure why someone would give his wife the _bad_ car for driving around town... I'd rather have my car break on the way to/from work and have her take me the rest of the way than have to drop everything and go rescue her and children from the grocery.

Back to your reguarly scheduled bickering,

-TC

suggested:

Right, my wife is driveing the '03 Sable, (which incidently gets as good or better milage as mine)I got the '00 ZX3.

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In alt.autos.ford.focus Tim C suggested:

suggested:

[..]

Yup, looks better and has some numbers in addition.

[..]

Ah see, thought trucks and SUV would belong to one category, you don't see much of those over here owned privately, perhaps some Ford Ranger and there are some older VW Caddy. Don't know why, perhaps it's just raining to much? Was looking into getting a Ford Ranger times I got my Focus, but it wasn't easy getting one cheap (at all) used, wasn't sure which one to get, top speed seemed a bit low, IIRC not even 100 mph, which is often not enough to drive comfortable on the left lane of a German high-way, so I got a Focus. It does pretty well, despite the few minor glitches any Ford I owned had.

[..]

You see a bunch of those SUV recently, mostly Mercedes M class, BMW X ?, VW Tuareg and others. But those are probably not that large as the ones driven in the US. They are pretty expensive, so one can assume most of the owners have one or more other cars.

[..]

Full ack!

Sounds like "Freddie" surely is a product of Texas. But not one of their hospitable and friendly persons. But does bovine and equine scat best describe his posts, and by extension, brand him the same?

GM wrote:

GM wrote:

Congratulations Richard for jumping right in the middle of a thread that, to a lot of folks delight, had finally ended for some 24 hours.

Did you have to use both brain cells trying to think of something clever to say?

Freddie

As I said in my previous message "Freddie" is a Very rude person, he responded to Richards post and demeaned him. Talking about brain cells he is the one to talk. Maybe he is related to George whets his name he comes from Texas. Gina.

Congratulations Richard for jumping right in the middle of a thread that, to a lot of folks delight, had finally ended for some 24 hours.

Did you have to use both brain cells trying to think of something clever to say?

Freddie

I thought this thread was over, then along came Richard to stir the pot, and now your wanting to turn the whole thing into a political debate. Shame.

Freddie

Headline: Troll snares a netfull.

As one who has a Mexican built 2004 ZX3 that I got in April of 2003. I have had reliable service for over 132,000 miles. The only major work that was done was replacing the front brake rotors and pads at

122,000 miles. The only car that I have owned that ever come as close to this level or reliability was my 1997 5 Speed manual Ford Escort wagon that I totaled in a wreck with 200,000 plus miles on the clock.