On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:39:18 GMT, Mr.X graced this newsgroup with:
don't *even* get me started on the American cars I've owned (all new btw, and, if you knew me, would know that I'm religious about maintenance and washing and waxing).
For example, my brand new 79 Berlinetta Camaro.
The pin stripe running down the middle of the hood was off center by over THREE INCHES! What the heck was the factory tech doing? Was he/she drunk?
THEN they painted clear coat over the pin stripe!
Also, the car arrived *out of the factory* with a dead battery.
Then the starter caught fire.
Then the alternator froze up and snapped the belt.
Then the front end had to be realigned SIX TIMES the first year because it kept eating tires.
The a/c died 2 years later. Compressor prematurely died.
3 years into ownership and the automatic transmission failed.The paint faded less than 18 months after purchase. The entire rear spoiler went from gloss black to almost white.
It had a 350 V8 that drank gas like flushing a toilet but had less hp than my old Fairlady 280Z.
The drivers side window jumped the track and smashed into a million pieces then burned out the window control switch.
The armrest on the drivers side door broke off in my hand.
The center console was warped.
The t-top leaked like crazy when it rained.
The trunk lid was warped. Not just unaligned. *Warped*. The sheet metal was all crooked.
The piss poor design of the spark plug wiring melted the plug wires against the exhaust manifold, shorting out the plug wires and killing the car, of course, out in the middle of nowhere.
Lemon? Nope..I had two friends that had Camaros...one had a RallySport (79) and one had a Z28 (80) and they too had a long list of nightmarish problems with their cars.
Quality control? We don't need no steenkin' quality control!
So I sold it three years after I bought it with a whopping 16,000 miles on the odometer. I just couldn't take the pain anymore.
Then in 2000, I bought a Dodge Durango.
Three months into owning the truck, there was a downpour.
Hey downpour = turn on the wipers right?
Uh..wrong...turning on the wipers OPENED ALL THE WINDOWS INCLUDING THE SUNROOF!
The ONLY way I could get the windows back up was to pull over and turn the truck off and back on..THEN the windows came back up and the wipers turned on. Dealer could never find anything wrong..how come THAT didn't surprise me?
Then the paint started to chip..and chip and chip and chip. What did they paint the truck with? Watercolor?
The rear a/c was about as worthless as...well you get the idea.
Oh, and did I tell you that it got 9mpg?
And then the ABS light went off..ended up being an ABS CAB module. $900 to replace. 100 MILES OUT OF WARRANTY. Dodge dealer didn't want to pay for it..recommended I call corporate. So I did. Ok, it's out of warranty, I'm not going to make a big production out of it but I thought it was worth asking if they were willing to work with me.
Conversation went like this:
"Sir, did you buy an extended warranty?"
"Well, no I didn't but..."
"Well SIR, I guess you will NEXT time won't you?"
"Hello? Hello?"
The bitch hung up on me!!!
So..we bought a couple of brand spanky new Saturns....
and the nightmare continued. Wind noise, faulty transmission, windshield leaks, a $600 thermostat repair because some moron designed the engine that placed the t-stat *inside* the engine block so the entire top of the engine had to be removed to replace a $12 t-stat.
Unbelievable.
After that, we lost complete and utter faith in any American (big three) cars and went to Japanese cars. We have three Lexuses and a Sentra. ALL of them have been absolutely bulletproof and drive and look like new. The GS300 has 225,000 miles on it, the ES300 has
85,000 miles and the LS430 has 60,000. The Sentra just clicked over 100,000 miles and the ONLY things we've had to do to any of the cars was routine maintenance and tires. Fit and finish are like brand new and none of them squeak or rattle.IMHO, for every American car you say had been driven and "look like new" at 200,000 miles, I can show you a dozen more of the same model in the junkyard destined to be remade into soup cans.
American build quality is better than it was in the past but quite honestly, they still have a VERY long ways to go before they match the fit, finish and quality of foreign automobiles.