Since I am in my seventies, and have quite a few cars, I have had a
> number of foreign, and a number of domestic. My first drivable car was
> a domestic, a Crosley, the second was an MG-TD. Averaging among all the
> cars I have owned, it is hard to make generalities. I have had domestic
> dogs and domestic gems, foreign dogs and foreign gems. I have even had
> both from same brand- often certain brands have bad years and good > years.
>
> ALL cars in recent decades have been far better than my earlier cars.
> When people say, "they don't build them like they used to," I say > "thank god."
>
> We have typically kept our cars for ten years, but in earlier days we
> had to get rid of some earlier, but my last car was 11 years old (a
> Dodge) when we sold it recently, with 150K miles. It was still in
> excellent shape, but wife was getting worried about its age. Even
> though the car got 32 in city, 36-37 on highway (used to get even
> better) we also wanted something with higher city milage, since most of
> our driving is city. We went with a Prius.
>
> Again, I have had mixed luck with both foreign and domestic. If you end
> up buying enough cars to even out the statistics, I don't think it makes
> much difference. In general, too, the gems FAR outweigh the dogs, even
> counting the cars from the forties and fifties, or the new cars of the
> seventies that we bought. Keep abreast of car reviews in the mags, word
> of mouth, etc. and you can avoid most dogs.
Sage advice, that...