Saw the new '07 Sebring Thursday

How many engines in those? That Chevy "Blue Flame" knockoff of Toyota's was VERY famous for frying exhaust valves, as were all mid '70s Toyotas. I know one guy who bought a new '74, forced to since Japan Inc. had dictated that Nissan would stop selling their competing model in the US, while Toyota would stop selling the Crown. First fried exhaust valve was covered under warranty, but not the rest. I used to joke with him that he needed Dzus clips instead of head bolts, that thing was apart so much for valves. It would even fry induction hardened valves on unleaded! Anyone familiar with the Chevy 216/235 knew that Toyota simply stuck drawings of the old "Blue Flame" into a copier to produce that engine...and then they screwed up the head castings! Almost as bad were their OHC straight 6s..the 2M and the

4M...complete dogs in performance AND economy. They were found in the Toyota Crowns, the last one of which ('71) was bought by my grandmother who nursed it along for a number of years. A "luxury" car the size of a Ford Falcon that got 10 MPG...what a friggin' concept! After giving that thing away, she went back to Pontiacs, where she'd been since 1946.

False claim. My sister had a Maxima with the first year of the V6. What a piece of crap that thing was! Cheesy interior material that would disintigrate, electric heater and AC controls that would fail regularly, fuel injection system hassles galore, dash electrics (guages, lights, tell-tales) that would fail regularly, steering rack that would develop play due to soft steel, lousy braking system...the list went on and on. I got tired of fixing it for her again and again...I'd seen people do less work keeping a friggin' Fiat running! After 140K, it went to the crusher, as she finally gave up on sinking money into basically a disintegrating car. The previous year used the

2.8L straight 6 right out of the Z car, and would run forever...with the car falling apart around it. The V6, at least in its first year, was a piece of garbage, almost as bad as anything from "It's-A-Shitty." Worn OHCs were a specialty on that engine, even with regular oil service.

Sorry, I have personal experience with both the Land Cruisers and the Maximas. Your story doesn't hold water, at least with certain years. Modern Maxima buyers don't appear to be the kinds that maintain cars...they drive them until they quit, and never talk about them again..

Exactly the point of the LA Times article.

I'm sure my Concord would do that mileage easily and based on 11 yrs and about 100K of 70% city driving the 3.3L engine would do it without major repair. It's still performs as new, including the pollution test results. Very high mileage is usually from highway driving, much easier on a vehicle than city driving.

My 11 yr old Concord's interior has surprised me as well. Usually the drivers side is worn from getting in and out, but it looks as new, particularly after a recent professional cleaning.

Its not, as its actually quite common. Chrysler products last forever.

ROTFL! There are that many in my immediate *family*! There are probably

5-6 in the little 30-member Mopar club I belong to.

I know of 30 or 40 Toyotas in my small little

Trucks maybe. Older ones (ie not T-100s or Tundras). Nothing front-drive, that's for damn sure.

How many M-bodies do you want?

If it's an M-body Le Baron, probably quite a few. If it's an EEK Le Baron, probably none, but I do know one chap out here with an EEK Le Baron who has 245K on the original everything. Blistered clear coat on the paint was his only real gripe, and after a repaint, it is resplendant as new.

This was true when Japan, Inc, was crushing the US economy, but it ain't so anymore. Japan's mired in a prolonged recession, and housing prices continued to climb, thus cutting disposable income even more. Most Japanese in urban areas live in VERY tiny accommodations, true, but that's necessity driven by real estate prices that still make US prices in major metropolitain areas look dirt cheap in comparison. When the disposable income starts to dry up, the first thing that the Japanese salesman will do is drive his Lexus another year longer.

I can't understand why anyone would do that. Old-fashioned brakes, old-fashioned and dangerous construction, probably no seat belts or air bag.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

And no modern safety features (all cars, not just American).

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

So, you're not terribly familiar with US cars, are you? Of the list you suggest, only "no air bag" is accurate.

On 28 Oct 2006 15:41:09 -0600, Joe Pfeiffer graced this newsgroup with:

did the 78's have disk brakes? I thought they had drums?

Front disc brakes, rear drums.

Schmetterling has outed himself as someone who posts about things he knows nothing about.

"Safety equipment" had progressively been mandated on US cars since

1966.

The '78 Newport has:

1.) Front disc brakes 2.) 6 passenger lap belts, front 2 passenger shoulder belts. 3.) Far beefier construction than the later M-body version that came shortly thereafter. The Ms had one safety flaw that was serious: lack of side impact protection. Earlier C-bodies didn't have a problem with that.

Of course they had front disk/rear drum. I think 1969 was the last year for drums -- it certainly was within a year or so of then.

So you're telling me that crumple zones and were so developed then as they are now? Internal cabin design to minimise injury?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

There were huge improvements made in the 1960s, with only incremental changes since then. By the early 1970s cars had side-impact beams, collapsible steering columns, and, yes, designed-in crumple zones along with active safety features like vastly improved brakes compared to a decade earlier.. Is it *as* advanced as a modern car? No. The modern car is able to get comparable levels of survivability with less material. But the difference is probably less than the difference between a modern small car and an SUV. To put it another way, my crumple zone isn't as well designed as a Honda's, but I've got a *lot* of crumple zone.

Going over to the NHTSA's crash test data site, I compared a 1979 Newport (that was the earliest I could find; the 1979 was a redesign going to Chrysler's old mid-size platform, so it's a smaller car than my 1978) against a 2006 Civic. The only directly comparable data was head injury; for the Newport, head injury indexes in left and right front seats were 897 and 106. They tested two Civics and only gave information for left side front and rear for both. For one, left side front head injury criterion was 237 and rear was 751; for the other, the numbers were 356 and 355. So the Honda scores better, but they are close enough to have substantial overlap -- my passenger is in better shape than the Honda's driver.

Incidentally, results for a 1979 Honda Civic showed head injury criteria of 2029 and 2095 for front left and right seats.

I accept your point about much of the progress having been made by the early seventies, though I wonder if all the features actually helped (side-impact beams are good only if designed correctly) but, anyway, the NHTSA's facts speak for themselves.

It is interesting that you should take a Japanese car for comparison. When I was following European crash test results in the nineties (usually conducted by consortia of leading motoring organisations and trade mags or newspapers) the Japanese cars performed poorly compared with European models, and some European models performed markedly worse than others. 'American' cars (i.e. those made in the USA as opposed to made by American-owned companies) were never tested because there were too few of them being sold.

However, within a product line there would usually be improvements so that, e.g. I would expect a Chysler of today (or of 5 years ago) to perform significantly better than one of 20 years ago in safety and handling.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

True.

Dubious. The jury's still out about the efficacy of frontal "air bags" in frontal collisions. All other mandated safety gear on 20 year old Chrysler products had been in place since the '70s...collapsing steering columns, padded surfaces, blunt control stalks, and so on. Of course, lap and shoulder belts had been mandated for some time.

One area where all US cars were weak at that time, especially certain Chryslers, was in side impact protection. Earlier M-bodies, then favored in police fleets nationwide, were notorious for side impact intrusion into the passenger cabin.