The 170 was as big as they offered in the "Falcoon" in '62. Still, it was better than the 144 of 1960, especially with the 2 speed FoMo. The spring tower front ends of Falcons were notoriously weak, a problem that carried through on the derivative Mustang and even the Maverick.
Standard transmission was the saving grace on your car. '62 Chevy IIs with Powerglide were notoriously slow and fuel hungry. I believe you could also order a Chevy II with overdrive, as you could the Falcon after '61.
Sometimes I think Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler Corp. as a German tax write-off.
Well, not really...the "crossed bars" grille is a salute to Chrysler's glory days with the letter series 300s of the '50s, but only old timers seem to remember that.
The 300M was just another gussied up LH, wasn't it, a la Iacocca's EEK cars. The current 300 is a whole different concept and even has some performance in its hemi form, but as I said, that car has been spoiled by being a "ghetto ride," which scares off buyers looking for a long term car investment. Cadillac's now feeling the problems associated with having that image.
troll ! pretty pathetic one too...
he drives a 1978 Honda- what would he know about an American car ??
he's a RICER
he recently disassembled an entire 318 engine, when all it needed was a thermostat !
Yes, Cadillac has a problem with sales up about 10 % this year I believe. .
A few years ago I would receive regularly the monthly mag of the ADAC, Germany's largest motoring organization (equivalent to the AAA in US, I guess).
Annualy they published break-down and repair stats for all cars with more than 10 000 annual sales. In all classes where the Japanese manufacturers (Toyota, Mazda and, I think Honda) were represented they clustered at the top of the reliability tree.
There were anomalies and distortions in the figures. E.g. they were not normalised for mileage, so that cars like the Merc S Class came out worse than they should because their average mileage was much higher than those of other cars, but as a rough-and-ready measure the tables were not bad.
Don't know how it is now. Sadly I don't get the mag anymore.
DAS
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
If one looks at ANY magazines ratings in PERCENTAGES rather than as a LIST from best to worst you will discover they ALL have a defect rate between 1% and 2%. Around 2% is the defect rate for all manufactured products. Paying 20% to 30% more to buy a Japanese vehicle is hardy worth it, considering one chances of getting one of the 1% and 2%
Better for one to look at what large corporate and government fleets buy year after year. Corporate fleets have no brand loyalty. They buy what is the most cost effective to buy, insure, maintain, repair and replace. Like any 'tool' used to operate their business they consider the total cost of ownership over five years or 300K. Federal corporate tax laws require their vehicles to be depreciated over five years and many corporations keep them that long or longer. The brands that get around 80% of the fleet business are Ford, and GM second. Very few buy import brands because of the higher purchase price, as well as insurance, part and maintenance costs. Even stand alone rental car companies, whose cars are their 'product,' rather than their 'tools' that they sell off in a year or less, chose mostly domestic cars and trucks
mike
You're VERY SLOW to change.
The rental car companies are getting more imports now. Last rental I had was a Kia Optima, that was the worst POS I have ever been in and it was less than one year old with 14k on it.
The rental car companies must buy foreign cars in that class, domestic do not make midget cars ;)
mike
Strange thing is the Kia Optima is considered a larger car and is Kia's higher end. Wife's 4 years older base Impala is a much nicer car.
Correct. GM imports them from their Korean partner and sells them as a GM product in NA.
Naturally I was referring to the sub compact size
mike
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