Warren J. Dew

I think it's interesting how long these brand images can stick. My parents had similar issues with their Dodge cars when I was growing up, and to this day I've never been on the premises of any Chrysler dealer.

My father had problems with a high mileage Volkswagen Beetle - more forgivable since it was an economy brand - and so I thought of VWs as cheap but somewhat junky cars for 35 years. What changed my mind there was when my fiancee needed a cheap but junky car and I got her a 14 year old VW for occasional use (e.g. so I didn't have to drive over and pick her up all the time), and she liked it so much that when she got a job she had to commute to, she bought a new VW. (Plus I have great respect for engines that stay in production for 30 years, as the VW sideways 4 has.)

My own first car was a '77 Firebird that I inherited from my parents when they moved overseas, and while there were problems with the fit of the body panels, it was quite reliable transportation for 130,000 miles. It even turned out that the worst problems with fit and finish weren't the fault of the car, but the fault of the dealers. The hood tended to come up an inch or two in highway driving, and my dad took it in to get that fixed three times, and it was never fixed. When I got it (at 70,000 miles), I took a look at the hinges and springs that held the hood open, and figured out how to adjust them - and the hood went right back into place.

I bought an '88 Trans Am about the same time as a friend of mine bought a Toyota MR2. They went into the shop about equally often, and often at about the same times. The big difference there was that when he took his in, the dealer fixed it in a couple of days, whereas when I took mine in, it often took a couple of weeks. I believe that a big part of the Japanese "reliability" advantage was this - that the Japanese dealerships had better trained mechanics and fixed things faster, not because the cars were actually inherently more reliable. That's why the stories about Honda dealerships being unresponsive bother me a lot.

I'm also worried about how long the body is going to last. I keep my cars 7 or 8 years on average, normally to over 100,000 miles, and that's a lot longer than Honda's rust through guarantee lasts. I could get an aftermarket undercoat, but the one time I did that, I think it ended up causing a variety of miscellaneous problems - though it prevented rust on that car for at least 16 years. I don't have a garage, and I live in an area where they have to use a lot of salt on the roads.

benny

Bill, please don't think me so shallow that I have made my decision "solely" on my experience and "snap shot in time." If you read my post I said "I'm not talking about a lemon, I mean a car that every one made and sold is junk and that the manufacturer knows is junk but still foists on the public." and "Now everyone that I knew that owned one, including us, had alternator problems. Not once but many times in the course of a couple of years."
I know that lemons come off the line and they are not representative of the entire run of that particular vehicle, so I specifically left them out.
Also by including the remard that others I knew who had the same vehicle had the same problem should indicate to you that I did not reduce the sample size to one. "No wonder you are a lawyer."
By the way, the Sunbird was all we could afford then as a new second car and I do not agree with your inference that because it was cheap I should have expected problems....
The bottome line to me is that the car was junk and they continued to replace the alternator with units they knew were defective.
I can't even say their service was bad. It was the fact that they knew they were not fixing the problem and therefore putting at risk the lives of people whom I love. I will not excuse that. I have no need to do my homework on any new vehicles they now sell as I will not own one.

dlq04

Bill,

I've read your comments on this subject before and as much as I appreciate your open mindedness to all cars, I disagree with your conclusions. Certainly the editors and readers of Consumers Report would as well. I have found their risk assessments to be very accurate. Personally I will stick with Japanese cars - we have tried Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Honda, Acura and never had a bad one. Prior to that we tried Chevy's and Pontiac's and never had a good one -- not from a reliability standpoint. And, as for British cars (which you know I love) forget it. The reports I hear, for example, on the new Rover MG are enough to make me think they have never learned anything. But I do love the style and charm of their cars - like the new Aston Martin.

MsPerky

Well, the only car I ever owned that was a real lemon was the Audi 100LS. The first nice car ex-hubby and I bought. It was a mess - drove beautifully, though. Audi has cleaned up their act in more recent years, so I suppose I'd buy another one. Not at the top of my list, though. We also owned a Honda Civic and two Accords, which were very reliable. Great cars. I didn't buy the S because it was a Honda, but I suppose in the back of my mind, I was thinking about that.

I do love Mercedes, having owned a 450D for 20 years before buying the S. It was never going to wear out...I just got tired of it. And I have to say, after seeing the Detroit Auto Show televised yesterday, if I had the bucks (450K!!), I'd buy the SLR Maclaren. WOW...what a car!!

valentine

I'm with you, MsP -- WOW.

WireGuy

I think some of you are misinterpreting the general car passioned point that Bill was trying to make. There is no perfect car that can be or do everything that you may need at a specific time. (Track or towing a boat). So we buy a certain make/model car expecting to enjoy that vehicles attributes. With that there will be limitations as well.
I also agree that the sins of a manufactures past make it hard to forgive or forget when shopping that brand. There were some prettily poorly engineered stuff that came out of Detroit in the 80's.
My impression is that if Honda/Toyota pulled that same kind of stuff, we would jump ship so quickly that their heads would spin.
Engineered improvements all around have made brand loyalty much harder for any one company to keep.

Corona_S2K

I am partial to Honda and Toyota. I had great experiences with 60's vintage American cars. I bought my 1st Honda (76 Civic Hatchback) in 1978. Traded it in for a new 1981 4 door Civic sedan, the first year for the 4 dr civic. I purchased a new Toyota pickup in 1990 and my son drove (I should say more like trashed) the Civic until 1998. In 98 we sold our beloved Civic after 17 years and 220,000 miles of FLAWLESS service. At the time the American cars were more reliable and we purchased the car that forever turned me against GM products. The 1998 Buick Regal. It was a great car until 80K miles. At that point the plastic air plenum on top of the intake manifold developed a hole between the water jacket (yes boys and girls they run water through the air plenum) and the air box. I was doing 70 on the freeway when bang, boom, big white cloud out the exhaust, and bye bye engine. Even though there were many problems with this component, and GM admitted the plenum on my vehicle was defective, they refused to pay for the new engine. They did give me $400 for the defective plenum. Their story was that I kept on driving even after the engine overheated. After replacing the engine ($4,000) we thought we almost have a new car. Yeah right one thing after another went wrong.

That's when we got rid of the POS, went back to Honda, and bought the S2K.
1990 Toyota Pickup - 240,000 miles Purchased from me by my son in 2002
2002 Toyota Tacoma Prerunner - 29,000 miles (still a baby by Toyota standards)
2004 Honda S2K - 10,000 miles (Still a newborn by Honda standards)

So Honda Toyota GM

P.S. On Friday we received a recall notice in the mail for the Buick. It seems that GM is recalling the Buick Regals for air Plenum problems. It took me a little while to pull Paula down off the ceiling and get her calmed down. I still have the air plenum in the garage ..... I wonder .....

Legal Bill

This thread sheds new light on the practice of coming here for advice on what car to buy next. It seems that the question people should ask is "Which Honda or Toyota should I buy next?" Maybe the rest of you already knew that was the underlying assumption in every such question and answer. Maybe when such advice is sought, we should respond with an answer that includes the prejudice.

I guess this surprises me because there are only so many models of Honda and Toyota. If you know you want a mid size sedan, do you really have to come here to find out about Honda Accords and Toyota Camry's? I mean, what is the point of the "what car should I buy" thread? I guess some of you would recommend a Nissan or a Subaru too. So maybe people looking for sedans come here to discuss Accords, Camrys, Maximas and Legacys. I don't know. Maybe everyone else enjoys a discussion of two or three Japanese cars that are all pretty much the same.

I'll admit, you folks have me on the issue of such cars as Buick Regals and Pontiac Sunbirds. I would never buy such a car and it isn't a question of money. Those cars are just the kind of basic transportation that I shun.

The other issue is the quest for 200,000 mile vehicles. I don't want to own any car that long. If I had a Buick Regal for 80,000 miles, my head would explode before the plenum did. But I'll tell you what Corona, there are plenty of people on this site who have had their S2000 engine explode DURING the warranty period, to discover the dealer and the manufacurer were not going to stand behind it.

Maybe the best thing is for me to change my sig line again. since I am the odd man out on this forum, I'll just label myself with a warning. "Legal Bill thinks there are good cars made by manufacturers other than Honda and Toyota, and will even recommend the purchase of non-Japanese cars."

LINESUPER

30 years ago I would never have purchased a Jap car, or for that matter a German one. Just one of those old predjudices that we pick up from our parents. (My dad served in the Army Air Corp on B-17's in WW II). Anyway, when my wife graduated from college and pickup a job teaching, I had to get a "second" car. not having a lot of money to spend I looked for something "cheap". I pickup a six year old Mazda 626 with 96k miles on it. I figured it would last a year, and it was cheap enough to pay cash for. As things go, I kept that car for 4 years and 100K mile - sold it to my neighbor for $200 and he put a little work into it and gave it to his son, who was in the Navy, to drive back and forth between home and Norfolk for 4 more years.

When I replaced this car I decided to look at Japanese cars, and had "one of those experiences". Went to the local Mazda dealer and delt on a Mazda pick-up. They just wanted more than I could pay - checked out the local Nissan dealer and though they didn't have truck on the lot, arranged for a test drive with the owner of the last pickup they sold - I ended up with a new nissan hardbody for $1000 less than the Mazda. I did go back to the mazda dealer and told them I was test driving a Nissan and that the end price was better - they told me that it was the best they could do and they "knew" they would see me in the afternoon to sign the papers. I replied that for the price I wouldn't be back. After I signed on the dotted line for the Nissan pickup - the Mazda dealer called up and wanted to know when I was coming up to "get my truck". the Mazda dealer was a total dork - he just couldn't take NO for an answer, and didn't want to deal.

My last "American" made car was a Dodge 600 Turbo. that car has totally prejudiced my opinon of Dodge-Crysler product. In the first six months of ownership it was in the shop seven times for various malfunctions, failures and lose/missing parts. Needed a new battery to get it out of the showroom, courtiesy fell out of the door on the way home - windshield leaked first time it rained - door trim fell off the car in second month, mirror popped out of housing in third month - engine service sensors failed and had to be replaced - the car had a case of automobile leprosy - parts just kept falling off! I traded that piece of junk on my first Honda, and accord - I've never looked back. Best dealer, best car best auto experience of my life and it's been that way the last 15 years.

dlq04

That's ok but list some examples please. The only American car that seems go above the 50k and turn to crap line that I hear about is the Cadillac. This seems born out by some of my friends. Perhaps the Mustang can be thrown in as well because they seem built to take rough punishment. As for the others the reputations of Chryslers, Jeeps, most GM & Fords, just keeps lagging behind by all accounts I've read or know about personally. If you have no desire to ever own a car 100,000 miles than you set a low standard to begin with. The German cars all seem to have more than their share of problems as well.

Here's my examples: My daily driver is a 15 year old Maxima, bought new, which is still a wonderful car at 145k. Both of my wife's Outbacks have been rock solid. Years ago my Toyota Corona and Toyota Celica were outstanding for 100k, my Accord well over 100k. To me these are the true tests - styling that does not date itself quickly, cars that continue to be fun to drive year and year, and a reliability record second to none.

To a point earlier, I don't look for cars to perform multiple tasks anymore than I do tools (ie, pull a boat vs track car). I do look for the fun factor in every purchase.