How many of these have you driven though? When I get the choice between driving my Mustang or my parent's Porsche or Audi I would take the German cars any day. You just compared a Jap car to an American one and IMO those two that you mentioned aren't much defferent except for reliabilty. Drive a BMW, Audi, or Porsche (Mercedes sucks) and I doubt you'll ever say that foreign cars aren't that much better. If American cars even up to the foreign ones then why won't they sell?

 

Well I really don't know why they won't sell. I have driven a Porshe and a few Mercedes as well, and also a low end Jag, and I just really was not impressed with them at all. Don't get me wrong, they are nice cars, but I just couldn't see them being so much better to be worth that much more money. As far as reliability goes, I still hold to my stand that American cars are more reliable. I can count about 10 american cars and trucks that I know of that are approaching 250K or have exceeded it and have never had anything done to them. I don't know of any foriegn cars that have that many trouble free miles on them. I've got a friend who has a porshe and its always in the shop and it cost's a ton to have it worked on. I wouldn't trade my Mustang even for it. I know a guy whose got a Honda with only about 150K miles on it and its had to have 3 head gaskets and overhauled once.

 

if i had that much to spend on a non-ford, then it would definently be a 1970 barracuda, not necesarilly a hemi-cuda, but a barracuda.

 

If you guys have been reading consumer's reports and various car magazines over the years, you would not claim that American built cars are a better product than foreign cars. I bought a new Avalon in 1998. The car was assembled in the Kentucky plant by American workers. So, with the exception of the running gear, it is an American built car. However, I put well over 200K trouble free miles on it, and it was still running strong when I traded it in on my 03 Mach 1. The trade-in value was quite a bit more than any American counterpart. I have ridden in Buicks and Cadillacs, and you cannot compare their mushy ride to the stiffer, more controlled ride of the large foreign cars. More than any other product, you get what you pay for in a car.

 

yes, american cars are not better than japanese cars and MOST if not all foreign manufactures are getting their plants out of america cause we do not bulid them the same way they want them built. but with good reason.if you look at the colture(sp) over there and compare it to ours they are two totally different sides of the spectrum. the japanese go to school all year round, mainly cause the living conditions there are meager to say the least and they are taught from an early age, "work, work, work!" now for us, we are more laid back. we are about having fun now and than. the last i read was that we are trying to assimilate some of their work ethic into our production plants and there has been a slight rise in our reliablity. it will be a LONG while before we are where we need to be. also european cars are in decline with their reliability they are number three behind us now. namely the benz cars. they are having very dumb problems like a/c compressors malfunctioning WAY too early and various other problems.

and paddy, you said we have under powered engines (power per volume) and than when we had a V6 with 200 horses and it was getting better mileage than a 260 horsepower V6 from a japanese car was due to the horse power did you not consider we have the same capabilities to make a high powered V6? DUH! we do, but we also know the economy in this point in time wants a car that gets good mileage and anyone who cares about power knows you will sacrifice mileage to gain power.

i do agree, japanese built cars are more reliable and that's due to what i stated above about their colture(sp, again). yeah, if i really wanted something reliable i would go out and get a japanese car. hell, i almost went out and got a scion tc recently. aside from the fact that i can't afford to make payments at this time, i would have done it, but i still prefer my good old american built machines. i have worked on several of cars from all three continents and lemme tell you i have found some really dumb stuff on foreign cars. like a VW, don't remember what model. it had a dropfilter mounted upside down on the bottom of the car! a DROP filter. they are supposed to be mounted towards the top so you can DROP the filter in, hence "DROP filter". on a saab, the oil filler cap was the dipstick and it had this 3 inch tall spring compressed between thin plastic about tops an inch think. the thing broke in my hand as i went to take it off cause i had to compress the spring to get the filler around the little locking nub things. i have never seen this on any american car. now on the flip side, ford thought it would be a good idea to bolt the distributer cap to the distributer to make it better. well, the problem ther was found on my own 89 4 banger mustang. i went to take the bolts out and they were seized into the distributer and broke off flush with the dristributer. i had to drill it out and use drywall screws (as they were all i could find) to hole the thing on. clips always worked fine!!!

okay, end rant.

 

yea, not all imports are as great as the "almighty" honda accord, take in for instance, the VW bug sucked back then, it still sucks now the VW rabbit sucked back then, well they didnt learn from the first time around, so they are releasing it AGAIN, its gunna suck.

 

i wanna know why in the hell WV, "the peoples car", a car built to be affordable, gets off building an 80 thousand V12 car? doesn't that go agains what the company was founded on? even tho it was founded by a sadistic fudge job!

 

German > Japanese > American. Just look at the sheer numbers, tests, and consumer's opinions. The American cars aren't coming to par and that's why their sales are doing so poorly (in addition to a lot of poor marketing). I think a big reason you don't see a lot of older foreign cars around is because they haven't been around that long and when they did come to the States people didn't just immediately start buying. They stuck to the American cars while they were still better. Reliabilty, Comfort, and Resale Value are all riding on the foreign manufacturer's side and the American Auto Companies are putting too much dependence on their client's pride even though these cars are hardly even built here

 

not true! most imports have been around as long as the stang.. BMW since 1968, datsun have been aorund a long time, toyotas at least since the 70s, honda came.

 

believe me i have checked it out in many places many times trying to prove someone wrong, only to prove myself wrong. now, as of a year ago it was: japanese>american>german. the german cars were declining. i'll be the first to say they are wicked engineers by far, but for whatever reason they started slipping and A LOT of benz drivers were getting pissed at all the little snot going wrong. it wasn't ever really anything major, but enough little stuff to make some noise and rattle a few cages. now, if they have fixed the problem, i don't know. i do remember there was one american company that had a rattling problem with something in their cars and after a study they found it was mainly cars made the late part of the second half of the day. they looked into it a bit more and the gentleman who rivited whatever part into the car was this TALL dude and he was getting sore bending over to rivit the piece(s) in. they worked with some japanese auto maker or conslutant of sorts and figured out they sould raise the car up or make a pit for him to stand in so he's not leaning over and further they found it was easier to go in thru the trunk to rivit it in.