I have had consistently good experiences with GM cars. We have a 1998 Buick Regal and have had almost no problems with it. It cost me about $2000 less than a Honda Accord EX when I bought it, and I have not put more than a few hundred into unscheduled repairs. We also have a 2003 Olds Silhouette. We did have to put a new transmission into it, but it was warranty work. I won’t hold that against them (no cost, no foul). We were without the van for about 1.5 weeks, but the Buick served as a back up car for my wife while the van was laid up. The dealer did give us a car for 4 days, and we worked our schedule with 3 drivers around that.
I had the same waterpump problem Bering/seal shot) with my Caprice (at 150,000 miles) in a small mountain town during a holiday weekend. We were on a hiking trip with a group. I left the car with a local mechanic, rode with our friends, and picked the car up the following Tuesday. Total cost $225. The AAA paid for the towing.
I had a 1977 Lincoln Mark V that went 274,000 miles before developing a bad knock. My dad bought the car new and I got it at around 120,000 miles in 1984. It never had its engine or transmission rebuilt. I replaced a few things like the water pump, alternator, brake master cylinder, suspension parts, etc., throughout the 2 plus decades I drove it but overall it was very reliable and comfortable and almost until the end I was confident to drive it on any long trips.
It might have gone more miles but someone apparently had tried to siphon gas out of it and left the cap off (while I was out of town in my other car). There was a torrential downpour that night and rust developed in the filler neck and who knows where else. I rebuilt the carb and replaced the fuel pump (both had rust particles inside) put in a gas dryer and did what I could but the car never ran as well afterwards and it seemed to go downhill from there. I know of a couple of other Mark V’s that have well over 300,000 miles on them.
Nice map Whitey, but what does it represent?
“I’m ticked off because the Colts aren’t in it.”
I’m a Ravens fan, but I watched the 2nd half. It was a great game, even if the wrong team won. 
I don’t know why you’re sore concerning the Colts fate. They weren’t even close to good enough to play. Neither were the Ravens, for that matter. The Steelers were definitely the best in the AFC this year. (groan)
I have had completely average experience from imports ( Toyota & Mazda ) and average to fantastic from domestics (GM, Chrysler & Ford).
I finally did watch the last half of the game and you are right–it was a great Superbowl. The Colts really threw away their chances in the first playoff game. It seems that any team I support loses. I wanted to see Arizona win, but they did make a good showing.
The same thing about supporting a team that loses also seems true about any product that I buy. I liked AMC products, but this company went under. I bought an Oldsmobile and GM dropped that division. My house was built with a state of the art Clare gas furnace. That company is gone and I have been advised to replace the furnace as parts may be hard to get.
In short, if you want a team to lose, pay me to support the team. If you get mad at a manufacturer, fund me to buy its product. I’ll fix them
I’ve personally owned more than 50 cars since my first one - a VW purchased new in 1961 - and had a great Chevy Malibu in 1976 (I called it Bruce, after the mechanical shark in “Jaws” – it was grey, after all). Had lots of American, Japanese, German, Swedish iron. In general, every automaker designs cars for the home market – except for the Japs. So German cars are built for the autobahn; fast and great handling. US cars are built for owners who don’t know or care about maintenance; Swedish cars are solid, stolid, and OK in the snow, if you can recognize that snow is not dry pavement.
My best ownership experiences have been with Japanese cars - Mazdas, Honda, Subaru Outback. Worst have been with U.S. products; my last was a Dodge Neon that was totally clapped-out at 50k miles. By comparison, my 2005 Outback just passed the 100k mark, and all it has required was a new battery, wiper blades and tires. And regular maintenance. No new shocks, brakes, exhaust bits, nada. Gets 30mpg on the highway, more if I pump up the tires. Round trip to work is 130 mph. Comfortable, great handling, quick enough…what more could I want?
You certainly are an atypical driver! Over a 47 year period you have owned 50 cars, so if you are the only driver, you keep your cars less than one year. Driving 130 miles per working day for 250 days per year gives about 33,000 miles per year of work-related driving. If you buy new cars, you should have virtuallly no problems with any car that is not a lemon. If you buy used cars it’s a different story.
Could you tell us more about your car buying decision-making process? Most posters here keep their cars much longer for economic reasons. Our family has had 2 cars since 1972, but I bought my first car in 1958 and so far we have only owned 12 cars and I have had 4 company cars.
Having been in the car business, I’ve owned many, many cars. Detroit has indeed made some junk, which badly tarnished their reputation. But so has Honda and to a lesser degree, Toyota. Consumers seem to overlook that.
Lets face it, cars provide you with transportation and the MAIN factor is the cost per mile to deliver that transportation. My 3 all-time best cars: 1978 Chevy Malibu 305 automatic. 1992 Ford Crown Vic. 1998 Ford Crown Vic. Honorable mention: 1972 Dodge W-200 318 Power-Wagon, 1991 Toyota P/U. These vehicles delivered (and still deliver) reliability, comfort (not the W-200) easy to repair (seldom needed) and low operating cost. They are ALL body & frame construction, rear-wheel drive.
In my personal and professional opinion, Unibody, FWD, automatic transmission, McPherson strut suspended automobiles can never match the overall low operating costs of the cars I mentioned. I NEVER buy NEW vehicles. Operating costs can be cut in half if you allow others to absorb the first 3 or 4 years of depreciation. Always pay cash, never finance a depreciating asset.
All-Wheel-Drive (AWD), the new darlings of the automotive world, have power-trains so complex that they are literally not repairable. What was once a $30,000 “investment” becomes salvage overnight. Cost per mile to operate goes off the scale. You want to avoid vehicles that are mechanical disasters waiting to happen. But it’s your money…Spend it the way you want.
The colored states are where I have been in my travels. The white states are states I have yet to visit.
I think it’ll be interesting also to note the years. IMHO Detroit built the absolute best cars in the world up until sometime in the early '70s. Many of us go back that far. I recall when the pinnacle of success was to own a Caddy or a Lincoln.
My '64 Fairlane was solid as a rock. Real Detroit steel.
When the riceburners originally came here they were cheap, tiny tin insta-rust econoboxes unable to compete with Detroit iron. I think the first Toyota was something called the Crown and it was a disaster. The first Honda that came over was the tiniest Civic you can imagine.
So the question opens up some real discussion and real memories.
Agree, mountainbike! Until the early 70s, there were only 3 foreign cars worth buying from a reliability point of view; Mercedes, Volvo and the VW Beetle. Sometime during the 70s, Japanese quality started to improve very rapidly, Volvos became unreliable once they stated tuning the engines for low emissions, and American cars started their slow downhill journey. Italian, British and French cars could never cut the mustard in a North American environment.
By the late 70s, early 80s the quality curves crossed. I remember a guy I worked with, who did very little maintenance on his US cars, asking my opinion on a Honda Accord. We live in a dry area, so rust was not a problem. I explained to him Japanese cars were built to very tight tolerances, and needed maintenance by the book! He took my advice to heart and put 82,000 mile on his Accord with only a battery replacement! This convinced me that Japanese cars were here to stay and decimate the local products, unless they improved similarly.
My boss bought one of first Civics for his wife, and it did not fare well. It was biodegradable. That year, Consumer Reports tested a number of small cars and rated the GREMLIN! the best of the bunch.
From what I understand, the first Civics were horrible. I still see a few on the roads from the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until the Civic got electronic fuel injection that it became known as one of the most reliable cars on the road. I still know people who owned one of the first Civics who refuse to own another Honda.
Since they don’t use salt on the roads in Japn, the cars disintegrated rather quickly. A friend of my wife had one and the door posst rusted out so badly that the door hinges came loose. There were also head gasket problems, etc. But Honda learned very quickly and by the time the Accord appeared on the market around 1980, most of those problems had been solved.
Nissan had the same rust problems initially.
My brother had a '66 Datsun (Nissan) SPL-310 convertible. It was more or less a clone of the MG of that day, and it was really fast. That, however, was the only good thing about that beast.
The bumpers were totally rusted within a few months. It was virtually impossible to start the thing when the ambient temperature was below 45 degrees. It leaked badly from underneath the windshield, and in even a light rain, the passenger’s legs were quickly soaked. The tonneau cover was too small to actually fit the snap mounts for it, making the tonneu cover useless. The Owner’s Manual was written in Pidgin English. (“Windshield wiper have two kind speed” was one of my favorite quotes from that essentially useless little book)
And, the most bizarre thing of all was the air filter. In order to change the air filter, the dual side-draft carbs had to be removed, because there was inadequate clearance between the fender well and the filter housing. I also recall our mechanic saying something about the brake pads on this car being very difficult to change.
The service department of the dealership (Rick’s Motors in Jersey City, NJ) was…are you ready…the local Gulf gas station that had little tolerance for foreign cars in general, and absolutely no training in how to repair a Datsun. Apparently Datsun was such a “fly-by-night” operation in those days that they did not even bother to require that a dealership had a service department! As to warranty claims, the dealer’s attitude–both literally and figuratively–was “Fugeddaboutit”.
In those days, Datsun automobiles and their US operation were pure unadultered crap!
The Gremlin? Oh, the horror! That must have been a really bad year!
My dad had a Gremlin. I don’t recall the year, but when he had his first stroke I drove it to my house to store it while he recovered, a journey of about 20 miles. I thought that poor thing was going to fall apart under me. Then, while driving down the highway, the hatch suddenly sprung open and wouldn’t close again!
I currently own a 1997 VW Golf GTI with 216K, 4-cyl with manual trans and original clutch. It has been the most reliable car I’ve owned and I highly recommend it. Before it, I had a very good 1986 GTI with 211K (purchased new, assembled in the U.S.). I also have a 2003 Dodge Grand Caravan with about 65K. It has been a very good vehicle so far. It has needed no repairs except brakes, and those were very easy to work on. I also have a 1993 Pontiac Transport van with about 150K. It needs both power windows fixed, but otherwise it’s been just normal wear and tear. It is a surprisingly reliable van that is also surprisingly easy and inexpensive to work on. It just doesn’t have much in the way of handling or performance (or looks). Before the vans was a 1988 Pontiac Grand Prix that went 12 years and 150K with only routine maintenence. The only bad car I’ve owned was a 1977 Monte Carlo. Rusty with big carburator troubles.
My personal headache with American companies is they have about given up on the small hatchback (that and firm, supportive seats). I rented a Dodge Caliber, which looks good on paper, but now I wouldn’t own one (not for quality, but for design). The Pontiac Vibe looks nice - kind of a Toyota built in California. Every other small hatchback is an import as far as I know. Cars like the Focus and Cobalt look really nice, but no hatchback. I would like a newer American car, but it must be a small hatchback or wagon (smaller than the HHR).