Cars in Israel

Agree! Books like that are seldom written by industry experts. They deal with the noise level generated by owners of these cars. The Ford Pinto was not all that bad, but the exploding gas tanks doomed it forever.
My personal experience with knowing owners of ghastly cars are:

  1. The British Vauxhall models of the late 602 and 70s. These cars were biodegradable; I tried to change a tire for my neighbor and the jack in the trunk was already so rusted it was unusable! This was the worst car ever exported to Canada from Europe.

  2. The Russian Lada . A friend of my wife had her husband buy her an 80 model. The electrical system was junk, the engine rough, but the glove box could hold 2 liter bottles of vodka semi-upright!

  3. Another friend of my wife bought a French Renault 4, equally biodegradable with poor
    electricals.

  4. A sorority sister of my wife had to endure driving a Rover 2000 which her English husband insisted was the "most sophisticated " car on the road. On paper yes. but the detail engineering meant an hydraulic clutch that did not work below freezing, poor starting and zero rust protection causing gaping holes in the fenders due to road salt which was not used in England. But that leather upholstery smelled nice!

  5. My brother’s girlfriend bought a 1986 Hyundai Pony, cheap but full of flaws. The only good part was the Mitsubishi engine which had some proven use in Japanese cars.

The list goes on and many of you will have some tale of horror. Most of these dogs also suffered from “dealers” who had few mechanical skills in repairing and parts were always hard to get. GM dealers’ mechanics hated working on Vauxhall cars sold by Chevy and Pontiac dealers.

I think we should include the Sterling 825 of the late 80’s in the above list.

Only the British can screw up a good Japanese car design like the Honda. I gather this was a car built from a Honda license with very poor results!

It was, and the icing on the cake was the Lucas electrical system.

Ah yes, Lucas Electric, aka “Prince of Darkness”!

That is true, but it doesn’t apply only to “dog” marques.
My brother’s first wife bought a Datsun SPL-311, and–despite Datsun’s “okay” reputation at that point–this model was truly a car from hell. To top it off, Datsun decided to allow a truly sleazy used car dealer from Jersey City to buy a franchise.

Because that SPL-311 was such a piece of crap, my brother had to bring it back to the dealership very often. We quickly noticed that nothing ever seemed to improve after the car was brought in for warranty repairs. It turned out that the dealer’s “service department” consisted solely of one elderly man who washed cars and tore the plastic protective wrap off of the seats before delivery. Anything else was referred to a Gulf gas station a couple of blocks away, and the owner of that Gulf station lacked specialized tools, specific training on Datsun vehicles, and–above all–any interest in trying to resolve problems.

After the 4th or 5th unproductive visit to that Datsun “service department”, my brother lodged a complaint with one of the brothers who owned the franchise. This guy–complete with broken nose and shiny suit (think… Mafia…) --convinced my brother that it would not be in his best interests to ever return to that facility.

We did find a decent indy mechanic for the car, but, as the old saying tells us, “You can’t shine sh*t”, and there was a limit to what even a skilled indy mechanic could do to improve that piece of crap produced by Datsun.

You had to say it, didn’t you? Below is a polished cross section of dinosaur scat.

Of course there are good cars sold by crappy dealers. Volkswagen decided when they entered the North American market to succeed they had to properly train dealers and insisted they stock a year’s supply of parts based on market size and estimated shop activity.

I remember hitchhiking in the 50s and being picked up by a Swiss immigrant couple who had just bought a new VW Beetle. Somewhere along the way something started acting up and their manual in the glove box showed the closest dealer which I was also familiar with We dropped the car off, I bought them lunch and we proceeded an hour later on our way.

VW service in those days was in many cases better than the Big 4’s.

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Big 4? GM, Ford ,Chrysler, and Who?

I presume @Docnick was referring to AMC.

Yeah I had to think a little bit, going down the street, remembering who was there. In the 50’s yeah, AMC. Turned into a dental office, insurance agent, and barber shop now. Right next to what used to be National T, then Sears, and now NAPA. Piggly Wiggly is now a bar, and the Ford Dealer is a furniture store. Ah now I remember the Western Auto store (couldn’t think of their name) but its a bank now-of course torn down. The old Plymouth dealer sells tractors now and the old Dodge dealer is about to be swallowed by the county jail. Wow now I’m thinking of the gas stations-Clark, Cities Service, North Star, DX all recycled. Sorry.

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AMC was founded in the Fall of 1954 by the Merger of Nash and Hudson.

They were outsold by Studebaker-Packard in 1955.

Which is why I questioned who the big four were. Looking back, we now know that AMC became more successful and survived much longer, but that was not true or apparent in 1955.

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Yes, in the 50s and 60s we had 4 major US car companies. AMC gradually got dismembered and absorbed by others.

my wife is from nam and my first time visiting in 2017 I was astonished by the lack of cars there. Looks like 99% of ppl drive mopeds. Also the first time seeing an uber moped.

I think we often take some of the remarkable privileges we have in this country for granted.

When Top Gear went to vietnam some years ago there was a mention of a 100% import tax so even a few years before you were there it was very expensive to buy a car compared to other parts of the world. The equivalent of $1,000 US would only buy you a moped or other motorcycle.

Vietnamese workers make much less than even Chinese workers. There’s no way most could afford a car. Good thing it doesn’t get cold there.

When my brother was stationed in Da Nang, he observed that the natives donned overcoats when the temperature dropped below 75 degrees. I guess that “cold” is a relative term.
:wink:

Also, I found it shocking that vietnam citizens pay 2-3 times more for honda vehicles than here in the states. But they have honda plants here in the US, so i guess its justified.

When I used to go to Central Florida for work, the DJs always whined about the winter temperature when it went under 50. They also said us northerners were probably laughing at them, and we were. Their low for a bad day was always 5 to 10 degrees higher than the high back in MD.