pkrstr8 wrote: I personally will not buy a japanese car. My job is tied to the auto industry here, and I will fully sport them and buy American! How many Asian's do youy see in American cars here......almost ZERO, they are tied to their country.
...or they don't feel compelled to buy crap cars. I see a lot of Asians in BMWs.
I think back to the cars my two closest friends and I have driven. It has done a lot to color my perception of cars. First cars:
Friend 1: '84 Toyota Tercel - Friend 2: Early 90's Volvo wagon - Me: '82 Cadillac Cimarron.
Our experiences were much what you'd suspect the Tercel was gutless but got great efficiency and just worked. The timing belt slipped once. We drove several miles wondering what was going on, before deciding to get it towed to a shop where it was cheap to fix. It was still running well when his parents bought a new car and gave him their Camry.
The Volvo required more maintenance than the Toyota, but never had major frustrations. It died when he was hit by a car that blew a stop sign at 30-40mph. Totaled the Volvo, he had a few scratches. He got a newer Volvo wagon.
The Cimarron was... a Cimarron. It sucked. I had blown head gaskets, power steering that died, power steering that later got funky and tried to jerk the wheel out of my hands. It would sometimes decide not to start. No response from the ignition. I would fight and curse at it for a half an hour, and it would spontaneously work again.
I couldn't even sell that damned thing. And I hated it. My grandparents then gave me their next cast off car, a Chrysler Cirrus. It sucked too. It was more boring than the Camry. And it liked to break the engine mounts and take other systems when those went. I think it broke 5 or six engine mounts while I had it.
Then I got a BMW and have only had to replace wear items.
JD Power is biased...
It's funny how many people dismiss a source because is conflicts with their preconceived ideas.
Either way, JD power has done a lot more than this thread on trying to figure out if domestics are more reliable than imports.
Our nxt argument? Ford vs. Chevy. Honda vs. Nissan. Tune in for the exciting conclusion. 
Yeah there was a V6 diesel for a short time and yes it was a turd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Diesel_V6_engine
And while BMW made great engines during WWII they still had the same issues that they do today. They are very expensive to rebuilt. They are also very fussy on tolerences.
So while you want to hold BMW up, they are a low volume supplier. I would expect their quality to be even higher then it is!
It is fun to note how popular a Chevy engine in a BMW is.....you know one of those crappy American engines.
[sarcasm]Yeah, remember the BMW Isetta? What a piece of junk that was. No power, totally unsafe, and how many do you see on the roads these days? I don't see why anyone would buy a BMW[/sarcasm]
pkrstr8 wrote: It is fun to note how popular an LSx engine in anything is.....you know one of those crappy American engines.
Fixed. The LSx's are fantastic engines. But it is not indicative of the build quality for all American cars.
Xceler8x wrote: Flounder. We could do this all day folks. JD Power Dependability study.
JD Power notes 'problems per 100 vehicles'. It does not differentiate between a sticky ashtray and an engine failure. For that reason, I do not consider them to be a reliable source of quality rankings. Unfortunately, they are pretty much the only game in town unless you count the 'unbiased' (ha!) Consumer Reports.
Also I see a major problem with the reporting of the most common problems to include wind noise and steering/suspension pulls. Wind noise is many times confused with wind rush, or the sound air makes as it goes over and around the car. Every brand I ahve ever worked for has had a lot of complaints about wind noise in a cross wind. Guess what, folks- it ain't the car causing it.
Ditto pulls. Many roads are crowned so that water will run off in a heavy rain and a vehicle will 'chase' toward the downhill side of that crown. Every day I have to demostrate to customers that in the right lane it pulls right, in the left lane it pulls left and point out that it ain't the car.
'Excessive window fogging'? WTF is that? I have NEVER seen a fogged glass due to anything other than environmental issues.
Noisy brakes and instrument panel issues, yeah those could quite possibly be due to problems with the vehicle.
But when 3 of the 5 top complaints are quite possibly not a vehicle defect but rather envirionmental conditions beyond the manufacturers' control but JDP still considers those 'defects' I have to wonder about their credibility.
pkrstr8 wrote: How many Asian's do youy see in American cars here......
Several...actually. I'm not going to hop on any bandwagon here...just pointing out that your generalization, while it may be true for you, is just that...a generalization.
I own multiple vehicles, Japanese and Domestic. I pretty much only have the ones that stick around for 20+ years.
On another note altogether.
I find it interesting that the Japanese make cars with such longevity. A 10 year old car in Japan is considered ancient. Taxes on vehicles go up as they get older (converse to our system here in the USA). You'd think they'd build them to last 11 years and phase them out at 10 ;).
One of the Japanese folks I know (one of the aforementioned that drives an american car) thinks it's outrageous and unbelievable that I drive a 26 year old Corolla (so noted when she was asking me about getting her Lumina fixed by a mechanic).
Clem
Man oh man are you way off base!!
Jensenman wrote: JD Power notes 'problems per 100 vehicles'. It does not differentiate between a sticky ashtray and an engine failure. For that reason, I do not consider them to be a reliable source of quality rankings. Unfortunately, they are pretty much the only game in town unless you count the 'unbiased' (ha!) Consumer Reports.
The same Consumer report that used to love the Japanese but has now started praising the Domestics, particularly Ford. Let me get this right, when the Japanese cars were on top they were objective, now Ford does well they've become biased? CR isn't an enthusiast mag, they call it how they see it, which is probably pretty accurate for 99.99% of the population. I recall people lambasting them when they criticized the Lotus Elise as being too harsh, well guess what, for Joe average it is.
Jensenman wrote: Also I see a major problem with the reporting of the most common problems to include wind noise and steering/suspension pulls. Wind noise is many times confused with wind rush, or the sound air makes as it goes over and around the car. Every brand I have ever worked for has had a lot of complaints about wind noise in a cross wind. Guess what, folks- it ain't the car causing it.
Well Duh, if we all drove in a vacuum with no air there would be no wind noise, doesn't mean that it's normal though. The front window trim on the DN101 Taurus was notorious for howling (No domestics aren't perfect, but htis was 96), poor quality there and many were replaced. There's wind noise on my C30 that the dealer tells me he can't find and everything fine. Well how come it only does it on the drivers side not the passenger side, confirmed by driving both directions to allow for wind direction and swapping driver and passenger, the drivers door always makes noise. My wife's old Toyota Highlander (may it, it's designers and quality engineers rot in the Great Pit of Carkoon to be slowly consumed by the Sarlacc.) howled like 20 ally cat's at midnight if you opened any window at over 15mph. Not a fault persay but really E36 M3ty aero management and just a crappy design with poor sign off. No modern vehicle should make that much noise.
Jensenman wrote: Ditto pulls. Many roads are crowned so that water will run off in a heavy rain and a vehicle will 'chase' toward the downhill side of that crown. Every day I have to demonstrate to customers that in the right lane it pulls right, in the left lane it pulls left and point out that it ain't the car.
Ditto it can be a fault or poor design. When I worked on the 02 Panther front suspension one of the most important design briefs was to reduce the sensitivity of the front suspension to the road camber and make it less sensitive to slight changes in alignment.
I haven't been able to bring the article up - must be those GM servers
But while lord knows that the domestic car companys have berkeleyed up repeatedly, ditching them isn't in our best interests.
Let me ask you - why do we feel the sense of entitlement to always have the best? Domestic vehicles are loads better than they've been at any other time in my 46 years. While it serves us individually to get the best quality within our budget, collectively every time we go overseas, it's another tiny staple in the coffin of American manufacturing. And those that think that we can get by on service industry, high tech and finance are deluding themselves IMO.
I know this isn't a popular view, and I'm not trying to lay guilt trips, but actions have repricusions. Just as we threw the boatbuilding industry out with the luxury tax, in giving the big 3 the boot, we pass through a door that will not likely open again.
pkrstr8 wrote: How many Asian's do youy see in American cars here.
Around here, LOTS if you count South Asians.
In Canada brown guys like to drive Escalades and pretend they're black. 
Shawn
Adrian_Thompson wrote: Man oh man are you way off base!!Jensenman wrote: JD Power notes 'problems per 100 vehicles'. It does not differentiate between a sticky ashtray and an engine failure. For that reason, I do not consider them to be a reliable source of quality rankings. Unfortunately, they are pretty much the only game in town unless you count the 'unbiased' (ha!) Consumer Reports.The same Consumer report that used to love the Japanese but has now started praising the Domestics, particularly Ford. Let me get this right, when the Japanese cars were on top they were objective, now Ford does well they've become biased? CR isn't an enthusiast mag, they call it how they see it, which is probably pretty accurate for 99.99% of the population. I recall people lambasting them when they criticized the Lotus Elise as being too harsh, well guess what, for Joe average it is.Jensenman wrote: Also I see a major problem with the reporting of the most common problems to include wind noise and steering/suspension pulls. Wind noise is many times confused with wind rush, or the sound air makes as it goes over and around the car. Every brand I have ever worked for has had a lot of complaints about wind noise in a cross wind. Guess what, folks- it ain't the car causing it.Well Duh, if we all drove in a vacuum with no air there would be no wind noise, doesn't mean that it's normal though. The front window trim on the DN101 Taurus was notorious for howling (No domestics aren't perfect, but htis was 96), poor quality there and many were replaced. There's wind noise on my C30 that the dealer tells me he can't find and everything fine. Well how come it only does it on the drivers side not the passenger side, confirmed by driving both directions to allow for wind direction and swapping driver and passenger, the drivers door always makes noise. My wife's old Toyota Highlander (may it, it's designers and quality engineers rot in the Great Pit of Carkoon to be slowly consumed by the Sarlacc.) howled like 20 ally cat's at midnight if you opened any window at over 15mph. Not a fault persay but really E36 M3ty aero management and just a crappy design with poor sign off. No modern vehicle should make that much noise.Jensenman wrote: Ditto pulls. Many roads are crowned so that water will run off in a heavy rain and a vehicle will 'chase' toward the downhill side of that crown. Every day I have to demonstrate to customers that in the right lane it pulls right, in the left lane it pulls left and point out that it ain't the car.Ditto it can be a fault or poor design. When I worked on the 02 Panther front suspension one of the most important design briefs was to reduce the sensitivity of the front suspension to the road camber and make it less sensitive to slight changes in alignment.
WooEEE, I touched a nerve.
No JD Power does NOT diffeerntiate between minor and severe problems. They will tell you it's because both minor and major problems inconvenience the customer. So if A complains about a sticky ashtray and B complains about a grenaded transmission, both get equal weight in the final tally. Sorry if you see that as bias one way or the other, I see it as being too lazy to properly tabulate problems. It also hurts the manufacturers, what if 99% of your problems were squeaks and your competitiors' was 99% engines falling out? Yet both receive the same weight on the survey?
Each and every workday of my life I deal with these things. It is possible to reduce but not eliminate wind rush (defined as the sound of air moving over the vehicle or its exterior trim) as opposed to wind noise (defined as air entering the vehicle, as in trhough a door weatherstrip) and NO car will be quiet, wind rush wise, in all conditions. Yet people continue to complain about it even though it's an enviromental condition which in many cases is beyond anyone's control. Hell yes there are wind rush concerns which can be repaired; Avalon mirrors, Isuzu Trooper windshield moldings, Grand Cherokee roof rack forward mounts all come to mind. But these are NOT the wind rush complaints I am referring to. BTW, drive a late BMW at highway speed in a strong crosswind and tell me how quiet THAT thing is.
At least you admit that not all pull concerns can be fixed. I have to tell people every day that it's a tradeoff: we can try to reduce the right side road crown drift by futzing with the caster but you may not like what it does under other conditions.
Re: Wind noise... my S40 sounds like a helicopter is hovering overhead if you roll down a rear window and not a front. I know it's just an aerodynamic anomaly due to the particular planes on the S40, pressure differentials, and all that. I don't blame Volvo. I am a little surprised they didn't tweak things just a little to minimize it, but it is what it is. I suppose it's entirely possible they know about it, but the solution created more noise at other times or was in some other way unsatisfactory.
My experience on the few modern cars I've driven is that you can't roll down just one window without that crazy harmonic thing happening (ok..."harmonic" is probably not the correct term...but that pressure differential thing that is audible and drives you nuts). You have to at least crack another window too...
Clem
Tim Baxter wrote: Re: Wind noise... my S40 sounds like a helicopter is hovering overhead if you roll down a rear window and not a front.
Lots of different cars do the same thing.
I drive rental cars probably 50 times a year in business travel. I'm fortunate that I don't have to drive the low end econoboxes - I usually get 'full size' and often get upgraded to premium and SUV. Many times, because I'm a 'frequent customer', I get cars with less than 1000 miles on them - sometimes less than 10 miles.
I've driven lots of domestics and lots of imports. IMHO American cars are better than they were. They aren't usually as tight and well made as the imports.
My totally biased ranking - best to worst. (initial quality, fit and finish, ride, handling, general sense of 'this is a NICE car')
German/Swedish
Japanese
Korean -tie- American
Don't hate me, just my opinion.
That helicopter noise with the rear windows down thing was a big complaint when I worked for the Buick dealership.
I had a guy who bought a Park Avenue Ultra and he had only one real complaint about it: when you added fuel and the pump clicked off, you could not keep adding fuel to get to an even dollar amount. This drove the guy NUTS. He wrote letters to the service manager and dealership owner telling them we refused to fix his car. He wrote letters to GM brass about the same thing. His rationale: he could do that with the Acura he owned previously but not the Buick, so the Buick was defective. 
I'm sure that went into JD Power's 'problems per 100 cars' in 1996.
I drove a 2003? whatever, it had about 60,000 miles on it 328i BMW a while back. Pluses: good gas mileage, good handling, good power. Minuses: an absolutely horrid and vague feeling manual shifter, something somewhere was squeaking and every piece of interior plastic trim had paint peeling off. 
Jensenman wrote: I had a guy who bought a Park Avenue Ultra and he had only one real complaint about it: when you added fuel and the pump clicked off, you could not keep adding fuel to get to an even dollar amount. This drove the guy NUTS. He wrote letters to the service manager and dealership owner telling them we refused to fix his car. He wrote letters to GM brass about the same thing. His rationale: he could do that with the Acura he owned previously but not the Buick, so the Buick was defective.
Ya think that guy might have been a bit OCD?
Just a wee bit. The bad point: his wife would jump in and give her .02 which matched his. We even took another P-A-U to the gas station, showed both of them that it was the same way, her reply? 'Then that means ALL of them are defective'.
A Modern Parable.
A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford Motors)
decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.
The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to
investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.
Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person
steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order; American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.
They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the
boat, while not enough people were rowing.
Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent
another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.
They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2
people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition' and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.
The next year the Japanese won by two miles.
Humiliated, the American management laid-o ff one rower, halted
development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.
The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable
to even finish the race (having no paddles) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.
Sadly, the End.
Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty
years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages.
TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen
plants inside the US. The last quarter's results:
TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in
losses.
Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting
bonuses... IF THIS WEREN'T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY
This is the protracted result of Detroit's mismanagement and corporate greed...during the 80's. Sure the quality has improved, but they spoiled a few generations of buyers.
It doesn't matter if they are 98% as good as a Toyota or Honda. Hell, maybe they're even better from a reliability standpoint. This is especially impressive given that they have to deal with the UAW and pensions.
Wal-mart tennis shoes are $19 and made out of 98% of the same stuff as the Asics or New Balance that I run in every day. Probably just as reliable and a better value for the money, but that doesn't matter.
Everybody on this board is better-informed about cars than 90% of the people out there who are buying new cars. Cars are a fashion accessory and GM/Ford/Chrysler is UNCOOL.
Are you going to spend $25000 on an UNCOOL Bailoutmobile?
I saw a good deal on Coby MP3 players on Good Morning America this AM. $30-40. They're probably more reliable than an iPod and play music just as well. I want an iPod.
Jensenman wrote: 'Excessive window fogging'? WTF is that? I have NEVER seen a fogged glass due to anything other than environmental issues.
You've never driven a Honda Odyssey or Pilot with a family of 4 stuffed inside in the wintertime. Run the a/c full blast, the windows stand a chance of keeping clear. Let the automatic controls do their thing, and all the side glass fogged over within 10 minutes.
Kramer wrote: Anecdotal evidence is crap.
I read a great deal of this thread. Here's a giant piece of wisdom.
pigeon wrote:Jensenman wrote: 'Excessive window fogging'? WTF is that? I have NEVER seen a fogged glass due to anything other than environmental issues.You've never driven a Honda Odyssey or Pilot with a family of 4 stuffed inside in the wintertime. Run the a/c full blast, the windows stand a chance of keeping clear. Let the automatic controls do their thing, and all the side glass fogged over within 10 minutes.
I guess I never see that down here because it just doesn't get all that cold.
People exhale and sweat water vapor, water condenses on cold surfaces. That's an environmental condition, pretty much beyond the control of the manufacturer. I suppose it could be dealt with, but at what cost? Like it was put to me one time, 'a nearly perfect car could be built. But no one would be able to afford it.'
Datsun1500 wrote:Jensenman wrote: I guess I never see that down here because it just doesn't get all that cold. People exhale and sweat water vapor, water condenses on cold surfaces. That's an environmental condition, pretty much beyond the control of the manufacturer.OK but can you explain why it happens in my Odyssey but not my Wife's Lexus LX? Same family, same size car. Never happened in my Caravan.....
I once had a Nissan that only the right rear window fogged over to the point you couldn't even see through it. Ya it didn't have any vents on it but neither did the left rear window which remained clear. Never could explain that either.
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