On Mon, 30 May 2011 18:06:28 -0400, "Ralph Mowery"
wrote:


"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
m...

"harry" wrote in message
...
Heh Heh. Finally catches up with where Europe and Japan were fifty
years ago.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/bu...%2Findex.jsonp

.

The car makers are not catching up, the consumer is. Detroit built small
car back in the 60's. I liked my '62 Corvair. Then the Pinto, Chevette,
Horizon, Vega, etc, but they just never sold many of them.

The American cars did have the small cars as far back as the 60's. Just
none of them were any good. The larger ones were not any better. I had a
Ford , 3 Chrysler products , and 2 GM products. None of them made it to
80,000 miles.

American cars are getting much better. Well, Chrysler still makes junk (and
you couldn't give me a GM). I've had one AMC (Gremlin), four Fords, and four
Chryslers. All have made it to 80K, except the Gremlin (no need to explain)
and the '74 Rustang II that followed it (no need to explain there, either).
The '78 Granada made 140K and 14 years before I gave the rusted hulk away.
That was followed by two Chrysler minivans, both made 80K, but not much
longer, and two Intrepid class cars, also junk. I now have two Fords, a '00
Sable (100K) and an '01 Ranger (90K). Both will easily go another three or
four years. I'll replace the Sable as soon as we get the house paid off, but
not because it'll need it - SHMBO wants a Mustang Convertible. ;-)

The last one was a 74 GM product and I had to put two timing
gears in it and the transmission went out at 75,000. I have only bought
Toyotas for the last several cars. One went 100,000 with only standard
maint. Traded it off for a Camry and put 190,000 on it and only changed one
sensor. Just put tires on a Tacoma truck at 45,000 and no unscheduled
maint.

Your experience is just with the '70s and '80s cars, then.

Glad RonB's wife has a better memory as to why not to go American than he
seemed to.

I hate to buy from another country,but if the American stuff is junk, I am
not about to help the big wheels in the US make the 100 million plus dollars
a year for doing it

It's not junk, though. It certainly *was*, but that was more than 20 years
back.