American Cars

Here's a great article from the Boston Globe: What's Bad About GM? The cars.
I remember when foreign cars took over the U.S. market in the late 80s. Everyone was up in arms and my parents vowed to never buy a foreign car. They never have. They have also spent tens of thousands of dollars on cars that are complete pieces of shit.
Here's the lineup:
Ford Taurus -- 2 so far. Both models ran fine but had faulty paint that peeled off the car within five years, leaving the car looking like it had the heebie-jeebies.
Pontiac Grand Prix -- also had all its paint peeled off. My parents spent $2500 on a new paint job only to have the car lose a brand new timing belt and blow its engine less than a year later.
Dodge -- my dad has bought 2 new Dodge trucks, one gas and one diesel. The gas truck had a variety of issues and the diesel, while better put together (and one of their most trouble-free cars) has not aged particularly well.
Oldsmobile diesel sedan -- while I sped the demise of this car by side-swiping someone, the car eventually died. Before it did, we had to manually heat the glow-plugs via a button my dad put in the dash by carving it out.

Before the "no foreign cars" vow we had a toyota pickup. What did it do? It ran and ran and ran until the body was a heap of twisted, oxidizing metal, and then it still ran just fine. How about my Subaru GL? Fabulous car that I rolled and it still ran. I used it for 3 years before selling it to an ex-boyfriend who ran it until he totaled it in a rollover. It probably still ran.

I have had one US car that ran well -- the Ford Festiva. It is a great little car. Of course, I found out it was actually designed and put together by Kia. Big surprise.

We bought a 2002 Ford Focus brand new. To date, we have had $9,450 worth of repairs on a car we paid $10,500 for. The car has gone through two transmissions and the third one is starting to make grinding noises while we drive down the road. The car spontaneously loses power while we are driving, which means we lose power steering and brakes. The side mirrors are flimsy and one has been broken over and over again, so we have to glue it on. The rearview mirror spontaneously pops off all the time. We got a flat tire and found out there was no tire iron in the repair kit. We have manual door locks and windows, few safety features and the car has a ton of road noise. We don't even have cruise control on the car.

We had originally wanted a Honda Civic and I wish, oh, how I wish we had bought one! I bought the Ford because I had loved my Festiva (this was before I knew it was built by Kia). It was a terrible, terrible purchase, I now know.

There is a lot of talk about GM and how worker costs are breaking the company, but that simply isn't true. Most American carmakers are just turning out crummy products. My parents may have vowed to never buy foreign, but I've made my own vow -- never buy American cars. They may be a few hundred dollars cheaper on the lot, but the cost of the headache is out of this world.