actually, several of them come from toyota... see: rav4, echo, matrix, the mid-90s camry

detroit does make some ugly ones too, though.

anyway, my next car was a nissan pickup and so far it's been great.

Exactly what I've always felt about american cars. My first car ever was a sky blue truck (1987 4x4 Ford Ranger) rally nice but so many things were wrong with it for starters the side mirrors would fold once you hit 50mph & I always had a problem with the 4 cylinder engine I never bought american again, my latest car is a 2003 Acura 3.2 S & I couldn't be happier with it.

and don't feel bad. back in the day, when your dad and granddad grew up, there was nothing better to do than monkey around with a car. if they had internet porn they would have bought foreign, too.

anyway, i had 270,000 miles on my '88 honda civic before i finally got rid of it last year. it was all rusty but the engine still worked great. living in AZ i just couldn't deal with no AC anymore. we bought a new civic to replace it. we also have a jeep grand cherokee for hauling kids. it's an '02 and it's been great.

My dad bought a 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 when I was away at school (used 15k miles on it) and finally gave it away to a local charity in 2003 with 157k miles on it---never had anything go wrong with it, nothing. I truly enjoyed driving that car---rooooomy.

Before I continue I must confess something:

I'm 6'8".

Auto makers don't really factor height outliers like myself in their designs and many of my auto choices are a result of my semi-freakish height.

The first car I ever bought myself was a 1991 Mazda 323 2 door hatchback. That car was awesome. It was also my last foreign car. I put 100k on that car in three years (long story) and never had an issue with it.

I got a new job and a bit more cash so I traded the reliable 323 in for a Ford Probe (94). The Probe was the first car I ever had that had leather, a CD player, Auto locks/Windows, etc---all the goodies that are on almost all modern cars these days. I really liked that car until it started to fall apart.

I got out from under the Ford just in time and bought a brand new 99 Buick Century. It came down to the Buick or an Accord. Here is where I start to attempt to explain "American Cars". My recollection might be a bit fuzzy, but I paid 19k for that car at 1.9%, a similarly equipped Honda was 28k (@6.9% or 7.9%). In my estimation reliability didn't come with a 50% premium, so I went with the Buick.

American cars are cheaper.

I drove the Oldsmobuick for five plus years and 85k with nary an issue---hell I never changed my brake pads. I then decided to buy another car: a 2005 Magnum RT.

Now that car was sweet. Outside of having an incredible factory stereo (Boston Acoustics), it had the most room that I've ever had in a car. My other finalists were the Lincoln TownCar and the Cadillac Deville---remember, I'm a big guy. Anyway, after a year and a half of car-owner bliss I discovered that my wife was having twins, so I traded in my Magnum for a Dodge Grand Caravan. I got more in trade for my Magnum than I owed (depreciation?) and I got a flexible vehicle that has auto-everything, leather, DVD player, Infinity speakers, you name it for 10k less than what a new Toyota would have cost (similarly equipped) and at 0%.

Just this past April, my wife and I traded in her '03 Buick Rendezvous for an 2004 Suburban (needed a vehicle that fits four car seats---there really aren't any foreign cars that can fit four car seats in them). Prior to that she drove a 1997 Cavalier.

(Side Note: Anyone know why Warsteiner comes in 11.2 oz bottles?)

My experience with American cars has been overwhelmingly positive (minus the shitty Ford and the ancient Chevy).

Bottom line is that over the last ten years My wife and I have driven eight different American cars between 250k and 300k miles and outside of my crap Ford Probe, have had zero mechanical issues.

So Scott, I'd have to answer this please explain as:
1) Price and Financing and
2) Recent reliability.

A couple of things I think need to be brought up. On the West Coast, there is less patriotic loyalty towards cars, especially since most were built in the midwest. I'm guessing some of the east coast readers (especially new yorkers) are less passionate about the subject, since automobiles don't serve the same purpose, as mass transit has a large impact. Globalization has taken longer to be accepted in the flyover states, as we grew up with parents with fair paying, industrial jobs. Now many of us are in the service industry and push back against GATT and NAFTA like deals have strong appeal. We are going to make less than our parents.

Just like Chris brings up that he is really tall, so that has an effect in buying patterns, I drive a lot of miles per year, so after 5 years I have 160-plus on my car. My past experiences tell me that ain't going to happen with a Ford or Chevy. (From what I have seen, the best made American car is generally a Buick. Great comfort inside, but they are totally made for 70 year-olds, despite what Tiger Woods might try to market differently.)

Most everybody in Michigan seems to have a relative who worked for the Big 3 at one time, so you see mainly american cars, because of loyalty, but also employee discount pricing.

I think American non-luxury cars are generally more comfortable for bigger people, but they are just so fucking ugly. Outside of a limited item like the Ford Thunderbird, they just don't look good. Chrysler made some interesting stuff, which I'm guessing came in part because of German designers being involved.

I don't know this for a fact, but it does seem for too long that American designers were too caught up in making the engine go faster. Since this just appeals to car critics and a few buyers, it seems like a waste of energy. These companies need to hire a few women (or a guy like me) to help with design. Style, gas mileage, and reliability will sell more cars than if you have a HEMI.

American cars sucked from approx. 1975-1995. Styling, quality, performance, all sucked.

In the last decade, the quality gap between US and Japanese brands has been reduced to about equal. The styling and other brand issues are also improving, but it takes a long time to recover (shift customer perceptions) from that 20 year period of bad product decisions and a bad quality reputation.

But forget about all that. If the UAW does not agree to fundamental changes in the luxurious pension and healthcare contracts of their giant pool of retirees and also the current workforce, the US auto industry will cease to exist within 5-7 years. Similar to the American steel and textile industries.

It costs $1,500 more (per car) for Ford/GM/Chrysler to produce a car vs. Toyota, and that $1.5K is completely due to pension and healthcare benefits to the UAW workforce and retirees.

The point is, every car the US auto industry produced could be a sales hit and the tens of billions of dollars in contract obligations that the automakers are on the hook for (legacy costs) would still bury the industry.

The Detroit Lions are a micro view of what Ford auto is run like. No wonder...

What a mess.

Toyota is now one of the Big Three. It should be #2, actually, any day now (it's already #1 in the world).

There is a saying, "Horses for courses." Since you're a 30K+/yr driver, then Toyotas and Hondas seem to be exactly what you need.

I am surprised by the bad Taurus you had. They were fleet vehicles for a reason: reliability.

Me? I own a 1991 Civic Wagon with 175K on it. It's my work car (15 miles/day, around 4-5K/yr, all told). Runs like a champ, more or less. I could probably hop it in right now and drive to Alaska. However, I can't imagine it's the safest vehicle in the world.

As for American, our family car is a 2000 Ford Crown Vic (bought used about 2.5 yrs ago). Yes, it sucks the gas, but not as bad as you'd think. My Accord before that got 22/27, and this thing gets 19/25. Anyway, the Crown Vic is listed by Consumers and Edmunds as a used car best bet, super reliable, safe, etc. Cop cars and taxis are Vics for a reason. What's great about these cars on the used market is the depreciation: they're overpriced to begin with, so the depreciation means I get a cheap used car. And there's the old man factor: only octogenarians drive the damn things, so I get a gently used, always well-maintained ride.

Bought from a WW II vet (no xit), I paid exactly six grand and got a 5-yr-old used car with 60K miles, two years left on an extended warranty, five-star crash ratings, ABS, power everything, and a mafia trunk which means we can load the car for family trips without even thinking about it. No more car-trunk puzzle like with the Honda. If we go to the park, I can put my daughter's bike in the trunk and close it--and there's still room to load groceries.

Would I buy another big, sloppy, rear-wheel drive, V8, old man mobile like the Vic or Grand Marquis? Unless gas is five bucks a gallon, abso-freaking-lutely. Do I wish I had 20 grand to spend on a new Toyota instead? Yes. But for six to eight grand, I'll keep bottom feeding the old man segment of the market.

I learned a lot about cars during that time and have made it a point to stay on top of car industry news. First, let me tell you that Honda is probably the best car company in the world. Second, Toyota has been declining in quality over the last decade in such a way that the Chevy Impala is now a better made vehicle than the Camry. A lot of this has to do with Toyota coming over here and GM going over to South Korea. Speaking of South Korea, Kia and Hyundai are the Toyota and Honda of the future. South Korea is making awesome vehicles right now and cheap.

All that said, I will say without hesitation that if I could buy any car on the market, it would be the new Chevy Malibu/Saturn Aura. These are essentially the same car. They are beautiful, cheap, fuel-efficient and reliable.

Finally, unless you are going to have a car for 10 years past is Model year (i.e. keep a 2001 model until 2011), do not buy a car, lease. You will always have a car payment, regardless of what you do and if you lease, you are not investing in a depreciating product.

Selling cars was one of the worst jobs I've ever had because my customers refused to accept that I knew what I was talking about. I hated it that so many people allowed themselves to be ripped off by some shyster salesman because they would rather listen to lies than the truth.

It appears that Jgpyke has taken the "go ugly early" approach to car buying. This approach in a bar is to go after a less glamorous woman early, as you end up spending less money and she will be more likely to provide "dependability and satisfaction." Of course, if you are bothered what others think as you are driving off the lot, you will go for the shiny number.

Weatherman. I can't go with you on the leasing, as if you put over 12 thousand miles per year on your car, you are screwed by leasing.

Then I visited the dealer. The outside was fine, about what I expected. The interior was a 1980's horror show. My friend had a Chevy Celebrity that looked more modern inside than this piece of crap. The leather felt like rock-hard, slippery vinyl. The dash was covered with acres of hard plastic. The back seats didn't recline, a feature that is standard on most Japanese cars and vans and suv's these days.
To top it all off, the rental agency had deleted the Onstar, which was the one feature that might have made me overlook some of the interior drawbacks.

I didn't even drive it, I drove immediately to another dealer and bought a Mazda5.

1) My first car ever was a Chevy Vega. Only much later did I realize what a huge mistake I had made putting my limited funds into a full-fledged piece of crap like that. One newspaper wag said, "it's hard to trust a car that's rusting on the showroom floor". It was supposedly one of those bastard arrangements made with the union in the 70's that killed it; GM wanted robots and designed the car for assembly by them, but the union nixed that. Trouble was, that left fit and finish in the hands of less-certain union guys. Whether that's true or not seems to me to be largely immaterial, because the rust problems the car suffered from were simply enormous, and this was in California, where the amount of salt spray is miniscule compared to the north and midwest.

GM decided to use this car as a guinea pig for a lot of other "innovations" as well, including an aluminum-block engine. The dummies unfortunately elected to use steel piston rings, which caused massive, early scarring that caused immense oil burning. This was, I remember at the time, only fixable by boring out the cylinders and inserting iron sleeves, though Wikipedia has this as being the result of poorly-designed valves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Vega

Just a total piece of junk.

2) 1994 Ford Thunderbird. Back in the days when gas was $1.29 a gallon, and that was in the expensive part of town, a big-block V8 was just about mandatory. Great, great, great road car, super comfortable for long trips -- and starting at about 2,000 miles after the warranty expired, the transmission started downshifting randomly during deceleration or acceleration. I took it to the transmission specialist shop nearby, and the owner told me that he got a lot of business from the local police department, whose Ford Crown Victorias had the same tranny and the same problem. Later, after repeating this cycle twice (once every 18 months), I took it to the dealership down the street. The service manager there told me they'd never heard of a problem like that, which told me (a) that they were lying, or (b) that nobody trusted these guys with complicated jobs like tranny rebuilds.

I ditched the car shortly thereafter.

Also, the maker pulled tricks like putting a battery rack that only fit a 3/4-size battery nobody used in this country. Everything was cheap and it felt like it.

1b) My ex-boss's then-new 1985 Cadillac had door pillar covers made of cardboard and spray-on crushed velvet, and attached with spring clips. Cheap, cheap, cheap.

This is a certainty. Buy the smallest car you can stand. It ain't going back down.

Although I was eligible for the GM employee discount from 1985 until about 2000, we never bought a GM car.

Fast-forward to present, my latest car is a Prius. I live in L.A. I commute 68 miles a day round-trip. I have a carpool lane sticker. I am less insane than I used to be.

Scott--as much as you drive, too bad you can't get a Japanese diesel. Diesels last forever, get good mileage, and you could even do the biodiesel bit. However, it seems that only German cars (read: unreliable, expensive to fix) are the only real diesel option in the US, sadly.