earlier on, someone dissed the Vega, and now you are dissing it's H body sibling the Monza..
they were good cars- but they came out in a time when everything else was HUGE and overbuilt. yeah, some of them fell apart after 5 or 6 years- mostly due to the owners not taking care of them like they should have- but they were GM's first tentative steps into a totally new way of building cars. but the best part of the Vega/Monza is that a big gas guzzling V8 practically drops right in once the stock 4 cylinder dies..
everyone always says how crappy the quality of American cars is, but take a look around sometime and take a tally of what kinds of cars you see out there that are more than 5 years old. the average 5 year old Honda will be in much worse shape than the average 5 year old Chevy or Ford. my 94 Chrysler LHS has over 160,000 miles on it and still drives like new and is probably the most comfortable road car i've ever had. i'm now driving a 1997 Chevy Cavalier that has 175,000 miles on it and it has no creaks or rattles, drives straight and true, has very little rust, and the engine- a 2.2 liter cam in block, pushrod activated OHV 2 valve design that does back to about 1982- runs pretty dang good and knocks down over 30mpg. show me an 11 year old Honda or Mazda or Toyota in the same category with similar mileage that still works as well as my Cavvy does, and i'll be impressed...

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Well; my slam was intened to target the GM's rotary attempt. You do make some good points, but there are many local variations on your whole theme. Around here, in that era, very few cars lasted 5 years and it had nothing to do with maintenance. (I would guess your area isn't much different, although we have had more pollutants historically)

I had a Vega myself. It was a good performing economical car for the time, even though it drank oil like it was going out of style. Aluminum blocks were still being perfected. But; In the end, the frame virtually disintigrated and rest of the car (including body panels) were still in good shape.

That depends very highly on the type of car, the model year or era and region. I see foreign trucks not hold up, but I normally see foreign small cars hold up. But; that's an impression throughout many decades.
Some of us older folks remember the 70's and 80's when the US was trying to match the imports (efficiency-wise). There were many flops that remain in peoples minds.
On the other hand, foriegn cars have some bad memories of parts availability.
In the end, I would love to see some confirmation on the numbers in a detailed manner.
Have you owned an import to see if you can match the same success? I've known a few people with 6 figure milage on Hondas as well as domestic.
I had an '87 cav myself. 7 years, never been to a mechanic. My ex had an '87 also... we had lots of problems with that one.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Mine, for one! 96 Honda Civic DX, 160K miles, 30-36mpg!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I drive an '85 Honda CRX and an '88 Mazda pickup. (This was when Mazda pickups were actually Mazdas, not rebadged Fords.) Both are still solid. The last American car I had (or will ever have) was an '86 Mercury Sable. What a piece of junk, although comfortable to ride in.

Honda in particular had rust problems in the '70s, but those days are long gone.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Again, cars were poorly built because those at the top were more concerned with build quantity than build quantity. Lord help the assembly worker who stopped the line to correct an error (we'll fix it in final inspection!).

A lot of the blame for poorly built cars has to go to the employees on the assembly line. Remember the concerns about buying a car built on a Monday or a Friday? According to what I read, you didn't want to buy a Monday car because a significant percentage of the employees were still hung over from the weekend. You didn't want a Friday car either because they were looking forward to the weekend and were doing shoddy work. Eliminating the Monday and Friday cars from consideration was effectively ridding 40% of their production. Hard to blame management for that.

I've known people who worked on the assembly lines. One guy told me that he wasn't allowed to join the union until he'd worked there for some time (perhaps 3 months, IIRC). He said his job was to put on a metal plate held on by 4 screws. It was so easy that he could work ahead of the line and then take a break. When his probationary period was over, the union shop steward told him to knock it off because he was making the other employees look bad. He was told that he really didn't need to put in all 4 of those screws, either. At the time, they practically had to have another assembly line (with many more employees) to go correct the crap that was produced the first time through. Hard to blame management for that, either.

After a while, he quit the job. He said that he talked to some friends still working there. The guy they hired to replace him couldn't keep up with the line even when only putting in 2 of the screws so they had to hire another guy to help him. Hard to blame management for that.

Admittedly, this story was told to me a long time ago. The quality of American built cars is much better today. But the Japanese didn't stop improving their quality either. I believe that car commercial (Ford?) that claims their quality is better than Toyota is a flat out lie.

The American auto industry is in trouble. Management sure is responsible for much of the problems but many problems are the fault of the workers and the unions. They were so convinced that they could continue to build crap and that people would keep on buying it.

I cruise around in my 2007 Dodge Ram Single Cab V6 SXT, with aftermarket chip and forced air intake, I get around 19-24mpg. Not bad for a truck, IMO. Costs me about $70 to fill it up on empty though with a 26 gallon tank.

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everyone always says how crappy the quality of American cars is, but take a look around sometime and take a tally of what kinds of cars you see out there that are more than 5 years old. the average 5 year old Honda will be in much worse shape than the average 5 year old Chevy or Ford. my 94 Chrysler LHS has over 160,000 miles on it and still drives like new and is probably the most comfortable road car i've ever had. i'm now driving a 1997 Chevy Cavalier that has 175,000 miles on it and it has no creaks or rattles, drives straight and true, has very little rust, and the engine- a 2.2 liter cam in block, pushrod activated OHV 2 valve design that does back to about 1982- runs pretty dang good and knocks down over 30mpg. show me an 11 year old Honda or Mazda or Toyota in the same category with similar mileage that still works as well as my Cavvy does, and i'll be impressed...

My coworker had well over 160,000 miles in his Toyota Camry (about 15 years old) when he wrecked it. Until that time, it had never needed anything more than routine maintenance (tires, brakes, etc). Show me an American car that can make that claim and I'll be impressed.

I've owned both American built vehicles and imports. My current car is a 2001 Honda CRV with 82,000 miles on it. Other than routine maintenance and repairs from getting caught in a hailstorm, it has been completely trouble free. No American built vehicle that I've ever owned came close to that level of quality. My Honda still holds a high percentage of its original value unlike every American built vehicle's resale value at a similar age. The ability to hold resale value is based on the market perception of quality. Toyota and Honda hold their values very well. I've never seen an American built car that did as well.

Larry Jacks wrote:

I remember stories about it. I don't recall hard followups to show it was true (perhaps akin to the discovery that 40% of sick days were taken on Monday or Friday, or that half of all workers are below average). The stretch to eliminating the entire production of those days seems a... stretch. Unless it was those hordes of drunken Irishmen staggering into the plant on Monday morning, arms linked and singing "Mother Machree" in poor harmony.

Depending on how I parse the above, I can certainly blame management. If jobs are so terribly unbalanced in a production sequence that intermediates pile up at a given station they have either hired incompetent production engineers or aren't listening to them.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

You can't seem to hold workers responsible for poor work habits and sloppy workmanship. No, it seems you blame management for everything. If that's your opinion, fine, but it doesn't excuse the employees for doing shoddy work IMO. People have to accept responsibility for their actions and that includes the workers and the unions that represent them.

I fully expect to make it that far with my own Corolla. Only 70,000kms, just about to complete my fifth year now, the thing is still in the same superb condition it was in when I got it.

My father is on his third Toyota (well, two Toyotas and a Lexus). He had no trouble at all with any of them, nor did he have any trouble with the Datsun. The Capri was okay, but as it was built by three car makers from three different countries, I'm told it was a major pain to get parts for.

The GMs and Fords he had beforehand, however... The Lumina was a lemon, pure and simple. So was the Ford Monarch, which didn't even make it home from the dealership.) The '76 (wait, it might have been a ' 67, let me think about it) Cutlass was a tank and lasted a good while, and I had fond memories of it, but the '88 Cutlass was pure meh.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

oooH. Help us with that one. Over here it was the Mercury Monarch, and the model spanned two drastically different models (in other words a drastic remake or re-labelling). It equated to the Ford Granada, and the Ford Fairmont. Maybe a year will help. We had a 78 Fairmont (the 4cyl version). We got it to last a while, but it was lacking in many ways the whole time.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Having been a life long American car consumer who grew up in the heart of the domestic auto industry - I disagree. I recently switched to buying Honda's over domestic. My wife had a Chevy and an Oldsmobile. I've driven three different Chevy's and one old Dodge. We only had one American Car that wasn't suffering from either brake issues very early or electrical issues throughout the life of the vehicle. One car in particular was drivable after 100,000 miles only in the sense that I was familiar with it enough that I could handle all the wiggles and shakes. It wasn't worth pouring money into to get it road worthy again because domestics lose resale value so fast. The Oldsmobile in particular started having electrical issues inside of 10,000 miles. We replaced the battery under warranty, then had the same issues. We finally got a Diehard battery because the GM product was so bad. Other issues still continued. Unreliable starts, brakes quick to wear out, interior quality was horrible. We less than 65,000 miles on it when we got rid of that one.

Our Honda has almost 50,000 miles on it. So far, other than standard filter replacements and tire rotation, we put gas in it and change the oil regularly. Not a lick of trouble. The only domestic we didn't have trouble with we ended up parting with for practical reasons so it had less than 50,000 miles. Can't say what would've come of it if we kept it. Might have been fine - but I'm just as happy not knowing. Besides - our domestics were mostly built in Canada while our foreign cars are built in the United States - so I'm supporting the domestic worker.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Why shouldn't we hold management responsible for all the bad? They take all the credit for anything good that happens, and reward themselves with obscene bonuses and/or raises for them!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

And as bad as Michigan's economy is relative to the rest of the nation, and the jobs leaving by the thousands - the Union's still advertise here. "Right to work. It's bad for Michigan's workers and bad for Michigan." No - it's bad for the Unions. Some jobs might actually stay if it wasn't a forced Union situation here.

Might be getting in to politics though.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Not hard at all. They put him on the assembly line before they were certain he could handle the work they expected him to do. That worker didn't hire himself.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

Late 60s model, I think, maybe as late as '72. Dad bought it (and returned it) before I was born. Dad never really felt the need to talk about it very much, but he mentioned it a few times in my lifetime. I've never actually seen one on the road (and given Dad's story, I never really expected to.) He referred to it as a "Ford Monarch", but it's possible he was fudging the name the same way one might called a Chev or Olds a GM. Or maybe I'm misremembering the telling entirely.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

I think it depends on the specific car. My mom's C5 'Vettes and my fourth generation F-bodies held up great, some over 100k miles, without a single non-scheduled maintenance trip. Then again, my 2 year old Grand Prix GXP, with just over 20k miles, is already showing signs of a variety of problems. Some of my friends, who drive mostly imports, have reported the same variation in quality from model to model. I'd love to see some unbiased statistics on this to see what the truth really is, but I doubt you'll see the same level of quality across any company's entire product line.

I've decided not to buy from GM ever again, but that's more due to their handling of the situation with my GXP than any perception of inferior quality. Still hoping I can trade up to a 'Bluestar' once Tesla gets that far...

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