The one area I think American cars take an unjust beating, is when it comes to being reliable. I've owned various cars, and American cars have been some of the most reliable. When they do fail, which for me has been hardly ever, they are also easiest to fix, not to mention the cheapest.
For all the jokes an old push rod V8 might get, it makes great power, great torque, and yes, returns very good mileage for the power. A 350 given little more than regular oil changes and service which is much simpler than most any other engine, will easily go half a million kms. The transmissions are among the best, if not the best in the world. Interior fit and finish is often crap, but look at the original price of these cars. We are comparing them to cars we buy now that are 10-20 years old, but new, our cars (Mercedes) were double what the American equivalent was. Not many of us took that hit up front for the better trim assembly by buying new. American cars aren't without fault, but there are enough Mercedes with bad heads, broken chains, and slipping transmissions to suggest they are less than perfect too. We won't even mention porsches. lol Many will snicker at the new ZR1 Vette, referring to it's suspension as truck based. The fact is, not only will it beat most anything else on the road, it will do it for hundreds of thousands of miles. Do you think a Porsche, Ferrari, or even an AMG will get you that far, that fast, for so little. NO way! While I'm not a big fan of most American cars, I feel their mechanical engineering is as well, or in most cases better sorted out than most everyone elses. Ed 300E 2009/1/21 Hendrik & Fay <heni...@ozemail.com.au> > Flexibility is the key to survival in business. > This is why Toyhota are successful, they have a range from very small to > very big and all is pretty reliable but boringly soulless. > The 'big 3' seem to be forever chasing the market and just don't seem to be > able to crack that reputation for reliability. What keeps em going is the > buyers blind loyalty, with an attitude of I don't care if it is junk, at > least it is American made junk. > > Hendrik > > Mitch Haley wrote: > >> Tom Hargrave wrote: >> >> Don't blame the 'big three' for their current crises - they were building >>> what the American public wanted. And the numbers show this to be true. >>> Before the run-up in gas prices, the 'big three' sold more cars in this >>> country every year than all of the imports sold together. >>> >> >> I've believed for decades that I could be a successful Big 3 CEO by merely >> approving design work on what was not selling at the time. The competition >> has proven time and again how adept it as at producing the cars that would >> have sold like hotcakes two years ago. They were caught without anything >> reasonably efficient for its size last year (GM got the Cobalt XFE on line >> reasonably quickly, but it just served to prove how fuelish the regular >> Cobalt was all along), and now it looks like all the new super efficient >> models will go begging unless there's another spike in fuel prices before >> they hit the market. >> >> Mitch. >> >> > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://okiebenz.com/pipermail/mercedes_okiebenz.com/attachments/20090121/b7b5bd79/attachment.html> _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
