Built like a Mercedes 3697

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:35:27 -0000, "Huw"

Remember the FORDS of the same vintage?? A friend's 3 year old Montego had the seat mounts rust-pull right out of the floor in 3 years. And Torinos that the mirrors fell off, complete with a large patch of metal in 2 years, or the door handles fell out, and there was nothing left to fasten them to??????? And Pintos that rusted through the firewall where the inner fenders fastened? Wasn't just the Japs and Brits and Fiats that rusted away in no time back then.But they did seem to rust faster for a longer period of time. They were not designed to handle the salt on the roads in "middle America"

I DO like American iron in many ways, but dollar for dollar I'll take a Toyota, or a Honda over most of what "America" has to offer today.And most of them will be built closer to my home than most of the socalled "American" models.

If I want a BIG car, I'd buy a DC product made in Brampton. Or possibly a Crown Vic from Tilbury. If I want a small car, a Corolla from Cambridge or a Honda from Alliston. For a small sport Ute, I'd consider the new (mostly Suzuki based) stuff coming out of CAMI down at Ingersol with the GM badge, or the Matrix from Cambridge. But right now I'm not in the market - the "Mercury Mistake" clone of the Mondeo only has a bit over 100,000km on it at 10 years of age, and will likely last the wife another 5 years - and it doesn't get much long highway driving. The 12 year old Trans Sport has 333,000 plus KM on it and will likely do me for another few years too unless a deal comes up that is "too good to pbutt up". Regardless, my next car will be another used one - whatever seams to stand up reasonably well and is cheap.

But bigger engines, not worked as hard, tend not to overheat as easily. A lot of the smaller "american" and european engines do suffer from heat on long hard runs. Even some of the Jap stuff has problems with "coking" and sticking rings, as well as lubrication breakdown (running that thin 5W20 oil). Lots of head gasket and intake manifold problems, even on some "american" engines due to heat (and poor design) With the "world market" lots of our "American" engines are euro, asian, south American, or Aussi in design. And lots of our "American" small cars are asian designed , and even asian built (Daewoo is GM in Korea - and sold here with a "bow tie")

Lots of these problems show up here, while the cars are the model of reliability in europe and elsewhere. Our conditions CAN be severe. They ARE different than most of the rest of the world.

Get over it.

And if you drive down the 401 (major highway across Ontario) at less than 130Kph you almost get pushed off the road. Talk about a "universally ignored" speed limit. I've personally shot across large expanses of the American Mid-West at well over 100MPH (160KPH), and it didn't take an $80,000 dollar car to do it.

Generally true.

Agreed. Yet DC is building big American Barges and making money doing it. Ford and GM can't seem to build decent small cars, except for their euro-asian influenced-designed stuff. Chrysler has had a reputation for not standing up too well over time, mostly little stuff like shedding cheap trim etc - but the old "K" cars just don't quit. Lately GM can't seem to fix ANY of their design problems - the 3.8 problems continued for years, and now the 3.4s as well.