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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

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Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#101

Post by oblio »

cobbzilla wrote: post #93
Someone1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe. Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it. After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French br…

You’re shopping at the wrong places. There is good bread out there. For better or worse, a lot of Americans like fluffy white bread that’s loaded with preservatives to give it a long shelf life. That’s what they ate as kids & they’ve never branched out. I’m not defending US mass market bread, but I do think it’s largely a matter of differing tastes and values. Your comment (and much of this thread) comes off as “I ha…

> “I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you”.

If your "values" are medically unhealthy... I'll let you draw your own conclusions ;-)

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#102

Post by mariorossi666 »

lgbr wrote: post #24
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. While I agree with you on other points, I take issue with this. American grocery stores are a real treat when visiting. Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers. Raw ingred…

> is so obsessed with the discount model,

It is really not.

Nobody goes to LIDL to buy food, unless has some real money problem.

You have to make a different comparison: buy quality food from a local farmer and the same food from a local European farmer.

You will notice that in Europe is much more common than you think, it can usually be found in the local market in your neighborhood and it's much cheaper than in the US.

> the meat, cheese, and chocolate is great, but it stops there.

Basically every kind of raw food, except maybe for raw meat, in Europe taste better.

Including vegetables and fruit.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#103

Post by iainmerrick »

gnosek wrote: post #97
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster. But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-produced)…

In Poland the in-house bakery in a grocery store is the cheap and convenient way to get bread if you can't be bothered to get actual quality (not made from deeply frozen dough). So if the Polish baseline is super fancy for NL, NL is better than UK and UK baseline is artisanal US bread, I wonder what baseline US bread looks like. It's made of sponge and sugar?

It's made of sponge and sugar?

Yes, pretty much. It’s very bad.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#104

Post by krzyk »

mariorossi666 wrote: post #82
patrickk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the small, but significant things I noticed about German apartments was the lipped 'bezel'[1], where the door and the frame fit snugly into each other and there is a rubber/plastic seal between the door and the frame. This is a big deal in an apartment, because it reduces noise, reduces drafts, and eliminates the need to heat more than one room at a time. Also, the door itself seems to be very solid, you'd hav…

That's pretty standard feature in Italy, it's called door frame and it's basically everywhere, even on cheap doors. I didn't know it wasn't common all over Europe.

Yeah, it is strange for me too. I live in Poland and such doors are the only kind that is being sold - it protects one from the winters.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#105

Post by azernik »

taurath wrote: post #56
mrarjen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd ague that Japan's quality is a bit better than EU but also depends on what food you are used to. Mainly healthy options wise I think Japan stands out even more.

It’s so hard to get a proper vegetable conveniently in the US, while in Japan you can get it at a 7-11.

In California, proper vegetables are very attainable.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#106

Post by Someone1234 »

arethuza wrote: post #3

I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.

They are, but the drivetrain is a very small part of a modern vehicle.

If we're talking about Tesla in particular, if you've ever watched those transplant drivetrain videos you can see that aside for the battery temperature control and a few other things it isn't super complex.

Where Teslas are complex is everything else. Tesla started as a luxury brand and you can really tell even in the Model 3. Everything is electrified. Everything. Even the door handles themselves have electric motors in them. That little flap that changes the direction of the airflow in other cars? Electric motor in a Model 3. The design aesthetic is almost a contradiction with the reality: minimalism brought to you by huge increases in back-end complexity.

I'm not claiming this is intrinsically bad (nor good). But I am pointing out that when you complicate simple things you add more points of failure. The "debate" is if the assembly/maintenance/etc costs are worth the benefits provided, and that is largely a matter of opinion (and how much people value the benefits).

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#107

Post by mxcrossb »

mpweiher wrote: post #87
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. Don't think so. My family moved to the US in the early 80s and all the same observations applied back then.

This. America has always been considered crude by Europe when it fines to cuisine, craftsmen, etc.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#108

Post by w-m »

kstenerud wrote: post #2

It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah b…

I found this part very interesting: "In fact, the quality of brand-new Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015.".

(I have no idea what "quality" means here, and how you can put a number on that, that rises 3.5x, but that's beside the point).

With one sentence, Tesla is telling 2015 customers that they got screwed over, and future customers that they should wait 4 years after a new model comes out before buying it, because they need that time to figure out all the quality issues.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#109

Post by jiggawatts »

beefield wrote: post #41
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I have this a bit uneasy impression[1] that a really significant chunk of US is basically a developing country with bigger cars. [1] Based only on visiting a few developing countries as well as a few states of US. Not on any statistics or data whatsoever.

The United States is the World's richest third-world country.

You have crazy levels of gun violence, high inequality, tribal politics, high levels of corruption that have been legalized via Super-PACs, effectively state-run media (Fox News), highest per-capita incarceration, a failing medical system, failing infrastructure, etc, etc...

The best example I can think of to show how far the US has fallen behind the rest of the world is that it's one of only a handful of countries that hasn't adopted the Metric system!

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#110

Post by juskrey »

I have travelled US a lot and have rented a lot of different cars. Honestly I don't know a much about reliability (except I got several problems with top Nissan models), but comparing to US cars, the rest of the world cars just don't drive and are not fun. And then you got Tesla which is crap inside but for some reason is super fun and you want to buy it immediately.
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