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

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321–330 of 475 posts

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

#321
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I dig the WRX, but I would love if the engine were quieter. As far as the WRX goes I would say you're in the minority. There was quite an uproar when Subaru ditched the unequal length headers on the WRX, eliminating the famous boxer rumble. That unique exhaust note is one of the reasons people love the WRX. >IMO a quieter engine is always desirable - akin to how I always want my computers to have quieter fans for an…

Yes, I know I'm in the minority, but I tend to think my preferences are correct, and that car enthusiasts who enjoy loud engine noises are as weird as PC enthusiasts who enjoy loud GPUs. :)

Are there PC enthusiasts who enjoy loud GPU's, or is that a joke that I missed?

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

#322

Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers makes the difference somewhat obvious. I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines with h…

Of note - I think the Porsche factory built on Japanese (Toyota) innovations on manufacturing. I recall reading something about in the '90's, Porsche and VW were in a bit of a crisis in terms of manufacturing, cost of manufacturing, tolerances of manufacturing, etc. Turns out a lot of steps relied on a person hand fitting something or reaching into a bin of parts, etc. They hired Toyota to consult and rejigger everything. This was also when they came up w/ the Boxster, and then their SUV's to save the company as the 911 was definitely not paying the bills...

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

#323

I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again until we switch to EV. Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit. The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought it used w…

I'm an American and used to only buy american cars (until I finished college) because my father was a GM factory worker and that was the expectation (right or wrong, GM paid the bills for my upbringing.)

I've driven GM, VWs, Hondas, Toyotas and currently drive a Ford F150.

I've had the fortune of rarely having serious problems with any of them, but we haven't kept most of the vehicles for more than 4-5 years for a variety of reasons (VW Golfs are fine when you're single, but not when you have a couple of kids (at least not in America...we're spoiled.)

Hats off to Toyota though. My parents have been driving my wife's old 2003 Camry for the past 3-4 years. It still runs great and up until this past weekend had zero issues. The master power window switch failed and now the rear driver side window fails to come up. Amazon is delivering the replacement part today for a whopping $23.50.

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

#324

Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.

Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S.

According to Wikipedia [1]:

> Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America

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

#325
post #299

I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me. By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But so…

This is one of my favorite aspects of the writing in Outer Worlds: that no one who works for a corporation is ever, ever allowed to speak ill of it, of it's products, or anything even tangentially related to the corporation.

It's hilarious the mental gymnastics these fictional people will leap through to avoid earning the ire of their employer, and it's absolutely shocking how true-to-life it often is.

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

#326
post #57
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like, US street food being incredibly better or worse than EU?

It can’t be better - the US basically HAS no street food outside of New York.

That is objectively false. Since I doubt anyone from my neighborhood taco stand or hot dog carts is on HN, I'm offended on their behalf

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the grandparent comment was actually talking about the quality of Tesla’s Public Relations department. Otherwise it would strike me as odd that someone would boost a vehicle manufacturer that doesn’t sell spare parts, in a thread on vehicle reliability. Edited a few words to better express my point.

Buy all the spare parts you want here: https://epc.tesla.com Or just walk into a service center. Tesla now undercuts all third party prices on parts.

Parts was my number one issue - and epc.tesla.com does not solve this (yet) as there is no pricing and contacting tesla was recently a total pain with lots of dropped balls.

Anyone with current info? If they got a parts catalog with Amazon style fulfillment they'd be in business.

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

#328
post #324

Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.

Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S. According to Wikipedia [1]: > Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America

Thanks for the info! Didn't know that.

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

#329
post #299

I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me. By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But so…

> there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials

There's reason to doubt that (from 3 days ago):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/a-tiny-pharmacy-is-id...

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

#330
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decent parks are much more common in the US than huge shopping malls.

Still pretty limiting. Can you have a farm market in the park? Street performances? Protests/rallies? Small towns are not only inefficient, they are also very limiting. Just merge a bunch of typical American suburbs into a city with denser population and see how life becomes so much more full of opportunities and experiences.

The park here is pretty nice, it has a band shell, the city band and other groups use it lots during the nice weather. They also setup a portable stage in another area of the park and have some performances by the yacht club.

There's no space for a farmer's market in the park, but there is a dedicated space on main street.

It is a very nice park, and is quite large. In addition to the above, there are tennis courts, a relatively modern kids playground, a pavilion, accessible fishing piers, a basketball court, sand volleyball courts, a softball backstop, many picnic tables and grills and benches, a disc golf course, a few miles of multiuse trail, a public beach that is guarded during the summer, a boat launch, a decent marina and a sledding hill. There's also a historic lighthouse and small museum.

This is just a normal small town on Lake Michigan (the members of the Yacht Club have medium sized sail boats...). I guess the density matches up with lots of older suburbs, more dense than a lot of newer stuff, but not a lot of large apartment buildings either.

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