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

What makes you think that other automaker aren't using third party suppliers? Borgwarner, Denso, etc... are all third party suppliers that many company uses.

After the recession of 2008, many third party suppliers went bankrupt. There is a consolidation of third party so now many automaker share similar parts among each other.

Even the new Supra, Toyota tested the BMW engine and ask BMW to change some stuff.

It still up to Tesla to test the reliability.

Every car, especially American makes, are drastically improved from even just a few years ago. Being in the bottom half in 2019 is a completely different story from being in the bottom half in 1999, or 1969.

So much this. I have an entire fleet (7) of 25+yo shitboxes including three of one model (so my observations are fairly scientific). Amount of shit that breaks is proportional to how hard of a life each vehicle lived regardless of brand.

Toyota and Honda cost a little more up front and they don't do crazy financing deals so the people with a 350 credit score and barely enough to make the down payment don't wind up owning them so they get maintained and rarely get used hard This makes them hold a little value better so the people who are gonna be hard on them don't buy them on the used market.

Meanwhile the kind of person who buys a Journey because it is the cheapest thing with three rows doesn't maintain it until it cannot function without maintenance and uses it for literally any task it can possibly accomplish. That's a hard life. One 4Runner year is like 7 Journey years.

It's all a self feeding cycle. Vehicle reliability outside of the first part of the bathtub curve is simply a reflection of how it's treated and that's a reflection of who owns it. The longer a vehicle can stay high in the socio-economic ladder the longer it will live an easy life.

This pattern holds even if you take brand and model out of the equation. Look on Craigslist for 1990s Ford SUVs. You will see a lot of Eddie Baur trim ones relative to the number of Eddie Baur ones that were actually sold back in the day. This is because that's the most expensive trim and the people who bought those had the disposable income to maintain them so they hit the used market in nicer condition, were bought by relatively more wealthy people and so on and so forth.

You should try Arizona in the summer next time you're in the USA - we have instant hot water 24/7 - even our cold water is hot.

Yes - I'm serious. In the summertime, our water from the "cold side" is typically luke-warmish at best. From the hot side, we can actually turn the temperature down on our water heaters and save some money.

It gets a bit better during "winter" (in quotes because right now, the temperature is around 32C - yep, shorts weather in the middle of November!).

Anyhow - you can purchase the tankless circulation system you describe, but it isn't cheap so you only usually see it on new houses, and only as an upgrade. Retrofitting old houses just isn't really possible without a complete interior teardown. The only other option is tankless water heaters, but those require a decent electrical circuit to each sink. So, most of us just have the central water heater tank, and when we want hot water, we turn it on and let it run (ain't like the water is going to disappear, thanks to the "water cycle"). Or we deal with the cold water (except here in Arizona - where again, our cold water is warm).