<p>My husband also had a VW Rabbit in college with a rusted out floor that had some suspension issue–if he drove it over 45 miles an hour the car would literally start to pull apart so he could see the road through the rusted out floor.</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, I am confused by your comment. Of the 6 cars I have owned, 4 have been foreign (VWs, Subarus), and 2 domestic. The one I listed in my post on this thread was the big loser, an American made car. You don’t really have the statistics to know whether “most of the cars were/are domestic”, since we aren’t listing every vehicle we have owned, just the lemons. Am I missing your point?</p>
<p>^^ That particular poster indicated that most of the cars indicated here are American and it’s an indication of why they’d never buy an American brand. My point was that probably most of the people posting on this thread have owned more American cars than foreign ones, especially when naming vehicles of 35 or more years ago, hence the preponderance of American vehicles in the thread. It’s true that I don’t know exactly the makes of the vehicles all of the posters owned and the domestic/foreign distribution of them but I think it’s likely that over the 35 years or so people are posting about there are more domestic vs foreign vehicles.</p>
<p>renault Alliance circa 1985 (my ONLY new car EVER). Immediately after finishing to pay off this thing in 1989, one thing after another started going. Then in the fall of 1993, I parked in front of my house and all the coolant started flowing out of the car. Not a drip/leak, but all of it, at once. My mechanic (I love this man) would NOT take my money to fix the car anymore. </p>
<p>My BF bought me a 1986 Buick Regal, I didn’t have mechanical troubles with it, but I didn’t like the car. I didn’t shed too many tears when it was stolen 18 month later. Got a 1986 Chevy Nova (in 1995) for $1500 and drove that for 3+ years until I got my current car, 1991 Honda civic (purchased used in 1998 for $6000). </p>
<p>Just got that car inspected, new tires, oil change, good until 2/10. I spend about $500 a year keeping that car running (it still has less than 100K miles on it).</p>
<p>I’m going to be sad when it dies someday.</p>
<p>It seems to me like most of the “older” cars listed on this thread are American, but the newer ones seem to be Volvos and VW’s. Which exactly matches Consumer Reports reliability reports, and anecdotal reports from my mechanic, who I spoke to before buying our newest car. (I wanted a Volvo, but CR and my mechanic warned me off). American cars in general have greatly improved their reliability in the past decade, but many of us still have that “Japanese is more reliable” mentality (including DH and I, with 2 Toyotas and a Honda in the driveway). But of course there can be lemons in any brand; and any poorly maintained car will not run well. It sounds like a lot of us pushed cars past their “expected” life, as well!</p>