Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone buy a new GM?

And parts for Hondas are outrageous. I think the Japanese brands are more refined and feel like they are better than american cars, but you pay a price for it. My new Nissan has been to the dealer 3 times in 7 months. My old Ford Contour has never had a problem in 6 years-go figure( the Nissan was 2x more $$ too).

My wife's old Honda was a major POS. The interiors of the imports seem a little nicer, though, eh?

I had a 90 Prelude that had electrical gremlins no mechanic could ever figure out, transmission leaked, pop up headlights worked when they wanted to, sunroof leaked, blew out both of the brake lines!(lot of fun when your brake fluid all sprays out)!looked real pretty though and ran like a bat out of hell.

Funny--our 91 Honda Civic has been pretty darn good to us. It went through CV boots until we switched mechanics, though.... Hmm.... The '94 Volvo has been a bit more costly.

I posted a while ago how close all these cars are regarding mechanical breakdown costs. When we "underwrite" and extended service contract, we know what the losses will be based on the data from a very large pool.

Some rough examples of cost on a "bumper to bumper" style, 100,000 miles warranty:

Accord/Camry - $1100
Ford Taurus/500 - $1100
Ford Explorer/Chevy Trailblazer - $1400
BMW 5 Series/Cadillac/Lexus - $2200

Luxury cars get a little more pricey ... but even the difference in domestic sedans to their Japanes counterparts is neglible.

This import vrs American debate never ends. All manufactures make lemons. I don’t care where they come from, or who makes them. A friend of mine just dumped her A6 Quattro. The damn thing was in the shop for numerous problems ranging from a rear window that would decide to roll down all on it’s own to her latest, major transmission problems. Another friend has a Subaru that he had to recently replace a headlight (one month after warrantee ran out)…..$800. My X-wife’s Volvo S60R has been in the shop several times for weird problems. A buddy’s Boxer, same thing…..shop time. Another friend’s Lexus land cruiser look-alike…..in the shop several times. My bosses wife’s Benz, oh-boy….not only lots of shop time, but very expensive because it to is out of warrantee.

About all I can say for the imports, is they have nice seats. Especially Volvo. That S60 has the most comfortable seats my butt’s ever sat in. And that includes that Bentley I was drooling over, sitting in the London Heathrow airport with a sticker price of 240,000 pounds. Them Swedes know how to make a comfortable seat……

They're bigger than the Japanese engineers who make that country's cars. The difference is most obvious with motorcycles.

I must say that the leather seat in my Maxima are plenty comfy and large enough for my 6'4" frame. The seat in the Jaguar X-Type I rented while in San Diego a couple weeks ago (I reserved a Taurus, but they ran out!) was not very comfortable due to its being slightly too narrow hor my hips -- which are by no means wide.