Comment by oflannabhra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oflannabhra | Hacker News Reader

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 with 160k miles on it, and sold it at 200k. Over 5 years I have done my own brakes and oil changes, and have only had to replace the starter. I sold it for $1k less than I bought it (I got a good deal). We bought essentially the exact same vehicle, just in SUV.

The Honda has been a little less stellar, but still good. AC compressor has gone out multiple times (a known issue affecting multiple models), but we replaced it with a warrantied aftermarket part the first time it failed. It's currently at 220k and still kicking.

We only buy used and in cash, so finding the right car can take some time. Toyotas and Hondas have unbelievable resell value in the used market. A used Toyota can fetch a similar price as a brand new American made equivalent.

For someone who doesn't want to buy American made cars, you sure speak fondly of some of them. Tundra and Sequoia have only ever been made in the us, matrix was once upon a time made in the nummi factory that is now Tesla's, and have been made in North America since, crv have also mostly been made in the us, otherwise North American production, same with all newer fits. The only car you mentioned made outside of North America would be the first generation fit, made in Japan.

I had a friend's dad who was one of the few people I talked to who, as a Japanese brand enthusiast, went out of his way to find a Chevy/Geo prizm - same mechanical bits as a Corolla, built in the same factory, but way cheaper because of all the people who reflexively avoided American brands.

It seems you and OP aren't working from a shared definition of "American made."

OP seems to have a reverence for autos made by foreign-based companies (Toyota and Honda).

While you are rightly pointing out that both Toyota and Honda manufacture in America.

The key difference in OP's enthusiasm seems to be not in location of manufacture but in company process/ethos/culture that delivers reliable vehicles.

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.

That's not really a rare situation. Even the worst cars today are far better than the best were 30 years ago.

I'll call you anecdote with one of my own. I've put the same 40,000 miles in the same 5 years on my '01 GMC Sierra and have had no issues besides a power steering pump when I bought it and regular maintenance. I'll probably sell it after New year's and I'm not sure if it's a quirk in my area, the going rate is the same as what I paid 5 years ago.

A regular maintenance schedule does wonders for the reliability of a vehicle.

>A regular maintenance schedule does wonders for the reliability of a vehicle.

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.

I think how well a used car was treated over the years is definitely a true thing, but if you look at the stats for luxury cars, you do see that the Mercedes, BMW, Porsche & high end VW cars break down more than the equivalent Acura or Lexus cars in the first 5-10 years of life.

I think a considerable amount of Toyotas are actually made in the US, ironically, so you might still call it American made :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_factories#Unite...

According to The Toyota Way, Toyota's first manufacturing plants in the US were built to work around the "chicken tax". The US imposed a tariff on imported light trucks to retaliate against French and West German tariffs on imported chickens. As a loophole, imported pickup trucks could be imported as "passenger vehicles" with the truck bed/box bolted on in an American finishing plant. Eventually the loophole was closed but Toyota, having built American manufacturing plants and trained a skilled workforce in the Toyota Production System, decided to keep using it anyway.

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