"Rich.Andrews" wrote:
Howard Ferstler wrote in
:
wrote:
Our whole society has the biggest snake oil jones of all....that the
new and improved consumer product really _ is_ an improvement.
Very often it is.
Usually
each new generation of consumer product-and often commercial ones as
well- are mixed improvements.
Yep.
Ask any VCR tech (I should say _former_
VCR tech) who will explained how the early toploaders were nearly
indestructible and highly repairable with crude electronic performance,
the early frontloaders were well made and superior in performance, and
current ones are low end ****boxes that are not even worth opening for
cleaning, they are totally nonrepairable plus being inferior
electronically. TV sets and car radios have worse RF sections than late
tube and mid-life solid state ones. Cars have engine and transmission
castings far less rugged and rebuildable than cars of 40, 30, or even
20 years ago.
Your last sentence is preposterous. I drove cars that far
back, and today's versions are head and shoulders better,
and that includes reliability. Statistics put out by
Consumer's Union over the last few decades support this
point, by the way. Cars are more reliable than ever, not to
mention cleaner burning and more fuel efficient.
Howard Ferstler
I quite agree with you Howard.....
(snips of good stuff)
I have owned American, German, and Japanese cars, and the
latter were way, WAY more durable than the two former. (When
I purchased my last Ford, even the sales manager told me,
because I had traded a Toyota in on it, to not expect the
brand-new Ford to run without using oil as my Toyota had
done.) As I stated on another part of this thread, the
average Toyota or Honda vehicle will drive the average
American car right into the ground.
Incidentally, my wife and I recently traded in her
turbocharged Toyota MR2 and my 5.0 Mustang on two Scion
models: the xA and the xB. (Hey, gas prices are getting
ready to take off, people.) We toyed with getting a pair of
Prius models, but the waiting list was just too long.
CR loved the xB and said that the xA was as good, but too
small. However, while I love the xB, the xA is a nifty
vehicle to drive, too. (Both of ours are 5-speed sticks, by
the way.) They disliked the stiff suspensions, but after
years of driving that 5.0 Mustang, they float like limos to
me. Besides, previously CR had said that the Echo (which
uses the same running gear as the Scion x models) rode nice
but handled only so so. The Scions have a stiffened-up Echo
suspension. They rid stiff but handle better than the Echo.
Indeed, in their accident-avoidance tests both the xA and xB
handled better than the vast bulk of sedans and virtually
all of the SUV and minivan vehicles they had previously
reviewed.
In the last 4,000 miles, our xA has averaged just over 33
mpg and over the past 3,000 our xB has averaged just under
32 mpg. I think that the current issue of CR has the Scion
line listed at the very top of its reliability list (at
least for the first two years of ownership) even ahead of
Toyota and Lexus. Of course, the Scion really is a Toyota,
but it is important to note that the very cheapest Toyota
models are typically equal in terms of reliability to the
company's most expensive models (Lexus), and that virtually
all Toyotas are more reliable than any American automobiles.
Nobody is more of an American flag waver than I am, but
bulletproof reliability when talking about American vehicles
is an oxymoron.
PS: consider this post as a Scion ad.
Howard Ferstler