You can also argue that perceptions take a long time to catch up to reality. After so many years of inferior quality to the Japs, it has become ingrained in many people's minds that domestics are inferior. Despite these recent gains by the domestics in quality, many people still see things the way they were in 1985.

Maybe after 10 or 15 years of comparable quailty when compared to the Japs, people's perceptions will change.

 

That is the biggest hurdle for the big 3. They've improved actual quality by a lot in the past couple of years, but percieved quality hasn't really improved and is still relatively poor. It'll take a long time, perhaps decades for public perceptions and stigmas to turn out positive for the big-3.

 

Whats more, they've improved quality issues in areas other than failure and breakage, such as percieved interior quality. However, the Big 2.5 do indeed have the better part of THIRTY YEARS of stigma following them around, and they're just going to have to live with it. The aformentioned lack of objectivity and responsibility in the general media doesnt help things.

 

Actually you would think Honda, with all of their "brilliant" engineers, would not design an engine that has the oil filter over the exhaust manifold on the engine block. But hey, it's Japanese so we don't question such things.

Personally I'm not jumping for joy at all when a GM or Ford is recalled. Certainly not a massive recall like this. While die-hard GM guys and rabid Ford guys point fingers and poke fun the rest of America is saying "ya see, I knew I stopped buying cars from them 20 years ago for a good reason!" The competition is no longer Ford vs. GM, the fight is Ford/GM against all.

 

HOOAH!

 

Preach on dude... preach it!

 

Everyone has made the point better than I did. ALL makers have recalls. It doesn't matter if it's Ford, GM, Chrysler, or even Toyota or Honda. Things happen.

Another excellent point was made regarding quality of today's cars. Notice that today's recalls 90% of the time tend to be about things that wouldn't have gathered a 2nd thought 10-20 years ago, let alone a recall. "Rusted cables on tailgates? Put more grease on them when the customer brings the car in for service."

Every so often, we get a serious recall like self igniting ignition switches or faulty steering columns (though under Jac Nasser's Ford, it DID happen more than a little too often), but for me at least, recalls don't seem to have the same impact it did with me 10 years ago (again, save Ford of the late 90s).

 

I wholeheartedly agree. In a market where Japan has 10 major auto manufacturers, and the U.S. has two, it truly is Us-Versus-Them...on our own turf no less!

I do not consider DCX to be U.S. anymore because of their majority foreign interest. I used to "hate" Fords, but quite frankly if GM can't give me what I want I will gladly look at a Ford now. In a market where there still IS a domestic choice, I will support it. Then again, you're reading a post by someone who actually bought an American-made microwave last year I'm a little more patriotic in my purchasing decisions than most...but if more people were, maybe there'd be more left to the U.S. than hospitals, insurance companies, banks and schools. Sadly, my fiance and I fall into two of those categories, because in the Northeast what else is left?????