[Stubby79]

My experience with domestics is mostly from late 80's until early 2000s. The best were mediocre. The Dodge 4-banger was a complete turd, won't touch one again.

Ok, not completely fair. My first car - cousin to a cavalier - was decent. Gave me 70,000 trouble-free kilometers - on top of easily twice that already on it - on the 2.0l OHC, TBI engine. Manual trans, otherwise it probably wouldn't have lasted as long. Gave great gas mileage.

The Geo Metros were good too. Not to say they didn't have things wear out, but they were too simple to have many things break down on them. Of course, a couple of them had engines built in Japan, not that I noticed much difference between a Japanese built engine and a domestically built one.

The Hyundai's I had sucked. So "import" being better is not all encompassing.

My '91 Nissan hard body with the 2.4l 4-cylinder wouldn't die, mechanically. Barely did anything for it. Rust was an issue. I don't think the 6 cylinder ones lasted as long. Then again, the would have almost all come with 4 wheel drive automatics, and probably get a lot more abuse in their life.

The miata was at about 300k when I sold it, and ran great. The engine was a bit tired until it warmed up a bit. It hadn't lead an easy life, either. Not surprising, for a sports car, though surprising that it put up with it.

I didn't want my wife to get her Saturn Vue until a bit of research showed that it came with a Honda engine and trans. Other than a wheel bearing, it's been trouble-free for many years. The transmissions are the weak point in these, so I won't be surprised if it's what eventually kills it. She's light on the gas pedal, so that might take a while.

What else was there?

A brief stint with a '00 Ford Ranger, 4 cylinder/5-speed. Nothing too wrong with it, nothing great about it. Pretty gutless. The '91 Nissan hardbody had noticeably more get-up-and-go, and ran and rode better. The ford engine was basically an updated version of the engine they were using in the 80s, iirc. Reliable, perhaps, but lackluster.

That's one thing with all the domestics I've owned or driven...when I want to go, I want to go. You gear down and punch the gas and...they're anemic. There's no zip. Better off just keeping them in the middle-rpm range where they develop reasonable torque. Of course, I've never owned a domestic with variable valve timing...or even DOHC. They didn't put such things in their affordable line-ups. They didn't even put OHC in a lot of them in the model years I owned. I mean...come on. Yeesh. Built as cheaply as they could design them down to...

I think that's what killed any interest in domestics for me. The decent brands of imports could build a decent product at a decent price, but the domestics? Noooo...even though they had the benefit of not having the cost of bringing them across the ocean, they couldn't. Bottom-dollar quality. Afraid anything Daewoo-sourced and, at least older Hyundai's were the same.

Never mind wearable items like wheel bearings and such on domestics...but major ones are/were still built as cheap as possible. If you did any significant engine power improvements, you'd end up having to replace the trans and, usually, the rear end. They'd only be rated to handle a few more HP more than the engine they came with. Miata trans? No problem. The rear-end on the early ones would go, but if you had the slightly later 1.8l, no problem. My Z's trans and rear end are supposedly good for 2.5x the HP it comes with stock. Point being, even if you tried to make your domestic less lethargic, you had to replace everything else while you were at it. Yuck.

Buddy at work had a cobalt. Everything went bad on it, got rid of it the moment he could afford to. He didn't rag on it or anything...it was a grocery-getter. Glad yours is ok.

He replaced it with a Trax that blew it's head gasket within a year or so. Traded in soon after. Don't think they're interested in risking owning something with a 4 cylinder ever again because of it.

I don't know anyone at work who's owned a Dodge that had anything good to say about it. One guy was driving a PT cruiser until recently...I don't see those any more. They've all gone to an early grave, despite everyone and their grandma wanting one 20 years ago.

The real thing that screams - to me, at least - the domestic vs import longevity are the classified ads. In the uber-cheap ads, you have your imports that just won't die...oh, they're falling apart, but they still run and drive decently, have way too many miles on them but just keep going...but in the same price range, you find plenty of much newer, much lower mileage domestics with blown trans, broken timing belts (and bent valves), and whatever else. A lot of dodges, a lot of GM econo-boxes. Seeing cars that aren't yet 15 years old and don't even have 200,000kms on them in that state sets off alarm bells. Unless the import has a well known issue, usually with a specific engine during specific years, you never see them in the uber-cheap - on their death beds - class.

I admit things have changed over the years and my distrust/distaste for domestics might be out of date, but, really, if the domestic manufacturers want to change their image, they need to make an effort to stop selling crap (ex rebadged Daewoos), stop building/designing their vehicles - all of them, including the entry-level econo-boxes - to the "bottom dollar" scheme they've been using for decades. If people discover that their little @#$%-box can and will get to 300,000kms without a hiccup, no matter what they do to it, they'll treat it better and they'll actually retain some value after the 10 or 15 year mark.

I don't like things being built to be disposable. Sure, it's good business, but I am not going to put good money or effort in to something that is. Neither will most people.

/rant.