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Originally Posted by Big Dave
Up until about 27 months ago, the big SUVs sold like hotcakes and they couldn't give away little cars.
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Who's "they"? 'Toyota, Honda, and all the rest of the Japanese/European makers of mostly small cars seem to have been making decent profits through all those years, when Detroit couldn't give away THEIR small cars. How'd they do that, AND manage to gain absolute market share, if everyone in this country only wanted SUVs & oversized pickups?
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Back in the early 70s Honda were archetypal "cheap Japanese junk." The mid-70s Vega was a lot better car than the Hondas of the day.
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Crap. I owned a mid-70s Vega. It might have been marginally better than a Trabant or Yugo, but I doubt it. The shifter would get stuck between gears, the floor pan rusted through - in Southern California! - and don't get me started on the engine...
My next car was a Mazda RX-3, which while admittedly pretty poor in city driving, was wonderful for the long-distance highway travelling I was doing in those days. Never had any sort of mechanical problem with it, nor with the '78 Datsun pickup which was the only other '70 Japanese vehicle I owned.