ILETRIC said:
Or is it -- dare I say -- American workmanship?
My last Am car i bought was a Dodge Caravan. To keep this long story short, I will never buy anything "Dodge" again.
Random tox screens, folks! That'll do it.
I've heard stories - albeit second hand - the stuff that was going on in the old Freemont GM plant. Alcohol, drugs and hookers.
FWIW, the '93 Dodge Caravan (bought new in 93) that used to be in our family was actually pretty decent other than the transmission. We had the 3-speed auto instead of the notoriously bad 4-speed Ultradrive transmission. But, still the tranny eventually had problems. The rest of the vehicle was not terrible in reliability, much better than the GM junk we used to have.
Re: GM's old Fremont (not Freemont) plant which closed then was resurrected to as NUMMI (GM/Toyota joint venture), then closed again (when GM pulled out (related to bankruptcy) and then Toyota too) and got sold to Tesla, apparently alcohol, drugs and sex went on when it was a GM plant.
If you have some time, listen to http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. It is a MUST listen to for any car enthusiast. I've listened to it several times. I was initially amazed and had a very emotional reaction to it.
Read http://priuschat.com/threads/great-story-on-nummi-on-nprs-this-american-life.78530/#post-1097941" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for my comments. They talked to NUMMI workers who formerly worked under GM reign and talked about how screwed up it was back then vs. what they learned from Toyota and their method.
I started a thread about that ep at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11371" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; but hardly got any response... :?
Nissan's quality and reliability is a bit hit/miss depending on the model (even ones produced in Japan), but Smryna has been doing it for a long time and appears to be able to put out reliable vehicles. You might find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/19/business/detroit-struggles-to-learn-another-lesson-from-japan.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; from 1993 interesting. I brought it up at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=276765#p276765" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.