Well, until I bought my first Chrysler products, I never had a problem with reliability with Domestic brand vehicles.
I also remember the late 70's when I first started driving, the hot ticket for the farmers' daughters (they always bought a house in the city and a new car for the girls going to University) was the Honda Civic.
Good cheap, reliable cars, but I am always amazed when no-one seems to remember how easily they rusted and became useless, because Unibody, with perfectly good drivetrains while being hauled to the wreckers to be crushed. They didn't last 10 years on the road.
I also remember my High School buddy's dad, a Doctor, who bought a new Toyota Corolla around the same time. He ended up with it five years later, but had to use Pizza Boxes to cover the hole in the drivers side floor. Yeah, but the engine still ran. That's not my idea of a "reliable car" though.
Speaking of Carbs, I rebuilt the Rochester 2BBL on my 283-equipped 67 Chevy sedan, which I drove all through College. Armed with the HP Books Rochester Carbs book and a $20 rebuild kit, three hours on the kitchen table, and after that the car would accelerate like mad, cruise easily (I liked to drive 90 mph on the highway in those days) and I got an easy 27 mpg highway with it if I kept it at 70. I used to love how, with the Powerglide, if you came up behind a vehicle on the highway that you wanted to pass, you would briefly hit the brake so you slowed to 45, then punched it. It would kick down into first gear, stay there until 70 (the 283 had a 6,000 RPM redline), and what a kick in the back when she shifted to high gear. You were doing 90 before you knew it. Never got tired of that.
270,000 miles when I sold it, still ran like a top.
I've owned lots of domestic trucks over the years, all were very reliable and very cheap to operate. People would tell me about how bad my gas mileage was, but I usually got 25 mpg on the highway with a 350/Turbo 400, and rarely bought anything except tires. A new battery every 7 years, a new alternator (for $60) every five years, a new fuel pump (for $13) every 100,000 miles, and that was that. Nothing else ever broke on the Chevy or GMC trucks I've owned, and I always bought them with 150,000 miles on the clock before I turned another 100,000 over.
The difference between 15 mpg (my truck) and 30 mpg is about $700 a year. One or two month's payment on some new Japanese car. Meanwhile I never paid more than $2200, and some of them $800, for a used pickup that never cost me more than $1500 in gas and a few hundred dollars a year in parts and consumables. Even insurance never was between $250 (for my first Chevy, a '74 ¾ ton) and $700 (for my last GMC, a '77, sold this summer) a year. I would run them for five to eight years, put on 100K in the process, then buy another 73~80. They all ran when I sold them as well.
Have to agree as well about trucks; the Japanese so far haven't impressed me with a heavy ½ or ¾ ton truck yet. Maybe in the next ten years. Nissan looks interesting but their reliability record, backed up by a friend who worked as a salesman at a Nissan dealer, scares me.
I also remember the late 70's when I first started driving, the hot ticket for the farmers' daughters (they always bought a house in the city and a new car for the girls going to University) was the Honda Civic.
Good cheap, reliable cars, but I am always amazed when no-one seems to remember how easily they rusted and became useless, because Unibody, with perfectly good drivetrains while being hauled to the wreckers to be crushed. They didn't last 10 years on the road.
I also remember my High School buddy's dad, a Doctor, who bought a new Toyota Corolla around the same time. He ended up with it five years later, but had to use Pizza Boxes to cover the hole in the drivers side floor. Yeah, but the engine still ran. That's not my idea of a "reliable car" though.
Speaking of Carbs, I rebuilt the Rochester 2BBL on my 283-equipped 67 Chevy sedan, which I drove all through College. Armed with the HP Books Rochester Carbs book and a $20 rebuild kit, three hours on the kitchen table, and after that the car would accelerate like mad, cruise easily (I liked to drive 90 mph on the highway in those days) and I got an easy 27 mpg highway with it if I kept it at 70. I used to love how, with the Powerglide, if you came up behind a vehicle on the highway that you wanted to pass, you would briefly hit the brake so you slowed to 45, then punched it. It would kick down into first gear, stay there until 70 (the 283 had a 6,000 RPM redline), and what a kick in the back when she shifted to high gear. You were doing 90 before you knew it. Never got tired of that.
270,000 miles when I sold it, still ran like a top.
I've owned lots of domestic trucks over the years, all were very reliable and very cheap to operate. People would tell me about how bad my gas mileage was, but I usually got 25 mpg on the highway with a 350/Turbo 400, and rarely bought anything except tires. A new battery every 7 years, a new alternator (for $60) every five years, a new fuel pump (for $13) every 100,000 miles, and that was that. Nothing else ever broke on the Chevy or GMC trucks I've owned, and I always bought them with 150,000 miles on the clock before I turned another 100,000 over.
The difference between 15 mpg (my truck) and 30 mpg is about $700 a year. One or two month's payment on some new Japanese car. Meanwhile I never paid more than $2200, and some of them $800, for a used pickup that never cost me more than $1500 in gas and a few hundred dollars a year in parts and consumables. Even insurance never was between $250 (for my first Chevy, a '74 ¾ ton) and $700 (for my last GMC, a '77, sold this summer) a year. I would run them for five to eight years, put on 100K in the process, then buy another 73~80. They all ran when I sold them as well.
Have to agree as well about trucks; the Japanese so far haven't impressed me with a heavy ½ or ¾ ton truck yet. Maybe in the next ten years. Nissan looks interesting but their reliability record, backed up by a friend who worked as a salesman at a Nissan dealer, scares me.
