10 worst used vehicle

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

I can remember back in the day, if you got 85K out of a car that was damned good. Usually you needed a complete engine and transmission rebuild before that.

Nowadays, for a car like a Toyota or my Honda, 85K is just getting broken in.

I switched to Japanese in 1990.

When I did I noticed a huge improvement in durability and workmanship.

Next to them the American vehicles that I had had for the previous 26 years were crap.

I have heard that since 1990 the American vehicles have caught up in quality.

Well, maybe they have, and maybe they haven't, but I have no intention of finding out.

I pretty much agree based upon my own experience. My wife's 2003 Toyota Sienna with 140K miles still runs like it's brand new. Doesn't consume a drop of oil. The only non-maintenance repair was the replacement of a catalytic converter at about 120K. Other than that, just fluids, brakes and tires.

OTOH, her 1995 Ford Windstar was the single most gawd-awful POS I have ever owned. We had 3 rebuilt engines put in this thing under warranty within 1 tank of gas. No shit. Ford has screwed up the head design so badly that engines were overheating and destroying themselves within 60K miles. They had so much rebuild work that they were forced to subcontract out rebuilds to non-union shops.

The union mechanics deliberately sabotaged a number of replacement engines, as they did with one of mine. The local Ford mechanic who replaced the engine noticed that a head bolt was missing, so he had to remove the head totally to retorque all bolts. A head bolt was down inside one of the cylinders. He said this had been happening with some frequency across the country.

Her Windstar seemed to be of similar quality to a Trabant or a Wartburg (from the former East Germany).