I was on travel a lot this summer, so I had a chance to rent and try many cars. I was universally unimpressed with every American car I drove, pleasantly surprised by every Korean car, and unsurprised by the quality of the Japanese makes.
The domestics didn't piss me off because they were unreliable, but because they each were designed somewhat poorly -- as an example, one featured a HUGE miles-per-gallon readout in the center of the driver's console... and you had to move one of your hands to see either the speedometer or the tachometer. Crap like that, bad decisions.
So I don't think the "crappy domestic cars" bit is worn out.
EDIT: someone's gonna ask. IIRC the Americans I drove were a Ford Focus, a Chevy Aveo, and a Ford Escape.
I actually liked the Aveo (used to own one), but to pile on I'll say that in the past few years I've rented a Kia compact, a Mitsubishi Mirage, and a Ford Focus and the Ford was definitely the nicest overall, which I found very surprising.
Huh, I didn't know that. The Aveo was the best of the "American" bunch but I did notice a lot of slop in the clutch response when starting from rest. It'd rev too long, then grab suddenly. Shouldn't feel that on a new vehicle, and pedal finesse didn't seem to help.
The Daewoo Kalos wasn't Korean, it was an American (GM) parts-bin-special.
Daewoo went to the wall, with a few projects in the drawing board, what would become the Aveo was one of them. GM bought them out, then set to work homogenising the assembly of the Aveo with wider GM techniques and parts.
There is undoubtedly some Korean influence remaining I'm sure, but it's predominantly a GM car - they were quite vocal about all the improvements they introduced.
I've heard good things about the Ford Focus. GM and Chrysler are suspicious just because they had to nationalize them to keep them from going bankrupt, and the Ford Explorer went to shit by 2008 or so, so for me, it's not a bias I'm especially interested in revisiting, especially with the quality of the VW's and Audis I've driven.
There are a large number of very high quality domestic models, easily rivaling any from anywhere. Again, saying domestic was completely unnecessary bigotry that added zero value to the comment. Especially odd that you then use VW and Audi as the comparator, given that both of those are historically, and recently, lower quality brands -- the incident rate for defects is much higher than average (though note that one survey put them on top by noting that sure the defect rate is high, but the owners are happy anyways so that equals quality anyways).
If I'm renting a car, the defect rate isn't really my problem anyway. What is my problem is the driving experience, which is where VW and Audi shine.
Anyway, I'm curious why you're getting all worked up and accusing me of "bigotry" because I don't like domestic cars. What are you, some kind of GM publicist?
Why do you think that I'm "getting worked up"? Slandering the entirety of "domestic" vehicles -- and doing so because you think you have an audience that will cheer along -- is a perfect demonstration of bigotry...at least vehicle maker bigotry. I know it is wrong and misinformed so I point that out, which is hardly getting worked up.
Probably because instead of just posting one comment that said "actually there are some pretty good domestic cars now, like A, B, and C", you've made repeated comments using emotionally charged words like "slander" and "bigotry", with a general tone that implies that you're personally offended by my dislike of domestic cars.
