re: I now understand the American car market

Buy toyotas with a vin that starts with J.

Dealerships want to sell you a loan an automobiles is just the vehicle (no pun) they us for that. That's how you sum up the "American car market"

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At least it will last with minimal maintenance over 100k, let alone 500k miles. Unions destroy companies. Literally cancer.

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You got it all wrong. The unions don’t make the quality any worse. Bad engineering makes poor quality, but it’s not all the engineering team’s fault either. The real problem is with the company bean counters and also from the government. The finance and commercial teams and executives run their models based on market prices and return on capital based on sales projections. They turn around and tell the engineers what features the vehicles must have and how much the vehicles have to cost to produce.

Let me give you an example. In the GM+Ford joint 10 speed transmission venture for their light duty trucks, Ford designed a planetary hub in 3 segments that is forged and precision machined and can handle a ton on torque. GM was like - how do we make this cheaper? They redesigned it with 4 segments to reduce the torque on each segment, and then made each segment weaker by using casting rather than machining to make the parts. They took a perfectly reliable part in the transmission and made it a piece of shite to save money.

Another example - the Commerical group tells the engineers what the service costs need to be or can’t exceed, and they tell them what fuel mileage it needs to get. So the engineering team designs things like bearings and timing components and chains and gears juuusssstttt good enough to make it past the warranty period while using service intervals that are a detriment to the longevity of the machine using fluids that don’t protect as well but increase fuel economy. GM 6.2L V8 and Toyota 3.4L turbo V6 truck engines say hello - bearings don’t have enough meat on them to try to lower internal resistance to increase fuel economy and they’re being lubricated by 0W-16 or 0W-20 oils…. You’d be absolutely nuts to buy a 6.2L GM vehicle from the last 6-7 years or any of the new 2022+ Toyota products due to poor design caused not by the engineers but by the Commerical side and the government.

The government is forcing the hands of the vehicle manufacturers with their corporate average fuel economy “CAFE” standards. Use bullshite oil like 0W-20 and you’ll end up with piss poor engine lubrication and a machine that will struggle to get past the warranty period. But hey you’ll get an extra 0.5mpg and that will save the company hundreds of millions of dollars on government penalties per vehicle. Nevermind that the consumer will spend more on repair after the warranty period to greatly outweigh that 0.5mpg benefit.

So yeah you have it all wrong. A new Toyota isn’t going to last 500k miles. A 2021 Tundra probably will though. What you don’t want to do it make a blanket statement about a brand. Look at the individual vehicles’ track records to establish the reliability of a vehicle model and buy the reliable ones. Never buy a new model on the first or even second year.

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Unions destroy companies. Literally cancer.

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Maybe so, but they don’t necessarily reduce vehicle quality. There’s not really a correlation between unions and vehicle quality or cost. Take a new F-150 vs a new Tundra. F-150 is made by a union and is cheaper and vastly more reliable than the Toyota. The Tundra is gonna to spin a bearing and get a new engine at 25,000 miles, but the engine wasn’t built by union labor.

No way the cam/lifters are making it 60 months on a new GM truck

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5700 miles on my Ford truck and no problems !

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I have a 9 yr old F150. It cost me $1100 once for some kind of climate change/emissions sensor replacement. Other than that it's been a solid truck. I'm not a brand loyal guy, and this was my first Ford, but I'll probably buy another one when the next time comes.

The thing that amazes me is how popular Tesla's are and you never see Tesla commercials.