Originally Posted by vip18971
You don't see many 20 year old econoboxes on the road today because they're econoboxes. I'll bet without searching for any studies or graphs on google that more people take better care of their high end expensive/nice/fast cars than do with their econoboxes. Thats what you get an econobox for, to drive that fucker into the ground and not worry about it.
EXACTLY. That's why I love Hondas so much. If I can't afford my dream car (or to drive it), I grab a used Honda so I can beat the piss out of it and change the gas station brand oil every 20K miles and it will still keep going. Won't catch me doing any $500 repairs to the old dogs, though.
Originally Posted by vip18971
Oh, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but imports were more reliable than domestics up until recently.
EXACTLY. This is why many domestic names, like Cavalier, Neon, Lumina, etc. are being shaved off. The domestics have grown up and caught up, and just about anything outside of Italy can break the 200K mile mark easily nowadays.
I agree, it's much easier to keep up with 305, 350, 427, 454, 632, etc. than to remember engine codes telling you what the company decided to name it, and all sorts of abbreviations for cam count and fuel delivery. The 2JZ GTE (2nd gen, JZ family, DOHC (from G, WTF?), Turbocharged with Electronic FI)
could have easily been called the "183 turbo," or "3000 turbo" for metric, and it'd be easy to tell what it was.
And an engine replacement on an old car can seriously be done in a half hour without pneumatic tools, and anybody with a hoist can do it, so don't even try to start that "just replace the D16 in a night" argument.