I've found that my of the domestics I've worked on have lots of little problems, but nothing truly major. GM and Ford for example have both gone to a cable style power window regulator (sometime back in the EARLY 90s) and they always fail. ALWAYS. Go to a used car lot and find a 94-95 crown vic and try ALL of the windows. 9 times out of 10, at least one of the windows won't work, and in many cases, the window regulators break one at a time over a period of about 4 years. I thought it was exclusivly a Ford thing since I always saw it in Ford products (Grand Marquis, Crown Vic, Explorer, ETC) until a customer came in with a 2003 Caddi Sedan Deville. His driver window fell to the bottom of the door and wouldn't return. I removed the door panel (PAIN IN THE @$$ on this car) and bingo, regulator is bad. Can't get one aftermarket, none in the local junkyards, and almost $400 from Caddillac. He decided to have us get the window up and jam it in position. It wasn't a month later, he was back with the Passenger window in the same condition. We're talking a high end car here, with low miles, and what I would consider to be relatively new. Fords window motors were very prone to failure due to a plastic bushngs inside them rotting away and leaving nothing to turn the gear. A quick fix is 3 nuts or pieces of pipe (or anything metal) about the same size as the bushings. This design lasted for A LONG time and the problem always remained.

As said however, Domestics are generally cheaper to upgrade. A set of 8 domestic pistons costs what 4 import pistons does, even if made by the same company. This works with almost everything from exhausts to camshafts.

The power argument is a bit unbalanced since you often have Domestics running 4 more cylinders than the Imports, and complaining that the imports don't have the same power. Well gee, they have half the cylinders and usually less than half the displacement. Instead of saying "Damn, your 4 cylinder import with the displacement of a soda bottle really kept up (or smoked) my massive V8 Domestic" you often hear "I beat you by .5 seconds, your car sucks."

Aside from the SRT-4, I haven't seen much in the way of Domestic 4 cylinders that impressed me, and I can't understand why the Domestic makers stepped away from Turbocharged engines. In the 80s the big 3 all had something turboed. GM had the Grand National, Ford had the turbo Mustangs, Chrysler had the turbo: Shelby Rampage, Spirit, Lebaron, Daytonas, Chargers, and Conquests. It seems to me this was/is the best way to get good gas milage and still have good power yet the big 3 got away from it for whatever reason and are just now getting back into the FI game.