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Originally Posted by ILike2DriveCars
Opinions galore. That's fine if you dont think you'll buy another American car because of what happened to you with this car, but it's also a bit sad, because you're condemning the rest of the American market based on a bad experience with a manufacturer that is going out of business soon. Im not going to say import vehicles are bad, because many of them are great cars, however there are also lots of great American made cars, also.
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Do you actually believe that there is a discernable difference in Oldsmobile from any of the other divisions of GM? Everything I have read about why Olds is being phased out has to do with a their design teams being tasked to compete with a loss of market share to foreign manufacturers; they failed. I don't think it had anything with Oldsmobile having having any worse (or better) track record for quality than the other divisions. GM plants build cars based on platform and common parts, not by any brand name. That being said, with only one other car sharing much in the way of components with the Aurora they have more than their fair share of issues. Low sales volume meant that less engineering work was put into fixing and/or redesigning problem areas. Every new platform has issues that usually get addressed in short order. Just wait and see about the current crop of GM pickups with their new powertrains for example.
Olds continued to lose sales due to a better value -and I think it is undeniable that Honda and Toyota were leaps and bounds ahead of GM (and all the other american manufacturers) in terms of quality and warranty back in the early 90s or so when Olds shifted direction to (try to) change their image.
The ONLY reason I own- and fairly happily I might add- my Aurora is it was DIRT CHEAP to buy used. I could get luxury features, ideal styling for my tastes and decent power in exchange for no resale value and a whole slew of fairly expensive problems. I do feel I got a better deal with the factors I mentioned rather than a midsize import that I'd have paid more for but likely had fewer troubles with, but there are no gaurantees there either with a used car. I am not a new car kind of guy, I'll take a well maintained 1 owner used car any day. In fact I pity the poor bastard that I bought my Aurora from; he took one doozie of a beating on the depreciation. I think it was to the tune of around 75-80% in five years, though I don't know exactly what he paid new.
It all comes down to what is offered at what price to me. My latest purchase was a 2001 Hyundai Sonata GLS for my wife. I paid $8500 for a nice, comfortable car with 40,000 miles of bumper to bumper warranty left on it. If I perceive a value, I would absolutely buy an american car. They just have more to compete with these days and the market shares show it. I don't think they have lost yet though- the americans have improved a lot in quality while there are signs Honda and Toyota may have been slipping in the last couple of years. I feel like I can get a better deal today than other times I've bought vehicles. Now if my health insurance wold just quit going up 15% per year...