think about what ya just said.!!!

Old cars dont count,, They kicked azz and were built to last the first time, take a 65 impala and an 03 impala,, that 65 will still be on the road 14 years from now and the o3 will be in the scrap yard,,, disposable!

umm, o.k., im thinkin bout it. Thinking done!
Love the cars, not their fault they were built wrong, Hate the people who built them for building them crappily!

Hold on a second, though.

Have you happened to look on the roads and see how many of those giant GM SUV's there are on the road???

They were building what people wanted to buy. Plain and simple.

Now that no one wants those beasts because of the gas prices, suddenly it's the Big 3's fault for giving the American people what they wanted???

That, to me, is a seriously flawed way of thinking.

As far as the imports, GM, Ford, and Chrysler all did exactly what the American people demanded they do. They gave them cars that were competitive with the imports. Ye all the while, they were fighting ( and are STILL fighting ) serious unfairness in trade policies that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to compete.

bravo.!!!!!!!!!! well said bro.!!!

Yes, they were built to last.

My Taurus needed a new motor. That's the first time that's happened to me.

My current vehicle is a 1999 Ford Ranger, which is evidently the "best selling" mid-sized truck in America.

However, you'd never know that by how poorly the thing was designed-

- For starters, they farmed out the engine (a 3.0 liter V-6 in my case) design to Porsche, which was codenamed "Vulcan". As a result, in order to get ANY power out of the thing, you gotta get the revs up at around 3000 RPM, as any less would simply bog things down. For you see... pickup trucks (even the smaller mid-sized johnnies like mine) are meant to be low-RPM with loads of torque, for pulling power when hauling or towing stuff. If I wanted to whiz around town at 2500-3000 RPM (all the while at 60 MPH), I'd go and get a... uh... Porsche.

The REAL head-scratcher is that the engine was originally put into the Taurus, a family sedan of all things. It just makes no sense to me.

The WORST thing about the motor is that everything was casted SO thinly that it will overheat and (even worse) blow head gaskets and crack cylinder heads with little effort. I've already gone through a set of heads that had cracked thanks in part to the shoddy engineering present in the damned thing.

- Another testament to the lack-of-proper-engineering present in my vehicle is the incredibly-fragile construction of the front suspension, which includes the power-steering rack (I'm on my THIRD one), the power-steering pump (on my SECOND one), and the suspension itself which won't align properly UNLESS you get an "alignment correction" kit that you have to BUY from Ford. You'd think they'd just put the kit on at the factory to at least TRY to keep the customers satisfied, but that'd be a wee bit TOO easy, right?

But then again, Ford is notorious for having vehicles with piss-poor front suspensions, most notably the 1964 Fairlane and the 1969-70 Mustang, which were pretty much atrocious (unless you did your own refurbishment, that is).

- This brings me to another point of contention- the paper-thin (and highly fragile) nature of the rear leaf-springs on the truck. Put any amount of weight in the bed, and the leaf springs will literally snap in half (this has exactly happened to me not too long ago) RIGHT OUT of their hangers. And since pickup trucks are built to haul stuff, this is a pitiful reality to behold... especially when on the job.

So -in short- I don't have ANY sympathy for the automakers and their bailout shenanigans. Their own quest for greed at the expense of vehicle quality and customer satisfaction has put them in their current position, and their wanting to nationalize their losses is simply disgusting.

Not only that, but my next vehicle will probably be a Toyota Tundra- i hear those things are built like tanks.