Quote:
Originally Posted by Charon
Once again, no PROOF. Only opinions.
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Lets look at every aspect of a car then. Economy? You've already mentioned this, instant fail for US cars. Big thirsty engines mated to a dated auto tranny means any attempts at saving fuel are pointless. The US market barely has any diesels on offer either, still don't fully understand why, even if diesel was $8 a gallon, getting 60 MPG would still be cheaper than getting 25 MPG in a gas powered car. Even some Euro race teams are starting to use diesel racing cars in endurance races, so fuel stops are not needed as frequently. It would also appear that the term hybrid is used a marketing tool for people who think they are going to save the planet by buying one. Pretty sure I saw an ad for an Escalade hybrid in the US that advertised economy of 15 MPG. Really? 15 MPG in a hybrid, Volvo have just released their own plug in hybrid that gets 150 MPG, that's 1000% more than the Caddy.
You really do get what you pay for with American cars. They are built cheap, so they are cheap to buy, it's that simple. US manufactures aren't willing to invest any decent engineering or technology into their product, that's why American cars haven't really changed apart from how they look, in the past 40 years or more. Big lazy engine up front, with an old fashioned auto tranny from the 70's, it's a recipe for fuel indigestion. Lets not forget the cart style leaf suspension. People outside the US are left scratching their heads on a daily basis, how do Americans get so little power from such a huge engine?When you look at some of the Sporty stuff on sale here, we can get over 400 HP from a 2.0 litre, US cars seem to need double that capacity to match the figures, if they were just willing to take a leaf from someone else's book, they could get just as much power but save fuel too.The term "power to weight" obviously means nothing to US manufactures. There's no sense of passion or prestige with US cars, about the best thing you can buy there is probably a Corvette for less than $100,000, of which has been criticized time and time again for it's cheap build and poor driving manner. Compare that to Bugatti Veyron, over $1,500,000 and they still loose money on every car they sell, that's just the dedication and commitment they invest in the engineering to make a masterpiece of Automotive design.
What about reliability? Americans think their cars are reliable, and in the US they are. There's a reason for that, the roads. Most of the US road network is made up of vast highways. Smooth and straight, the car's do very little work cruising up and down day after day barely ticking over. You try driving an American car in rural Romania and see how long it lasts. Take a peek at the surveys carried out in the UK every year, and you'll see that Chevrolet comes last year after year, 27th out of 27 with the Spark being voted the worse car ever in 116th place. The 3 other top selling GM cars came 92nd and 105th for customer satisfaction. The results speak for themselves.
Looking at the Nurburgring lap times, there are only 5 US cars in the top 50 (no points for guessing what they are) but again, huge 7.0 or 8.0 litre engines. Look at the other cars topping the list, some of them have 2.0 litre engines. Don't even mention NASCAR, how much skill does it take to drive in very big circles? I'm guessing there's more time, money and engineering goes into a single wheel nut on a F1 car than an entire NASCAR. As for rallying, Americans sent over
who they thought was a driving GOD, Ken Block. What happened, he crashed numerous times and came last with 0 points. It's very hard to argue your point when Americans do a very good job of showing us how bad their cars and their drivers are.
You mentioned British cars, last time I looked, Jaguar/Land rover were doing pretty well. In fact Jaguar came 1st in that survey I mentioned, and Land Rover came 6th.Give me a Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Range Rover, McLaren, Lotus*over a*rental car*Vette any day.*Maybe you ought to watch this video to help you realise just how much Britain contributes.
http://youtu.be/vmcmqTAu6b8
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