@philibuster: nah, at least it's still a 2 door

rubberized undercoating on the exhaust?

@twinturbo2: pshh, that's just americanimation.

@MushyHeirloom: i can't stand these things whenever i see them. of course, the only 4 door i'm willing to drive is a station wagon, so i suppose i'm pretty biased.

@MushyHeirloom:

reminds me of this

@KAdams1476: back at ya

@KAdams1476: Of course people want to indulge in blissful ignorance, but my point was that Toyota was truly leading the way with the adoption of this type of technology. Like you said, cars made by the big 3 developed a very negative reputation. The benefit of this is that people who owned them didn't really trust…

@KAdams1476: I think you're missing quite a bit of the rationale for the Toyota hate. It isn't so much that they're no longer "performance oriented" (which, of course they never were, but in the past they did at least have a few performance oriented models) - it's that they pioneered and expanded the notion that an…

@KAdams1476: your previous post mentioned an '81 malibu wagon as your only bad gm experience, and then a bit of trouble with an '01 silverado. still not sure you should be judging a brand based on cars that are 22 years old or more... if i did that, i might actually have a positive opinion of modern bmws!

@Buster Brew: Yup!

@KAdams1476: Hah, I'm in the process of "fixing up" an '88 635csi 5 spd and also own an e30 323i - but for a regular, reliable DD I have a Saturn LW200. 120k on it, and it's feels like new (which, even at the time, was not very impressive). But anyway, it does sound like your story is very similar to the Blazer one -…

Jensen Interceptor

@KAdams1476: Of course - the counterexample you picked (Chrysler) produced by far the worst quality car out there during the dark ages of the big 3. Despite that, my brother actually did go out and buy a heavily used late '90s Sebring as his first car and got 40,000 trouble free miles with essentially no maintenance,…

@KAdams1476: Pretty sure Ford is the only one of the 3 that's even public right now.

@Jagvar: It may not be very fair to Toyota, but I remember about a decade where every single GM, Ford or Chrysler recall was met by decrees of unacceptable quality by the media (who of course understand nothing about cars). It's just Toyota's turn in the spotlight.

My first car, a '97 Intrepid, had a bit of a radiator leak - no biggie, just dripped coolant a little. Well, I was in college and driving my friends to the mall when the leak really opened up and a steamy jet of coolant erupted from the front grill. I think that's the closest I've ever had to a break down or really…

shouldn't this be - Cummins v18 diesel equipped with mini?

@pauljones: ah, forgot what planes they were using. it's been a while since i've seen that movie since i really can't stand the site of tom cruise anymore :( (i could probably still get through Legend, though).

@pauljones: always wonder how they managed to do that without hitting tails...