29th May 2005, 20:13

1st commenter.. Yes, it's a cheap car, expect some road noise for what you paid for it. Unsafe? If you mean in an accident, maybe. Handling and ride are solid, and predicable. Actually, the handling is extremely good for a cheap car.

2nd Poster, my thoughts exactly. Had a japanese car before. Only owned it for a few months, and decided that was enough. Hated the fact that a friggin O2 sensor was 100 for 1st one, 250 for second one. Struts were 100 bucks a piece, and other parts were horribly expensive. The only plus was the nice seats, and the OK gas mileage. It was a Mazda Protege actually.

Got rid of it, and bought a used Buick. Love it. Parts are cheap, and plentiful.

14th Jun 2005, 21:13

Ever stop to consider why G.M. parts are so cheap? When people consider struts normal upkeep, prices go down. Imports tend to fail less, in my experience, as they come from the factory with fewer reliability issues, fewer things that need to be replaced due to piss poor engineering/manufacture, therefore replacement parts aren't so available, therefore more expensive. My struts didn't fail until well after 180,000 city miles on my "import". Just my 2 cents.

12th Feb 2006, 07:40

While I agree with the previous comment to some extent, unless you are buying parts from the dealer the "parts for foreign cars last longer" argument goes out the window. If I go to a shop and get KYB struts on my Chevy versus getting them on my Honda, they build quality is the same, and they will likely last about the same length of time. Yet, the Honda struts will cost 50-100% more. The same holds true for most parts.

Granted, design plays a factor in things like brakes (GMs are notorious for eating front brake pads). But, I can teach a 10 year old to change the brake pads on most post 90s cars in about 15 minutes.

For the record, I got 150k out of my stock Chevy struts. Not bad for the country roads it was driven on half the time.

Much depends on how and where you drive a car.

I'm not saying foreign cars aren't built better at the factory, because, as a rule, they are. Just saying that if you're buying a relatively new car and don't plan on keeping it much more than a few years, other than resale value it's not going to matter much.

24th Apr 2012, 14:06

And you're basing your opinion regarding American cars on the Cavalier?

Also, you are telling people to buy "German" cars; does that include VW? In case you haven't noticed, their reliability has been pretty shaky for some time.