Wow. You don't know what you're talking about at all. American vehicles (built after 1984) are designed specifically to be a 4 year car (tops). The market here is such that people are willing to buy a new car on or before the 4 year aniversary of purchasing the vehicle.
The cars themselves are designed with higher maintenence needs and lower tolerance for abuse. Whereas a European vehicle is held to a much higher performance standard, and an ideally lower maintenence schedule.
One clear-cut example of this is the MFG guidelines for oil replacement in a domestic vs a European vehicle. The American car is listed at 3 mos or 3000 miles. The European vehicle is 5 mos or 5000 miles. This means that the car can not only run longer with less threat of damage from dirty oil, but also that it doesn't burn oil as quickly as the domestic vehicle.
The problem with American cars equates to exactly what Dave said earlier. The manufacturer spends millions on R+D to make something that will wow purchasers. Whereas, foreign manufacturers have been sticking with the same formula for years. They make smaller, (save for the Merc trucks, which aren't designed to be passenger vehicles anyways) faster, and more efficient vehicles. There are rarely any whiz-bang features. The only major change to a foreign vehicle that I can think of in the last 5 years is the transition of Audi cars to a transmission without gears. (I'm obviously not including the advent of alternative fuels, hydro-electric, etc vehicles in this statement)
In short, Domestic vehicles DO NOT hold up as well as a foreign car at all.
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