America is sparsely populated compared to Europe. That's why you need to often drive longer distances to get from a to b. The absolute size doesn't generally matter. That's why we Finns drive quite a lot, too. Americans drive about 14k miles annually on average. Finns drive 16k km, so it's about the same. Just checked the statistic by googling.
Traditionally the difference has been 20-30% in fuel economy. Which is a lot of money with the fuel prices here.
Most BMW and Mercedes you buy in America are... well, made in America. As out Minister of Foreign affairs pointed out towards Mr Trump when he asked for an import tax on german cars. So the problem with most 'european' cars you have over there can probably be reduced to faulty or inferior engineering, and not design flaws. I'm not saying americans are incapable of precise and high quality engineering, but the overall quality of all products made in US I had so far was... lackluster.
The reason people in the US think german cars are superior is because it used to be that way, and a Benz is still seen as a status symbol. With us, it is rare american cars. Mustangs for example are more likely to get looked at than a Benz. I think americans are more than capable of designing decent cars for all price classes. It's more of an overall issue with quality control, rather than being limited to just cars.
I also never had an issue taking my BMWs, a brand that I am sticking with for something like 20 years, to any shop. At all. Software updates used to require a BMW dealer, but that rarely happened. Also had very little issues with the cars. It came down to the regularrily required check-up, and a replacement piston (I hope I have the right word here), and that's it. I never owned an american card. But even If I would buy one, it wouldn#t be made in the US, would it? Ford and GM have plants all over Europe aswell.
Last edited by Skulltaker; 2017-05-28 at 10:03 PM.
While I can agree with that on some level, it IS a newspaper/ reporter, right? I mean, it's their job to clarify, not guess. Not that I want to be sticking up for Trump, but it seems like they should have asked someone else for a clarification since they were unable to gauge context.
"I only feel two things Gary, nothing, and nothingness."
Because they don't have the quotation marks holding them back.
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cars are disposable in America. /end thread
I am not sticking up for him either. It is the job of the reporter/editors to double check their work. Unfortunately, in today's world that has gone the way of the do-do.
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I am not a professional translator, these people are. It is what they are paid to do for a living by the government. Let that sink in.
"When you build it, you love it!"
Cars are super cheap in Germany. New Mustang starts at 38k e in Germany, 67k e in FInland.
It's just that cars are expensive here in Finland, Mustang is no outlier.
EDIT: The taxation on new cars has actually gone down quite a lot in the past 10 years or so. The cars used to be even more expensive in comparison.
Maybe because they don't ship over the crappier versions of their cars to the states. Simply cause they won't sell that well.
Pulling up the list of Consumer Reports most reliable manufacturers of 2016, the majority of the cars are built in Japan, S Korea, or N. America (US, Canada, Mexico). With Audi being the only European built car showing up in the top 10. But CR is a shit metric, because it's all survey based.
But that's also being disingenuous to what quality ratings generally mean. CR does surveys, some people use recalls (which brings up the problem of mfgs not starting recalls), some use a combination, it's really all BS. Some of the best stats come from warranty sellers in Europe, since that business model doesn't work at all in the US, these stats are basically just the UK. But if you look at their top 100, it's a decently even mix but Japan has an edge there. But it's no run away, they just have better market penetration and the Japanese tend to make the cars UK drivers want in the smaller size area, which makes them cheaper which is also a factor on this list.
Some look at maintenance rates, but that's an easily skewed metric. If 100% of Ford's had their dashboard emblem falling off, vs 10% of Chevys that don't start on days below 32 degrees, which car would you want to own?
Last edited by McFuu; 2017-05-28 at 10:42 PM.
http://www.vdtuev.de/en/news_policy_...-manufacturers
There you go, some real reliable data on car reliability. All of the German annual inspection data put together. Not some survey bullshit.
Oh damn, the data isn't available for free. They've shown the data in Finnish auto sites, but cba to link sites in Finnish.
I seem to remember it was VW who hid the emissions of their diesels. Millions of polar bears lost their lives because of that.
French cars are quite shit btw.
American cars were made with their old insane money standards in mind.
In the USA for many decades the price of fuel was minimal and overall owning a car was extremely common even for teenagers.
The standard of living was so high that families could afford to have a car each for both parents and even children.
Then the european/asian industry started (war wrecked most of those countries) and because everyone was sh*t poor they had to be very cost and fuel efficient.
Jump forward 50 years and the american vehicle companies are completely out of touch with reality and what the modern world needs.
These days almost everyone just cares how cost-efficient something is and how "green" it is - and that is something the USA car manufacturers never cared or learned about.
Top Gear covered this pretty well with James May's history of cars.
TLDR: After WWII defeat Japan and Germany were not allowed to develop their military's, so their brightest minds (the ones that didn't move to America/UK)went into engineering and automobile development, instead weapons manufacturing.