In 1994 the LeBaron was at the end of the warranty period and I decided to trade it for the pickup I really wanted. Still needing room for three children, we looked at mid-size pickups with the extended cab. The Japanese mini trucks were absolutely too small and the Dodge Dakota had the largest extended cab of the mid-sized domestic brands.
I bought an outgoing ’93 model with the aero front end, 3.9 L V6 and the automatic. The 7/70 powertrain warranty was a big consideration in light of my previously bad experiences with domestic new cars. However, the thing quickly turned out to be a nightmare of unreliability and Chrysler had numerous service bulletins out within a few months after I bought it. But that was just the beginning of the end.
Can you tell where this is going?
“… the thing was a nightmare of unreliability…”
Faulty ECM’s caused backfires when decelerating. It took three replacements before we got one that worked properly. Then the driveshaft bearings and universal joints went bad and were replaced. A few weeks later I had to take it back for balky shifting and a leaking rear seal on the transmission (the techs admitted that it had been leaking when they did the driveline but had no authorization for that repair, so they let it go). They replaced the seal under warranty but I had to pay for the replacement fluid.
The shifting improved but was never as good as it should have been. At 50k miles the truck started stalling out on hot days and it would start up again after cooling off. I checked for spark, fuel and air. No fuel; the electric fuel pump apparently had an intermittent fault, but it was not covered by warranty and there was no easy access to the pump so the fuel tank had to be dropped to replace it.
The day after picking it up from the dealer it stalled in the same manner, so I limped it back to have what I assumed was a bad pump replaced again. The dealer asked me to leave it so they could try and replicate the problem and gave me a loaner for my trouble. A few days later I got a call saying the problem could not be found and that the truck ran fine.
I was sure I was not imagining being stuck on the side of the road repeatedly and told them so. The service department stood by their tech’s opinion and I went out to get the truck. Of course, it wouldn’t start and in spite of having paid over $500.00 for replacing the pump, once I got under the truck I traced the wiring to the pump. I found un-loomed wires from the pump to where the harness passed under the cab. One wire had the insulation worn thin and was grounding out intermittently. Red faces from the service writer and tech, but no admission that I had just been charged for replacing a pump that was probably working. They wrapped the wires where the insulation had worn thin and installed a body clip to secure them.
1988 Country Squire photo from the web.
Shortly afterward the dealer approached me about trading the truck in, I suspect that my continuing complaints about the transmission and the prospect of having to replace or rebuild it had a lot to do with the attractive offer. In the meantime, the cassette player stopped working, then the radio. No matter how attractive an offer I got in 1997, there was no way I would take a chance on another MoPar.
Elsewhere on our fleet, the ‘88 Country Squire we got from Mom got 12 mpg in town or on the highway. The cost was becoming a burden and I shopped around hoping to get a deal on two economy cars. Before that happened, things came to a head when the wagon overheated and stalled on my wife.
She managed to coast off the interstate to the top of the exit ramp near our house. By the time I got there, it had cooled off. The radiator and expansion tank were normal, so it appeared to be a stuck thermostat. The car started up and ran fine, but Barbara was tired of the gas expense and no longer had confidence in it.
Time for a new game plan: ditch the domestic brand cars that had been bleeding us for years. Honda was doing incredible lease deals on Civics. This was a time when Honda really protected their dealers so there was only one north of Syracuse. Barbara liked the four-door, and I liked it too, but they only had one so I took a coupe instead. Two new Civics! The payments were easy, and the cars were economical, getting 25 mpg in town and 30 on the highway.
The Civics were simple and dead reliable. In the 36 months of the lease, the only things I bought were oil changes and wiper blades. In fact, we liked them so much and they held their value so well that when the lease was up our credit union loan value was 2000 dollars more than the residual so we bought them both. Oh what a feeling! Oops; wrong brand, but the same feeling.
All our children learned to drive in them, and more than once they saved a life. It was such a relief not having to work on cars or even worse, having to pay for someone else to do it. Not having to worry if the car would start, run and stop freed us to concentrate on our children’s teenage years. Better late than never.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1988 Dodge Dakota – Not Too Big, Not Too Small
CC Driving Impressions: 1998 Honda Civic LX – My Two Weeks With A Curbside Classic
Vintage R&T Review: 1996 Honda Civic Coupe – Giving People What They Want
This has roughly been my experience, and I’m sure is shared with many others’
Well, you can count me out of that group. I’ve been driving mostly GM brands since I got my license along with a small number of import brands. Between that and my working from 1988 to 1995 and again from 2007 to 2011 at a dealer with both GM and Honda, my experience has not been great with the imports and has been outstanding with the GM products. I’ve also owned a small number of Ford and Chrysler products over that same 41 years of driving. Never have I been stranded or had such experiences outside of one Jeep with the VM Motori (Italian) diesel. It didn’t leave me stranded, but was frustrating due to the many check engine lights and others I would get. Long story shorter, it ended up that the US diesel was still much higher sulfur content and that European diesel engine was designed to work with ultra low sulfur content fuel. Basically, it just kept buring through EGR valves due to that. So I couldn’t really blame the Jeep.
My import brand experiences was bad enough that I went back to GM and have never turned back.
After years of hit and miss cars, my father in law finally went from Lincoln to Acura in 1986. He was up on his 84 bustle back Continental which Ford had to replace the wood grain appliqués 4 times!
I totally get the switch over.
This past summer the transmission on our 18 Sierra clocked out at 40,000 miles. It had enough left to propel it to the Nissan dealer. I’d looked at Toyota and won’t step foot into our local Honda store where they coerced my then 80 year old father in law with dementia into leasing a CRV for a cool $602 monthly-very close to my mother in law’s SS. To wit, they charged him monthly for the lease of the WeatherTech liner package.
Anyway, we chose Nissan (why not help out the underdog!)
So far, I’ve had zero issues in 9000 miles. That sounds stupid, but by 2000 miles I was already dealer with stalling and braking issues on a 1997 Blazer!
Great article
Thinking of vehicles I had from around the same era:
1990 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup truly needed to move on at 65k miles-exhausted drive train. Up to that point, no trouble.
My ’94 Dodge 1/2 ton pickup was excellent with 70k trouble free miles at trade in.
My ’97 3/4 ton Dodge 4×4 Cummins was excellent with only a loose shifter knob backing nut that needed re-tightening during the many miles I had it.
My 2001 Subaru WRX was the worst. It suffered from a faulty intake manifold gasket that only became an issue when outdoor temps dropped into the single digits F. Driving a car emitting air/fuel mix into the cabin is, uh, unwise and unsafe to say the least. The problem was never fully resolved and was quickly traded in.
My 2003 Acura RSX Type S was excellent other than an annoying random dash rattle.
Also had good luck with 80s-90s Ford work vans. One with a 351W developed an injector issue that was quickly resolved.
Luck of the draw, I guess.
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with all my domestic brand cars and they have all been Mopars. 4 Chryslers, 1 Jeep, 1 Ram…all great vehicles. My first car was a used Honda Civic. It left me sit on the side of the road.
I feel second-hand anxiety & rage just reading about your Dakota headaches! I will never argue that US brands covered themselves in glory during the 70s-90s. Stories like this bear out that domestic manufacturers often fell far short in terms of reliability and longevity. That being said, no rule is concrete. I’ve owned 15 cars since I started driving in 1992, with all of them being various domestic brands except for 2 Toyotas. Astoundingly enough the two Toyotas caused me far more headaches and failures than any of my domestics…and the most reliable vehicle I’ve ever owned is my current 2014 Charger, which has had zero issues in my 9 years of ownership. Like John C notes above: luck of the draw, I guess…
Great article, Harry.
As the comments add up here today (and I hope they do!), I suspect that many will try to create connections along the lines of “this is why domestics failed” or “I’ve only had bad experiences with (fill in the blank non-domestic make).” And, well, as they say, your mileage may vary.
I’ll take a different tack and instead comment on what a crappy service experience you had with that truck. First, I’m a bit befuddled (general principle o c with me) as to why the fuel pump wasn’t apparently part of the the 7/70 “powertrain” warranty. And even if that was Dodge’s decision and not the dealer’s, I think that many dealers (certainly nowadays) would comp you the service by bringing in the regional rep once you started to have it fail more than once. Also things like nickle and dime-ing you on stuff like paying for the replacement transmission fluid…ugh.
Mind you, I’ve had some equivalently truly awful dealer service experiences over time…mostly on non-domestic brands, because that’s what I’ve tended to buy…but the common point was terrible (and sometimes flat out destructively dishonest) service departments. I do think, quite arguably, that some of this has changed over time, and that some of that change has come from manufacturers learning that poor service experiences play a factor in where some people choose to buy their cars. And maybe (again, arguably) it was the non-domestics that led the way in that regard by setting a higher bar. Many owners will be willing to put up with silly repairs if they’re given cookies, a nice waiting room, solicitous service advisors, and loaners…and a better warranty that keeps paying for those repairs (until the lease runs out at least).
Jeff: I totally agree. The dealer “experience” can and will often make or break the customer’s view of that vehicle. Just recently our dealership traded in a very clean 2014 Chrysler 200 (Sebring) and the lady got a new Mazda CX50. Since the dealership didn’t put much into the Chrysler, I was really thinking about buying it. When I delivered her new vehicle, I asked her about the old car and she purchased it used (program/rental car) with lower miles in 2014. She said the car was a really nice car but she had trouble getting it smogged last time and didn’t think it would pass this time due to dash lights on. She said she was tired of dealing with the car and was ready to move on. As a note, the car had 100K on it.
As I got in and drove the car back to the dealership, I noticed that it drove fantastic and was tight with no noises and a quiet smooth ride. However, the ABS, TC, low tire pressure and check engine lights were all on. When I got back to the dealership, I ran a check for codes and found a minor EVAP code which was most likely the gas cap or a vacuum line. Come to find out one of the brake lights was out as well. So it probably just needed a gas cap, new brake light bulb, a TPMS in one of the tires and it would have fixed it all.
But my point was that the lady told me she was just tired of spending so much money trying to “fix” those problems. Great chance she was being hosed by that “service” department or local shop who saw her as an ATM machine. I don’t think it was the car at all, but who was doing the work on it. In the end I didn’t buy it because I can’t stand the thought of going back to putting gas in a car and decided to drive just my Chevy Bolt EV.
I purchased our first Honda 4 wheeler, a base Civic 4 spd HB in 1988 while UNLOADING..err…trading in a PO$ USofA built “car”…….. Mostly Hondas since then!
Many Honda 2 wheelers over the decades since 1964! 🙂 🙂 🙂 DFO
I bought a 65 Tempest with AC on eBay for $2132. seventeen years ago. It was inexpensively restored where necessary, and has given 45,000 trouble free miles. I need to put no-ethanol gas in it, and it has a Bendix aftermarket fuel pump. This is the solution for those of you who don’t want to send your dollars to Japanese investors.
Our first new car was an ’89 Honda Civic DX 3-door hatch. Liked it so much we bought a base ’90 Civic hatch the next year, and ended up selling the ’89 when we learned our first child was on the way. Wife drove the Honda while I soldiered on in “The Mayfield Belle,” my ’71 VW van, painted like a WWII bomber. It was my DD for about six years and required constant maintenance and repair work to stay roadworthy. The only issues the ’90 had was a stress-cracked windshield not long after purchase, and failure of the ignition ignitor that left me stranded in a pouring rainstorm – covered by warranty, thankfully.
The bus was succeeded by “Eeyore,” a ’64 Beetle in 1995 (after it died for good on a road trip to OSH). After six years of DD in ATL traffic, Eeyore was replaced by ‘Herbie,’ my ’00 New Beetle TDI. Loved the car – kept it twelve years and 212K miles before selling – but it was a maintenance and repair nightmare up until around 150K miles, the point at which I think I finally replaced all of the original factory parts that had issues. The ’13 Beetle TDi convertible that succeeded it got traded for a ’15 Honda Fit after only 18 months – it felt more like a Toyota when driving and had significant design/engineering issues in several areas that, when coupled with excruciatingly bad service experiences, turned me off of modern VWs forever.
We replaced the ’90 Civic with a new ’98 Dodge Caravan, and had good service out of it until it was totaled by an inattentive driver who pulled out in front of my wife on a State highway. It was replaced by another ’98 – used Grand Caravan, this time – which made it to about 278K miles before the transmission finally stopped transmitting. A nearly-new 2006 GC followed it, which was totaled by a direct lightning strike on the interstate. A fairly used ’05 T&C was its successor, which was in turn followed by a 2012 VW Routan (rebadged T&C). Never had any transmission problems with any of them, and only routine maintenance was required.
I’ve owned two new RAM trucks, a ’15 2500 and my current ’21 Classic. The ’15 had about a dozen recalls during the six years I owned it, but nothing ever serious and nothing that left me stranded. The Classic has been flawless so far, with 45K miles on it so far.
The other two recent domestics we’ve owned were both captive imports: a ’17 Chev SS sport sedan (née Holden Commodore SS-V Redline), which was absolutely flawless and a blast to drive, and the ’18 Buick Regal TourX (née Open Insignia Country Tourer), which has had a few issues covered under warranty so far (it recently ticked off 100K miles).
On the whole, we’ve probably had better experiences with our domestics than with our foreign cars…
Father-in-law had an early 90s Dakota bought new. Sold it after 2 years because it was nothing but problems. Last straw was it breaking down and leaving him stranded on a winter night, and subsequently needing major engine work to get back on the road, with less than 20k miles.
Our experience with domestic brands has been mixed.
Our 2005 Ford Focus SE sedan went for 235,000 miles with only two issues – the alternator failed at about 150,000 miles, and the idle air control valve went at 200,000 miles. When we traded the car, the air conditioning still worked, and the engine and transmission were fine.
It was replaced with a 2014 Ford Escape SE that was fine until the radio head unit went out at roughly 100,000 miles. Then the transmission failed at 135,000 miles (a $6,800 replacement cost). We had it replaced, and the Escape has been running well, although the back-up camera now only works intermittently.
Interestingly, the Focus was more reliable than the 2003 Honda Accord EX four-cylinder sedan we had at the same time. That car went for 269,000 miles, but over that time we had to replace the alternator and the starter, and had to have the air conditioning compressor repaired. The compressor was again on the brink when we traded the car.
Honda in particular Honda from the late 90’s to around 2009 had some known issues. One being the AC systems tended to be a bit flaky. The others were the charging system and some of the automatics. I knew a lot of people who gave up on repairing the AC systems on their civics and accords.
The transmissions were funny ask any Honda and they will tell you how many they swapped but it never quite affected Honda the way those issues plagued some of the domestics.
The transmission issues affected the V-6 equipped Hondas and Acuras from 1999 through roughly 2005. The four-cylinder Accords were fine…we never had any transmission problems with our Accord.
There are still Accords from that generation on the road around here, but they are all the four-cylinder models.
I now have a 2017 Civic EX-T sedan with 110,000 miles. We’ve only had two issues so far – a door switch for the rear dome light was sticking (replaced under warranty at 35,900 miles), and the rear discs were replaced at 96,000 miles due to corrosion. Otherwise, the engine, transmission and other major components have been fine.
My 4 previous new car purchases, Toyota, Nissan, Isuzu, and Subaru, were all based on bad domestic car experiences in my family in the ’70s and ’80s. While my Japanese labeled vehicles had all reached my 10 year/200k mile threshold before replacement, a few have had surprisingly serious repairs – a transmission on the Isuzu, and a transmission and a number of constant sensor issues on the Subaru. Thankfully all transmission replacements were done early in the vehicle life and were under warranty. The sensor issues on the Subaru are just annoying.
I stuck my neck out this year and bought a Ford Maverick. If it wasn’t for the Toyota-licensed hybrid system though, I would have stuck with Japan Inc. So far in 12k miles I’m very pleased, and hope this ‘truck’ lasts me into the sunset….
My current DD is a 2005 Civic, bought just about 7 years ago. 113K on it then, 181K now. It’s needed a bit of work from time to time, but not too bad. I expect my next car will be a newer Civic.
I don’t have the link handy, but there’s a post on CC from a writer whose father had terrible problems with his Cadillac, had the dealer take it back under a lemon law, and got a Honda Accord.
I had a 95 Dakota and my father still has it. Extended cab V8 auto 4×4. I think domestics in the 90’s were a mixed bag sometimes even on the same model. I know some people who drove 90’s domestics to 200k trouble-free miles and others had experiences like yours. I bought the dakota at around 9 years old with 70k miles. Other than some issues with the blower motor and an AC clutch (both under 100 dollar repairs) it was fine for me for the 4 years we had it. I sold it to my father when we needed a bigger family vehicle. He has used it alot at times but mostly it sits between dump runs and towing his boats. He just had to have all the front end bushings etc done at 160k miles. and the ECM went out last year. But other than that it’s been pretty reliable for a 30 year old Mopar. I picked up a new to me motorcycle with it last weekend. Other than a driveline whine (maybe driveshaft bearing) it did just fine.
My problems were never THAT bad, but I owned a 1986 Pontiac 6000 V6 followed by a 1987 Grand Am “Tech 4” and the both of them needed Supreme gas not to clatter and knock like a 70s Montego when accelerating up a hill. Despite repeated warranty visits it was chalked up to “They all do that.”
Going from the 70s to the 80s only meant your car likely stayed started on the first crank and you never clenched tightly on that first morning merge into traffic. PLENTY of faults remained a mystery.
My Dad was a GM guy almost for life. Cadillac finally pushed too hard on an iffy repair to a barely-out-of-Warranty Sedan de Ville. He got Mom an ES300 and before the month was out his Blazer got replaced with an RX. Game over.
As others have noted, there’s a couple generations who got shafted over and over and over and over again by the Domestics, and Turning Japanese was like one of those films when you could start seeing in color.
I’m going to put down my thoughts based on my professional experiences instead of my personal car experiences. So I worked at a dealership for 12 1/2 years that had Buick, Cadillac, GMC and Honda. Started in 1988 till 1995 and again 2007 to 2011. First, in those 12+ years, I never had one GM get purchased back by the company but I had 2 Honda’s be purchased back for ongoing issues. Second, I would stroll through the shop daily and at times talk with the techs about issues with all the brands. The least problems were with the Buick line, then Honda, then Cadillac and GMC were about the same and close to Honda. Being in sales, I would always talk with my customers as they were in for service and learned first hand the issues they would have. The Honda’s were no better than the GM.
Thirdly, although this is different today, the Honda’s back then needed (to keep the warranty valid) a manual valve adjustment every 15K. This cost added up and we would often find “issues” before the customers knew there was any. The Buick’s never needed this and over the course of 120K miles, that cost would really add up. We once did a comparison of the Honda with just the required services for 120K and a comparable Buick for that same time. We took the regular services for the Buick along with a couple common minor issues just to be fair. In the end, the Buick cost less than the Honda to run for those 120K. Fourth, it was “normal” for the automatic Honda’s to vibrate like a washing machine when at a stop while in gear. You didn’t get that in the GM’s. Fourth, I had one client to had a 1989 Honda Civic she purchased from me new. She lived about18 miles from her job and thought the Civic would be good for the commute. However, she had several minor issues over the years, but it was the constant rotting exhaust pipes that drove her nuts. Honda tried to tell her that she did too many short trips and the exhaust never got hot enough!! This really ticked her off since her daily drive was 18 miles each way. She finally had enough and traded it on a 1993 Buick Skylark. She had that car forever and gave it to her one son who drove it into the ground.
An acquaintance of mine worked for one of the most prominent automotive “lemon law” firms in my state. The number of buybacks by a manufacturer was mostly a function of how hard the manufacturer fought claims, not the quality of its vehicles, according to his personal experience.
He said that Honda and Toyota were much more likely to work with the customer, and buy back the vehicle, than other manufacturers. The Germans (this was when Chrysler was owned by Daimler) were the worst. Ford and GM were in the middle.
Geeber: Interesting point of view. Thanks.
I will say that the 12 1/2 years at that one dealership, Honda was not at all nice to work with. From my experience, limited as that may have been overall, it was Honda that would fight it all. I literally stood there and heard the director of service for Honda’s Chicago region tell customers that “our cars don’t have problems”. That is an exact quote. GM on the other hand seemed to try and avoid buy-backs, but they worked with the customers more easily and that seemed to avoid the buy-backs.
As many may know from my comments, I’m not much of a fan of Japanese brands. What they may not know is why. Those 12+ years working around Honda really turned me off. I won’t go into detail here, but Toyota is worse yet (a friend works at a Toyota store for over 30 years now and he’s told me things). So for me, it’s not so much the product (cars), but more the way they do business that I can’t stand. I just find GM better there.
You’re welcome.
This person had a very negative view of the German manufacturers, based on his dealings with them. He also said that the vehicles from European manufacturers in general had the most problems.
Reading these comments, and the story itself, I believe that a decent dealer can nip a problem in the bid. It seems as though a fair number of the problems are rooted in poor dealer service.
Opinions will obviously vary on this, but my experience as a fleet shop foreman in the ’90s and fleet manager in the ’00s proved to me that Dodge/Ram trucks were far inferior to the GM or Ford competition from an operating cost and reliability standpoint. This over 20 years and maybe a 500 vehicle sample size. Chrysler Canada also had the worst warranty service, and some (not all) of the dealers were sub par. We had an excellent maintenance program that exceeded OEM requirements too.
Yeah, they were 800-1500 bucks cheaper per unit, but you paid it all back and more over a typical 7 year lifespan. Resale was always much less as well.
I refused to buy any more after a particularly bad batch in 2008, and after I moved on to another role my successor decided to try again. Same result. I know fleet use is tough duty, but the competition held up a whole lot better over time. No, not perfect, but way better.
As for Honda, there are at least a dozen in my extended family including my wife’s CR-V. With one exception, an Odysey minivan, they’ve all been great vehicles for years.
It’s no mystery to me why Chrysler/Diamler/Stellantis have struggled for so long.
Overall, our imports (mostly Honda with a little Mazda thrown in) have had better service records than our domestics. I am hoping that our recent purchase of a Charger will be a good one.
Off topic and just out of curiosity: how has the Charger been treating you so far? I recall your post from earlier this year…love that F8 green!
I can certainly agree that there is nothing worse than buying a new car and have it continually being riddled with problems. Even if the problems are being handled by the dealer, it’s a drag to have to bring it in constantly. The biggest asset of a new car is that it is supposed to provide trouble free service for many years.
I seldom buy new vehicles. My last two were in 2007, a V6 Mustang and a V6 F150. I still have the F150, which now has 177,000 miles. It’s been quite reliable over that time. In fact, I drove it on an 800 mile weekend trip to LA just a few days ago. The Mustang is now in my Daughter’s hands and has required a trans rebuild, and oddly enough a harmonic dampener replacement. It has almost 180,000 miles.
I will buy newer used cars more often, generally with fairly low mileage, a few years old. One advantage, besides the lower price, is that they are usually already sorted out. Any problems were usually addressed under warranty by the previous owner. Major mechanical failures due to manufacturing defects usually occur within the first couple of years. One exception was my ’97 Chrysler Town and Country which developed a lot of problems after it passed 120K. The trans was rebuilt once, the a/c system compressors went out, and I couldn’t get it squared away and sold it in disgust.
And then there are my old cars. mostly American. Generally they have been pretty good, as cars now last well over the 100,000 mile mark if well maintained. If they develop problems, well, that doesn’t come as a surprise, though I have been pretty fortunate.
My only new import car was my ’90 Civic Si, and that was probably the best car that I ever owned. I don’t dislike imports, in fact I think that they are very good cars, but I just don’t find them very interesting and now pretty much stick with domestic models.