What would it take for you foreign car owners to buy an AMERICAN CAR Again ?

Where can I get a Holden in the US?

Wizard of Oz wrote:

Where can I get a Holden in the US?

From a Pontiac dealer.

diesel powered baby wrote:

Interesting. I mistakenly thought that VW's only diesel on the US market was the Jetta TDI. The last time I was in the market for a new car was when the Pius and Insight just came out and I never understood why anybody would buy one of those silly looking things when the TDI was available and got better mileage (on what was at the time cheaper fuel) and didn't have the massive built-in cost for future battery pack replacements.

What does your civic get wrt gallon mileage? When mine is tuned and running well, I still get > 40 highway. Which again makes me wonder why anybody would buy a silly Pius or Insight.

Not really sure what the civic gets on the highway- anytime we go for a longer trip we take the passat. Most of the time it just sits there, but in town gets around 30 mpg.

My parents bought their first of four Toyota Corollas in 1977 and those four never had a significant problem that wasn't predictable (eventually all clutches die) throughout their entire use. This generation of owners has had such success with Japanese cars they probably won't go back anytime soon - even if the reliability is decreasing which it is.

With the lack of a reasonably decent looking Toyota wagon (I don't think the Matrix is very good looking, in all truth), my mom bought a base model Forester. Driving slower on the highway using cruise control at 68 with the four cylinder engine the car gets 28-30. I have a manual Outback and I can get 27. The AWD definitely affects fuel economy, however; you wish you could turn it off somehow.

I own an American car, currently, after decades in European and Japanese cars. Not great but I got it for a steal and it does the trick for my purposes just fine. My next car will probably be Japanese or I might just get a motorcycle, maybe a Buell, a Triumph, a Suzuki, a Ducati, a Victory, or a Honda. (Harleys are lame.)

grease monkey wrote:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2007/04/top-picks-for-2007-4-07/overview/0704_top-picks-2007.htm

You do realize that every other car on that list was japanese or korean.

I'm not sure where they're made anymore, but Mazda is owned and operated by Ford, so I'm not sure they count as Japanese.

In all seriousness, though, as many people have noted, in this age of globalization it's difficult to define which country makes a car. Are we going by the founders' country of origin, or their current location? What about the location of assembly plants and parts manufacturers?

Why did you capitalize the word again? Why did you put a space between the word again and the question mark?

Running Bear wrote:

If theres an AWD vehicle out there that gets good mileage (30), I'd like to know about it.

The Subaru Impreza and the Suzuki SX4 are close to that (maybe 27-28 highway) and have decent cargo room if you get a wagon with fold-down seats. Toyota is supposedly coming out with a subcompact SUV, at least in Europe, based on the Scion xD platform in the next few years, that should get good gas mileage.