It is, at best, about a 3rd level application of Scripture, but if regarded as a Biblical principle, I think that the message given to the Jewish exiles (to Babylon) teaches that we should "seek the success of the 'city' in which we find ourselves". So I always try to buy products of the country in which we are living. So in Brazil, we drove a vehicle built in Brazil. They do not have any vehicle whose top level company headquarters is located there, so we had a VW. The operation there is, I suspect, largely locally administrated, and all of the cars sold there are manufactured there.justme wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 10:07 pm it's interesting to me, that very few people have recommended domestic vehicles.
i've been hearing a lot of subaru forester, a lot of toyota, a lot of honda.
i think that in this thread, neto and ohio jones were the only ones w anything good to say about domestic cars. i liked my malibu, i mean, at 19 years, it still gets 29 mpg. and would seriously consider another one, except that i think that a small suv would work better for me. i haul a lot of tupperware to vendor events, and it seems to me that i need to factor that into my decision.
the good thing is, my car is currently running, and so i have time to search for the perfect vehicle.
It gets muddy when you start talking about "American made vehicles" now-a-days, because many foreign companies manufacture the vehicles for the American market here in the States. But there is the difference of how much of the profits flow immediately out of the country. Chrysler is no longer an American company in the sense that it is now owned by an international (mostly European) corporation. So I tried to keep pretty low-key on my endorsement of that company, but I am definitely not a "Ford guy", and not into Chevrolet, either. I went along with the purchase of the Honda as a compromise with my wife, who comes from a "Ford family", and also because we liked it more than others we looked at or test drove. (We also looked at a couple of Chevrolets, and drove a couple as well.) The Honda salesman was also not in the least pushy, like the typical car salesman. I actually didn't test drive it myself. We asked him to do it, and the entire time we were out on the road with it was a constant flow of information on the car, as he demonstrated one feature after another. No, I don't like all of the automation. And sometimes when I walk through the garage (even without the dongle) it is quietly humming to itself - something at the rear right side. I have not been able to pinpoint the source of the noise, nor has anyone on the Honda forum I joined been able to tell me what it is. I kinda' suspect it is the fuel pump keeping up the pressure or something like that, but as I mentioned, no one seems to know. One thing is for sure, you cannot just leave one of these newer cars set for extended periods without having the battery run down over time. The old cars, when you turned off the key, EVERYTHING was powered off. Not anymore. It's a constant battery drain. (Our house here is the same. There are appliances all over the house that have constantly lit LEDs and what not. I look back at our house in the Banawa village with nostalgia - there, everything was off at night. (Well, there WERE a couple of LEDs on the solar array charge controller....)
One of the Dodges I need to sell is a Dodge Journey. It is a cross-over, built on the Dodge Stratus class. On that one, I thought I was getting an American car, but after signing, saw that it was manufactured in Mexico, and came across the Gulf into Florida, where we bought it. Oh, that's something I would say as well - Unless you are buying a vehicle that is no more than a year or two old and has been very well maintained at a good car wash, don't buy one from the Salt Belt.