Was a dyed in the wool Ford fan until 3 of our family's 3 Ecoboosts had major issues. My F150 had $10k in repairs in 7k miles of ownership, 61-68k. Grandma's Expedition caught fire at 55k getting on a freeway on ramp, replaced it with a Tahoe. Dad's F150 lost a trans at 20k (drove it as a commuter, never towed or hot rodded), and the replacement never did shift right no matter what Ford did. Plus it had the timing chain rattle. With fuel costs as high as they are, he just traded it in on a Honda Accord for the mileage. No more 3.5 Eco-bombs for our fam.
Dad sold his 2002 7.3 Lariat this summer with 120k on it (for the same money he paid for it back in 2008), those engines are awesome. But the trans was the weak point and the rest of the truck was starting to rust out. The new diesels scared him with all the horror stories on the DEF systems grenading and causing ridiculous catastrophic failures. Plus the ridiculous prices for the mileage, he wasn't going to have a truck with fewer miles on it. Luckily, grandpa (his father in law) decided to sell his truck and cut dad a smoking deal on his '07 LBZ Duramax with 50k on it, $28,000. But otherwise, he was going to dump a ton of money into the 7.3 to fix it up because he wasn't going to play roulette with the new trucks.
Currently I'm driving a half ton GMC with the 5.3, going on year 3 of ownership. Not many miles put on it so far and I've been happy with it, I'm almost to 135k. They're not bulletproof, but GM has been building that 5.3 for a long time so there's lots of mechanics who can work on them and tons of parts available, and their issues and fixes for those issues are well documented. Gets good mileage and it's very comfortable to drive.
That said, my next one will be a Tundra. Just hard to beat Toyota for the peace of mind. I'll never play the diesel game personally.
