Why are American branded trucks and most American branded vehicles so unreliable?

[Huntindog45]

always been a ford guy and could not disagree with any more. i drive my trucks hard, beet the hell out of them and they hold up great. I really have no clue where you are coming from on this one.

 

[Pacific_Fork]

I get a new top the line work truck about every 30 months or 100k miles. I’ve gone through 6 chevys and now trying my first Ford 2022 F-150 lariat.

They are all POS’s compared to my wife’s 4Runner as far as reliability. The chevys transmissions the past 7 years have all been compete shit. Constantly had recalls. My brand new ford has two recalls already, an AC that doesn’t work and Ford can’t figure out why, a window that rolls down on its own, etc.

It def seems like there’s little to no quality control for US made especially since everything went to computer chips.

 

[BRTreedogs]

Man, I'm not jealous and I regard unions as creeps overall. Their leadership are politically-motivated scum. Myself, my family, wife, etc, etc, have all been represented to some degree by unions in years' past for no good reason or outcome ever other than to drain our pockets for union-backed politicians = creeps.

There are some great Americans in unions, but overall they are a loathesome and corrupt org.

Well my company has been known to murder China men rather then pay them.

We're nothing more then an inconvenience to them.
Without my union I'm sure they would continue to work us to death for pennies

 

[deltadukman]

Why were the 6.0 Ford F250's and 5.4 F150's that you need to pull the engine to get to the broken spark plugs ever recalled. Not to mention the cam phasers and lack of oil pressure that burnt heads up. Reliable you say?

 

[Sapcut]

I get tired of all the companies that add gadgets and “features” rather than fixing known issues with their vehicles. All the truck commercials these days are about features. Tailgates that open 11 different ways, step ladders for fat people, lane sensors, 17 inch touch screens, seats that massage your butt….

Most domestic vehicles have a known issue that makes an otherwise great vehicle unreliable.

The problem is that Americans don’t want reliability in things. They want those features. Build quality doesn’t sell as well as cool gadgets or trends.

My wife has had 2 Honda’s go over 225k with no issues. They are bare bones vehicles. I assume Honda has just corrected problems rather than always redesigning and adding extra crap. If they built a truck I would probably buy one.

Zackly right.

 

[KurtR]

I get a new top the line work truck about every 30 months or 100k miles. I’ve gone through 6 chevys and now trying my first Ford 2022 F-150 lariat.

They are all POS’s compared to my wife’s 4Runner as far as reliability. The chevys transmissions the past 7 years have all been compete shit. Constantly had recalls. My brand new ford has two recalls already, an AC that doesn’t work and Ford can’t figure out why, a window that rolls down on its own, etc.

It def seems like there’s little to no quality control for US made especially since everything went to computer chips.

Since your ac doesnt work the pickup figures you need the window down. Its fords way of fixing it haha

 

[nobody]

I hear this- “dodge/ford/Chevy” has gotten so much better and Toyota has gotten worse, however I have been, and am around fleet vehicles that are primarily used on road with heavy miles, with about 20-30% off-road on trails. Not rock crawling, just the typical use off of paved/maintained roads with ruts, and mud, etc. These vehicles are replaced every 2-3 years and each one will have around 150,000 miles. No matter how many times it’s tried the Dodge rams, Ford F150’s, and Chevy 1500’s all show way more mechanical problems than the Tundras. The last batch of just over 20 dodges before they hit 100k miles we had multiple motors replaced, multiple transmissions, and multiple electrical issues that caused the trucks and people to be stranded. The Chevy’s and Ford’s are similar.

In two batches of Tundras, zero motors or transmissions replaced, 1 electrical issue that I remember that caused a taillight to go out prematurely and weird battery corrosion that didn’t cause a functional issue, just odd. No Tundra have broke down, no people have been stranded.



Now people have different ideas of “quality”. Mine is pretty simple- I don’t give two flips about fluff. I don’t want to screw with vehicles. I hate constant consistent maintenance- I want to put the key in, turn it and the vehicle start every time. I don’t care if one truck “has more power”, or “rides smoother”, or is “nicer”- it’s just a truck. I want the thing to work. @PNWGATOR sees my vehicles. I do not baby them. I might go 40,000 miles between an oil change (though I’m being better). I have a Tacoma that went 198,000 miles having the oil changed 4 times. It has 348k on it now and does get the oil changed at about 10k. The Tundra I’m driving is at 180k. It has a nagging tire pressure sensor issue, but that’s it.


All vehicles makes/models can and will have problems. I have no love for any vehicle brand. But what I see with 20+ trucks at a time used exactly the same way, is that if 20 trucks are needed, they get 20 Tundra’s. If 20 trucks are needed and they decide to go with another brand, they get 25-28 to cover when trucks are in for maintenance.

This is great to hear. I can only go off what I'm reading online, which is that reliability is decreasing for Toyotas based upon different ratings and websites online. I'll freely admit I'm wrong, in fact I hope I am, because the Toyotas still offer a ton that I like. Thanks for calling my post out sir, I better do some more digging.

 

[Broomd]

Well my company has been known to murder China men rather then pay them.

We're nothing more then an inconvenience to them.
Without my union I'm sure they would continue to work us to death for pennies

In the distant past, completely agreed. Unions served an important and meaningful purpose!
Nowadays? Lol.
The SEIU may be the biggest bunch of insects that this country has ever seen. But don't discount the corruption of the NEA, aka the teacher's union. Horrible org, one to which wife and I literally paid dues!

Sorry for the hijack, OP.

 

[jimh406]

The people who tear up American trucks match the use cases of Japanese vehicles better. Those of us who have no issues with American trucks match the use cases of the American trucks.

If only Japanese vehicles will hold up to your driving, it's pretty simple, don't buy American. Well, unless you need a truck bigger than a 150. Then, you are stuck buying American.

Then, there are some people who destroy whatever brand of everything they buy. I know a few people like that ...

 

[BRTreedogs]

In the distant past, completely agreed. Unions served an important and meaningful purpose!
Nowadays? Lol.
The SEIU may be the biggest bunch of insects that this country has ever seen. But don't discount the corruption of the NEA, aka the teacher's union. Horrible org, one to which wife and I literally paid dues!

Sorry for the hijack, OP.

Apparently you have never worked for a corporation who openly despises blue collar.

They take everything and anything they can from us at every opertunity they get.

My union has protected my position, pay, and safety several times in 16 yrs

 

[tradman]

GM and Chrysler should have been out of the game years ago. They are two defunct companies.

 

[CorbLand]

I get tired of all the companies that add gadgets and “features” rather than fixing known issues with their vehicles. All the truck commercials these days are about features. Tailgates that open 11 different ways, step ladders for fat people, lane sensors, 17 inch touch screens, seats that massage your butt….

Most domestic vehicles have a known issue that makes an otherwise great vehicle unreliable.

The problem is that Americans don’t want reliability in things. They want those features. Build quality doesn’t sell as well as cool gadgets or trends.

My wife has had 2 Honda’s go over 225k with no issues. They are bare bones vehicles. I assume Honda has just corrected problems rather than always redesigning and adding extra crap. If they built a truck I would probably buy one.

Ain’t you in luck.
The loan paperwork comes with divorce papers because no woman wants to be seen with you in one.

 

[Boxerboxer]

always been a ford guy and could not disagree with any more. i drive my trucks hard, beet the hell out of them and they hold up great. I really have no clue where you are coming from on this one.

Think about a jar full of 1000000 marbles, a mix of white ones and red ones. Say I don't let you peek at the jar but I let you pick 3 marbles out of the jar and then tell you, based solely on those 3, to estimate the percentage of marbles in the jar that are red. Even if the entire jar is well mixed and 70% white, you could still happen to pull out 2 or 3 reds, which would give you a very inaccurate picture of what's actually in the jar. In the same way, your handful of ford trucks that work great don't provide any usable information about the reliability of all ford trucks sold in the timespan in which you bought yours. It makes sense to use personal information if that's all you have, but when it comes to comparing reliability of two groups of many millions of cars each it's basically irrelevant. As the number of data points increases you slowly approach greater probability that your dataset represents the whole thing, and you certainly don't need to get anywhere near 1000000 to make accurate reliability estimates. This is supposed to be informative, not combative, hopefully it comes across that way, but the internet is a bastard when it comes to conveying tone and nuance, so I'm just gonna state it plainly. I'm certainly happy you've had good luck with your trucks, and not implying Ford is terrible. My view is that in the last 10-15 years American manufacturers have closed the gap quite a bit and that while they're not blowing Japanese cars out of the water like Japanese cars did to US made ones 25-30 years ago, they're probably more or less on par.

 

[Pdzoller]

Regularly drive Dodge, GM, Ford for work. All of them have warranty issues before 100k. The Nissan and Toyota vehicles we have seemed to fair better.

As for personal experience. Every American full sized pickup I’ve owned has either had to have some “upgrade or delete kit” to make it “bulletproof”.

Dodge - death wobbled me into oncoming traffic.
Ford - computer issues every 5k miles.
GM - needs a lift to make it over a speed bump.

 

[grfox92]

I've driven nothing but Fords my entire life, I have never once been broken down on the side of the road and never once had a catastrophic or expensive repair.

I broke down on the side of the road 1 time in my life and it was when I borrowed my uncles Toyota Tundra when my Ford was getting some bodywork done.

I'm not ignorant to know they Toyotas trucks are very reliable and tend to have less leaks and issues in high milage. But that's my personal experience.

Sent from my SM-G990U using Tapatalk

 

[Boxerboxer]

What about powertrain recalls?

Recall just means that the problem that is both known to the manufacturer and fixed by the manufacturer. Sometimes a problem is known and the manufacturer decides that they are willing to take the business risk of not fixing it. It's not cut and dried that a higher number of recalls is automatically worse. It might be, it's just not enough information to decide.

 

[Thinkingman]

So how is that not related to the reliability of a manufacturer? Didn't Ford recently issue like 9 million recalls?

The issue is the willingness of the manufacturer to admit a problem (Toyota flat out said they don't make defective vehicles...Arrogance AND stupidity in its highest form) and the other is the nature of the recall.

Is it a vanity mirror light that only works part of the time or is it THE LEAF SPRINGS AND FRAME UNDER THE BED OF WHAT SOME PEOPLE WOULD CALL A TRUCK?

I shouldn't have to shout like that but some people just refuse to admit when their favorite brand puts out a POS....And the fanbois keep running to them.

Counting the minutes till somebody posts how great their Toyotas are and I will reply 'Then Toyota should have asked you before they issued a recall.'

 

[southLA]

I suspect in this thread that everyone will say their truck is great. Carrying the theme, my F250 has 250+ on it and is still on the farm and my Tacoma has 180 on it and is still my daily. Never did much to either except wheel bearings and oil.

 

[JFK]

From Google: Toyota now builds the Tacoma at Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Guanajuato in Apaseo el Grande, Mexico. Citing the need to reduce overhead—namely in the form of labor—Toyota shifted production from San Antonio, Texas, to Mexico in 2021.

From Toyotas website: The Tacoma TRD Pro Series is assembled at the Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Baja California plant in Baja, California or Toyota Motor Mexico plant in Guanajuato, Mexico. The Tundra TRD Pro Series is assembled at the Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas plant in San Antonio, Texas. The 4Runner TRD Pro Series is assembled at Toyota's Tahara Plant in Tahara, Japan. Tundras and Sequoias are still built in Texas.

Thanks for posting. Didn’t know they had production in Mexico. Hope they keep their quality up.

I’m on my third Toyota truck. Have owned a 1988 pickup, 2000 Tacoma and currently own a 2017 Tundra. They aren’t perfect, and like anything they can break, but they are the most reliable set of wheels you can buy.

 

[rclouse79]

Small sample size, but I have had just as good luck with Suburbans and Yukons as I did with a Nissan Frontier.