the owner of my first car(ford escort)i took it to a mechanic i know as a friend when it developed a fault.
You should of bought 1 of these he says pointing to a mitsubishi colt.larf i larf so loud i nearly wet myself.Its 1987 im 17 what the hell do i want a jap car for!!
37 now and still japless?
is there still honda for the aged mentality towards japanese
cars?
PS do we still class the mazda as japanese?
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I think it is an age thing,anyone over 40 thinks Japanese cars especially Hondas are for oldsters,then there are the more modern thinkers,kids 17 and up that think Japanese cars are the coolest,especially Hondas.
Must have been something to do with the marketing,and we gullable Brits fell for it.
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> I think it is an age thing,anyone over 40 thinks Japanese cars
> especially Hondas are for oldsters
Yes, I caught a clip of Top Gear last night where JC was comparing the Civic Type-R to the new Golf GTI, and the little guy said something like "so the honda's faster, and much cheaper, why buy the Golf?", and JC said something like "because if you buy the Honda, then you've got a Honda", presumably implying that Honda's are a bit naff. I found this bemusing. I'm 32.
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I was a relative youngster when Japanese cars started arriving in great numbers in the early 1970's.
My father was in the car trade and the local traders used to say they were rubbish - there was a story that if you parked a Datsun Sunny on a hill you couldn't open the doors because the bodyshell was so weak.
Anyhow, we started to get a few in for service and found they were dead easy to work on. Then we sold a few s/hand and found that they didn't come back and the owners were happy. Only downside was the rust, but then they fixed that in the 1980's.
Japanese cars are well engineered and they all 'do what it says on the tin'. You can have reliable, bland and boring Japanese (Almera) or reliable, stylish and exciting Japanese (Skyline, FTO etc.). They all work well though, and are thoroughly engineered.
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ive got a new mk5 gt tdi.
My brothers got a honda hes 57.
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Count how many Colts you see on the roads and weep. We had one as an office runaround.....bombproof.
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Horses for courses I'd have thought. For those of us drivers who see cars as, mostly, a very convenient means by which to get from a to b, image and performance/handling are close to the bottom of the list of priorities. I don't want thrills and surprises from my car (a Mazda), I want it to start first time, get me where I need to go comfortably/safely with the stuff I need to carry and cost me as little as possible to run/maintain. Japanese cars fit that bill very well. For me, looking cool, the 'right' badge and performance I don't need and am never likely to use don't really come into the equation. My last car (Volvo 940se turbo estate) was extremely practical and reliable - it only let me down once in 6 years of ownership.
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But, again, you are making the mistake of lumping all Japanese cars together.
The Japanese are outstanding in just about every market segment - whether it be very small cars or real high-tech, high-performance stuff like the latest R35 Skyline.
They have made some superb cars over the years, like the Imprezzas and the Mitsubishi FTO Mivec - a lovely looking car which is dead reliable and one of the best handling FWD cars around with a glorious V6 engine which spins with ease to 8000rpm. If you want a 4x4 then, again, the Japanese knock the competition into a cocked hat.
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Yep Aprilia you're right to point out those Jap cars which are the exception to the rule. I was really only commenting on the mass market stuff. Some years ago I had the pleasure of driving a Nissan 200sxturbo for a few weeks (my brother's company car at the time). It was certainly fast and thrilling but turbo reliability was very poor apparently. Co-incidentally it replaced his Golf GTi (which I also drove for longish periods) and I preffered the Nissan.
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Remember it was Honda who taught the then British Leyland group how to build cars properly; contrast the Triumph Acclaim (a Honda Ballade) to the Allegro and Marina of the same era.
We still have several Acclaims in regular use around our area (one of them used to be owned by me and driven by both the offspring), but the Allegro and Marina examples faded away many years ago.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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The Acclaims rusted as badly as any BL cars though, so I am surprised there are many around. They were not bad cars to drive though.
Whilst I don't deny that Japanese cars have a good reliability record, I don't by into the myth that everything else compares badly with them. Actually, our family (me, Dad and my wife) ran a Marina for 10 years and nothing much went wrong with it. Not much rust at the end, either.
Since then I have had two Peugeot 309s, for seven years, which were totally reliable, a Xantia TD, which is still with us after nearly 11 years and is totally reliable, and, finally, a C5 which we have now had for two years. Of all of these, the C5 needed them most attention, having had the rear axle beam replaced, but it hasn't broken down.
The current belief is that if you have a French car, then it will almost certainly be an unmitigated disaster. My experience is the total opposite. It has been pointed out to me many times that experiences such as mine prove nothing, which I accept. However, I have enjoyed these cars and getting enjoyment out of owning a car is something that matters to me, as well as reliability.
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Back in the mid to late seventies I was involved in installing computer based stock control systems for the motor industry. I remember a meeting at a multi-site British Leyland franchise who were switching to Datsun. The Parts Manager asked the Datsun representatives what percentage of stock he should expect to hold for warranty claims (dealers holding stock - oxymoron?) One per cent or less they told him. A bit different to the forty to fifty percent I need to at the moment then? was his reply.
We bought 3 Bluebird estates for field engineers (they were happy it wasn't a Violet or a Cherry!) and each ran to 200,000+ miles with zero mechanical issues which we might take for granted now (with a few exceptions) but back then to run vehicles for that length of time with no unplanned maintenance was for us an eye opener.
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The Japanese had to overcome a great deal of resistance from the public in order to gain a toehold in the British market. In the seventies a large part of the working population had seen war service, many of those had been Japanese pow's and they could be quite abusive towards anyone who bought a Japanese car.
From what stories were going round at the time, it was a brave man who would leave a Datsun in the car park at Longbridge or Cowley.
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Tom Shaw has beaten me to it. Us older ones have heard too many stories about the Japanese. My uncle was captured at Singapore and was made to build the Burma railway, they did not treat him very well at all. He was lucky to come home, his wife did not recognise him, he weighed about four stones and suffered untill he died.
I would rather walk than drive a car from Japan.
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the germans killed my grandfather
but we cannot hold onto this stuff for ever
or we will end up like americans where 99 % of them think of themselves as irish despite never having been there or even met a real irish people
give peace a chance
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I guess that, emotionally, I understand your point.
However there are german/english, german/american, american/english, spanish/portugues, dutch/english etc. etc. histories Or even the vikings, it still happened even if we can't remember it. And the Normans were no better.
My point being all nations, even our own, are guilty of some misbehaviour or another. We need to let go of these things.
Also, this is a motoring forum and not the place for such discussions, so we will let it go in here.
Thank you.
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Tom Shaw has beaten me to it. Us older ones have heard too many stories about the Japanese. My uncle was captured at Singapore and was made to build the Burma railway, they did not treat him very well at all. He was lucky to come home, his wife did not recognise him, he weighed about four stones and suffered untill he died. I would rather walk than drive a car from Japan.
Its amazing how selective some peoples history is, if you really felt the way you do then there wouldn't be a country in the world that you could buy a car from. Every country has done things in the past that their not proud of.
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