Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings
Yeah, as a Kiwi, I&#x27;m entirely unsurprised. I&#x27;ve owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan - that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and Aus.<p>It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive, but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find official parts for them.<p>It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot&#x2F;trunk latch that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot&#x2F;trunk by plastic pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30 only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that always leaked and you could never quite fix.<p>The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name.<p>I don&#x27;t know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.