05-23-2007, 10:12 AM
TurboOmni08 Wrote:Thanks for your incredibly insightful input. What a great blanket statement based on one abused rental car, glad you could help us all learn. It should be obvious to any reasonable person that the car has be beaten like a red-headed step child (ginger?) Even with 4000miles if the car is having that many problems it has seen its share of neutral drops. Nothing you have stated is common. It is absurd to make an assumption about a whole product line based one one car....especially a rental car.
I understand you have a personal interest in the brand, but dont let it cloud your judgement here.
I've traveled for work and vacations quite a bit, and I have had a lot of rental cars here and there. Some are good (Mazda, Nissan), some are so-so (Chevy, ford focus) and some suck (Chrysler, V6 mustangs). You can say they are abused rentals, but hey have all had some miles on them and probably subject to the same abuse and it comes down to the build quality. Ergonomics, steering, transmissions and interiors on most of the smaller american cars just suck. It really is awful and it has nothing to do with abuse - and if it cant hold up to a few thousand miles of rental use how is it going to hold up to 100K miles, or more, of daily driving?
The american mfr's seem to get it right with trucks, but they really miss the mark with sedans.