Who Makes The BEST Appliances?

[clare]

Actually, the advent of lead-free gasoline had more effect on engine life (improvement) than any other single change in the last 50 years.

Less valve problems, spark plus last longer, easier on the engine oil, less engine corrosion, and longer muffler and exhaust life, to name a few.

One tuneup every 60,000 miles, which involves replacing spark plugs, PCV valve, and filters vs one every 12000 miles that included replacing plugs, points, condenser, filters and PCV valve as well as adjusting point gap (dwell) timing, carburetor, choke and valve clearance?

Hands down, I'll take today's engines - and I LOVE old cars.

And the old stuff was really HOT if it produced 1HP per cubic inch of displacement. Almost all of todays econoboxes excede that output.

With chain driven camshafts, if the oil is changed often enoug 200,000 on the chain is not a stretch. 60,000 miles on a 318 or 350 was doing pretty good

More expensive when it breaks? Perhaps. But you spend a significantly lower number of hours wages today to maintain the average car than you ever did in history.

[clare]

Actually, drum brakes are much superior to discs for the FIRST stop. Discs just handle repeated stops (heat) better. Drum brakes had adjustment issues but generally lasted as long as or longer than discs.

There are EFI kits available as well. Lots of "pro touring" modifications in the street rod world too.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Nate Nagel" wrote

He got a good one. They had trouble with rust when new at the dealer's lot sometimes.

[Stepfann King]

The manufacturer.

[aemeijers]

Early AMC hornets/gremlins had a similar problem. There was a shelf or lip up inside front fenders where salt-laden road crud would build up until it was pressing against the inside of the top of fender outboard of hood crack. Very bad design.

[RonB]

Michelle: You have probably figured out by now that folks have a few "opinions" on this subject. This is partly because of the fact that several of the old "tried and true" brand names have had their companies raided by accountants and mergers. All I can offer are observations from personal purchase and business associations:

- Amana used to be top of the line and they (Amana/Raytheon) literally invented the microwave. The brand has fallen victim to engineering-by- accountant.

- The good old reliable Maytag brand has fallen to a similar fate. A couple of dealers in our area that have handled Maytag for decades have discontinued.

- When we built our house 1-1/2 years ago we went with a mix of Bosch (diswasher) and GE (Gas Range, Microwave). Very happy.

- We looked at LG and were very impressed. The local dealer told us that the equipment was very high quality; and the service folks were impossible to deal with.

As said, our GE/Bosch arrangement seems to be working fine,

RonB

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Not only in appliance world, it happens every where. As a brass player I own vintage Besson horns. Besson is still in the market but ownership moved to Germany from England and they are made in China under German supervision. What the hell does it mean? I currently have GE/Whirlpool, so far no problems after more than 15 years in use.

[krw]

That wasn't the only vary bad design in the AMC Gremlin. Been down that road.

[clare]

And the 15 year old machines that have given you no trouble are absolutely no indicationthat today's machines with the same label might be anywhere near as dependable.

[salty]

Newer machines might just as easily be MORE dependable than older ones.