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PackardV8, yes, the Cherokee that was so incredibly reliable was the 4.0 liter pushrod six, which began life as a Nash engine around WW II.

My father over his many years on earth had one Ford and a Plymouth all the rest GM products. My father traded about every three years buying a new Chevy with exception of two new Oldsmobiles. He never had a lemon amongst the lot.

My brother has purchased his share of new GM products including a new 1976 Vega never any major problems with any of them.

I myself prefer GM sedans over other makes. This summer I sold a 1992 Buick Century that gave us no trouble in the eight years we owned it. Bought a 2007 Chevy Cobalt and I just love the car. On the other hand I prefer owning Ford trucks over what is offered by Chevy.

John F. Shireman

Packard53. Why do u prefer Ford trucks over GM????

Owen. The AMC 6 cylinder was a great engine for power. A great engine all around. Difficult to change lifters in tho because head has to be removed (ca. 1970 models). I had trouble with the 232 and 258 6's (ca. 1966-1973) lifters. I think they also built a 196 cid I6 engine earlier than the 1970 time frame.

ODD that i had a 66 Classic with 6/stick. Went thru 3 transmissions until someone gave me for free a real nice 65 6/stick Classic HT. The trans in the 65 was 1/4 inch longer than the 66 trans. Never had any more trans troubles after i swapped out the 66 trans for the 65.

My all time favorite of the post 60's AMC products is the Pacer with 6 cylinder. I'd like to have one today.

I worked for AMC headquarters in Detroit from 1978 to 1982.
AMC had corporate office and attire accesories. Cuff links, tie tacks, neck ties coffee mugs etc. NONE of them had Pacer motif however. EVERYOTHER model including Jeep but NO Pacer. Of course i bitched about it but to no avail.

My family has owned Dodge/Plymouth, or ford since the 50s, and I personally always owned Dodge. Weve had 6 Dodge trucks, and the only problem weve had to date was one transmission in the 96 1500.

My 1993 D-350 has just over 222,000 miles and still runs great, Dads hemi 2500 just turned 100,000 miles.

I work as a town mechanic right now, and we run mostly ford cars and trucks. I do not intend to ever purchase one, but the few chevies we have are worse. much much worse.

I've always bought Fords and Buicks when able to choose instead of necessity. I stick with full size Ford 74-78 and full size Buick 71-76 for daily drivers. The Buicks were higher maintenance, but more fun. Been using the same 78 Ltd for 9 years. extremely reliable, easy to maintain and parts are cheap and plentiful. If I were to buy a truck, it'd be a Ford as my father's served him well till his end.
Even then it would be 1978 and older as electronic crap creeps in after then.

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I've only owned 2 new vehicles, my '96 GMC 2500 4x4 and a 1986 Suzuki Samurai that I sold with over 191,000 miles. As of this morning I have personally put 345,383 miles on my 2500's engine. It runs like a dream. Never had any major trouble with engine or transmission. Towed my dad's 46 clipper from PA to SC through the Mtns of WV and never dropped below 60-mph. The 350 Vortec is an amazing engine. The truck is a battle wagon. It's been rear-ended more times than Barney Frank at Disney World.

I'm not sure how you can say big oil was complicit in the '70's automotive $%#$@. To meet CAF? the amount of steel in a car was cut around 25%. Are you saying they conspired to supply more plastic for the cars? I truly think it was a case where the bean-counters and politicians influenced the design more than the engineer. What car person with an ounce of self-respect and any eye for automotive beauty would roll out something like the '74 AMC Matador or the Pacer or Monte Carlo or the Grenada. We had lost our way. How cool was it when they rolled out the production models of the Prowler and Viper. I felt like I'd finally been cleansed of the '70's.

The Pacer, Gremlin, Granada and Monte Carlo had their audience, at that time in history, and the numbers on each are not small. You have to look at any car as an answer to a market that existed at the time. Look at Packards, for gosh sakes--a friend of mine said "Packards were great cars, the world just stopped making the kind of people who bought them", and to a large extent I think he was right.
Vipers are great, I just don't think everyone wants or needs or can handle a car that can acclerate that fast or handle like that. The more nimble the everyday car becomes the worse they are driven by average drivers (and below average) at high speed. Ford works hard at making their SUVs handle like cars, and I think that is not necessarily good. When a truck handled "like a truck" you drove it more conservative manner, now people drive them at 85 mph+ threading the needle through traffic. Halo cars like the Viper and Vette are good, makes a splash at introduction and lets family men dream, but you can't make your whole product line out of them. Chrysler tried from 2005 until the money was all gone.

IMHO, CAFE was a response to the so-called shortage of oil, yet all-too-real spiralling prices at the pump, back in the the 1970s.

Yet, instead of pursuing and promoting viable alternate sources of energy back then, the oil companies just rode the wave of windfall profits from a non-renewable resource. I'm not saying that oil needs to be eliminated as a fuel, but more alternate sources of energy, besides diesel, are needed to help keep things competitive in the marketplace. I don't believe that alcohol as a fuel is the solution, either. Meanwhile, I recently learned that there's a South American country in OPEC that exports the majority of its oil, but powers the majority of its domestic vehicles on natural gas.

Ironically, third parties (outside of oil refining and auto manufacturing) in this country had sucessfully refitted internal combustion gasoline engines in more than one GM vehicle to run on hydrogen back in the mid-1970s, but nothing ever came of it. While on-car storage of hydrogen gas posed some issues, the greater problem was distribution, and guess who controls that? Fifteen years later, talk began to turn to hydrogen fuel cells for (electrically-powered) vehicles instead of hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines, but twenty years after that, they're still talking about hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles. I'm less inclined to believe anything will ever come of that. Meanwhile, when was the last time there was a new oil refinery built in the U.S.?

While I can't cite any specific evidence of direct collusion between the Big Three and Big Oil, there are too many stories about energy-saving technology being suppressed over the decades, and where there's "smoke", there's "fire".

Personally, I suspect that Big Oil worked closely all along, but behind the scenes, with the gubbamint and the automakers to help give the appearance of responsible conservation, while maintaining those windfall profits - at the expense of the consumer and our future. You're probably right about them making more $$$ on all the additional plastic that replaced steel, too.

However, increasingly speculative trading in recent years, which Big Oil was able to cash in on once again, caught the Big Three asleep at the wheel with too many SUVs that got far worse MPG than the large sedans that they seemed to have replaced in the marketplace.

I'm glad to hear that you've gotten such great service out of your 2500, especially with so much towing. GM and Ford have built some pretty tough trucks. However, not everyone wants a big truck, and not everyone wants a fuel-sipping egg on wheels.

Presently, my daily driver is '98 Monte Carlo, which I've owned since new, but was never what I'd call a great car. (I much prefer those big old 1973-77 Montes.) However, it gets nearly 33MPG on the highway and 24-26MPG just back and forth to work and on errands - a good compromise of space and economy. Yet, I can't find an equivalent new 2-door car built by the Big Three to replace it. While there are times when I could use a pickup, as well, I'd be nuts to pay $25K for a regular cab, short-box "work truck" with flat black trim, painted bumpers, and no carpet - especially when there is so much good used iron still out there.

The main problem is that the most troubled automakers aren't making the kinds of cars that enough consumers want, but that's a greatly over-simplified point. How to rectify that situation is the challenge.

The way I look at it is government meddling in business. What they did with automobile design in the 70's was criminal. A car company now has really nothing to worry about other than maintaining the appearance that you are "too big to fail". The only thing you can do to make a change in a car company is to use your wallet. You give that control over to the government when they are propped up with your tax dollars without your consent. It no longer matters what you want. It becomes what the government wants. That is where we are now and that is where we were in the 70's. The EPA and the CAF? standards of the '70's dictated what the car manufacturers would build and what paint they would use. Do you remember those first few years of the low VOC paint? Let the companies fail, let them reorganize. If we can't do it right, then the Koreans should be building our cars.

It's funny that someone mentioned the K-car. When I was in the Army, the CG had a lime green K-car as his staff car. No one paid any attention to that little box, and the blatant lack of salutes caused a directive to be issued that ALL K-cars would be saluted by everyone regardless of who was in them.

The problem with car manufacturers today is that people are too stupid to realize they're buying a pile of crap. In today's disposable world, it's completely common and accepted to buy a new car every couple of years, as the old one is worn out. Compare this to even the '60s, you still got a good car for the money. Today, you buy a car for $20,000 that is no where near the quality of a $2000 car in the '60s and before. I question the arguments of "safety" and "durability" of these new cars, as I've seen too many of these new cars basically cut in half by an accident. That doesn't convey the meaning of the word "safety" to me. I'd much rather be in a '50s car and older in an accident than anything purported to be "better" and "safer" by these new car manufacturers. This is the main reason why I told my wife I'll no longer own a car newer than 1956 after we trade off the Jetta in a couple of years. I will no longer be buying a "new" car, I will stick to driving Packards from now on. Might buy me a Studebaker pickup if I ever find a decent one....