I can't pile on the Chrysler hate.





I have worked as a tech at a Toyota dealer, and this may rustle some arcom jimmies, but we never had a shortage of work, we constantly had a shop full of broke down late model Toyota's to fix and a line of them waiting to get into our bays. I also worked as a tech at a Ford Dealer, and also always had plenty of broke dick Fords waiting to be fixed.





The big difference? The owners, Toyota owners were often willing to rationalize their car being broke down when it shouldn't be. Tundra owners with bad rear ends at 25K? They would convince themselves that they should have had it serviced at some imaginary mileage, 10K, 15K or whatever, but they refused to accept that Toyota sold them trucks with shitty rear ends. Tacoma frames rusting out? That was the previous owners fault obviously, he had probably been driving it on the beach too much, or it was a "northern car" and the road salt rusted out all cars just as fast.





At the Ford shop the owners were different, they would bring in a car with 10K on the clock, and wheels with heavy road rash front and rear on one side, complaining about who shitty the car was because it was making a funny noise when they turned. Mustangs came into the shop on Monday morning and still had chalk numbers on the windows, registered owner explains to us that his son was driving it and it just stopped as he was sitting at a red light, and Ford sucked because there is no way a six month old car should have a locked up engine.



ETA: I have owned several Chrysler products over the last twenty years, four Neons, an LHS and a Caravan. All of them were very reliable vehicles, two of the Neons went well over 200K without any mentionable repairs, one was totaled at 180K, and the third is still going strong at 170K. The LHS was actually surprisingly trouble free, bought it new in early 97, put 120K on it between then and 2005, it was hit and totaled. While I owned the LHS I had to replace a blower motor resistor pack, way out of warranty, and went through a couple of MAF sensors before figuring out that I had an intake gasket leak which cost $12 and two hours to fix. The Caravan was a 2000 model I bought used for next to nothing in 2008 with 125K on it already. We put 70K on it over the next five years, in the time we owned it I had to replace a wheel bearing, and put a set of tires on it, aside from very routine maintenance that is it. I got more from the insurance payout than I paid for it.



During that time I bought a Kia Minivan, a 2005, I let the multitudes of glowing reviews about how great Kia was, and how much better their vehicles were at that point then in the past cloud my judgement. It was the biggest POS I have owned since I quit paying $400 for vehicles. In three years and 60K miles (bought new) there was always something wrong with it, including sliding door bearings that had to be replaced every 20K miles, I don't believe that the Caravan  we replaced it with had ever needed anything done to the sliding door bearings in the nearly 200K it was on the road, I doubt they had ever even been lubed and they still worked fine. The Kia, every 20K it needed new sliding door bearings or the rear doors wouldn't open or close, and it needed a new set of four tires, and front brake pads.