Want a reliable truck? Get an old Dodge D or W-series and screw the new stuff.
I'd rather have an old American-built junker (Ford, Dodge, or otherwise) than buy any of the aforementioned new trucks. There is a great peace of mind fixing cheap, old garbage yourself than handing expensive, new garbage over to a repairman that I don't know, with skills that I don't trust, at a dealership who I don't like, who will try to tell me that they fixed the truck with magic fairy dust and voodoo.
Yes, I know there are some great mechanics out there, but I only know of one I can trust implicitly - myself.
What's more, I don't trust modern management of the 21st century, or anything it puts out. The corporate workforce has been a poster child for sloppy, dispassionate, and uncaring attitudes since our B-bodies were built. Today's incarnation adds 10 times the corporate bureaucracy and politics that existed back then, not to mention the cultural mess that happens every time a company changes hands (here's looking at you, Daimler-Chrysler).
Neither do I buy into the "American-made" nonsense anymore, not for any company, including import vehicles made here. Crack open enough parts, and you'll find significant international outsourcing from one supplier or another. Anyone who thinks that any American vehicle today is virgin to China is fooling themselves like a Craigslister asking $20k for a slant six Duster with a tree growing through the hood.
For that matter, I don't care whether it comes from here or there - we've had enough garbage come from North America to render the previous point moot. If everyone weren't so hell bent on profit (can't blame anyone for that though), China could build stuff to a better quality than we can. They have the tools and infrastructure, we just keep accepting things built to crap specifications. Heck, I dare you to go out and try to buy a set of jackstands - or a jack - in the year 2015, and not be forced into buying a variation of a Chinese tool sold at Harbor Freight - whether Chinese or American made (Ironically enough, many of these Chinese stands - bad as they are - are still superior to American-made, consumer-grade RIVETED jackstands of the 1960's and 1970s).
Want a real jackstand? Germany has the best - and trying to get some of those brands is next to impossible here in the States. Guess nobody here in America wants to put the effort or money into buying some good jackstands to eliminate the possibility of getting smushed under their favorite car when doubling up on poor-quality jackstands will do!
But I digress. What about access to repair data on new vehicles? Shop manuals? Knowledgebase articles? Recall information? Forget it. You don't get access to it, and when the tools do get sold off from dealers, individuals get locked out of the database. Presto, you just bought yourself a $40,000+ piece of four-wheeled yard art if something in this frail supply chain of information doesn't become public before your warranty runs out. Not to mention closed parts supply networks.
By comparison, the old stuff has the best manuals ever written for them, and the most comprehensive failures and "recalls" ever documented. It's called the internet, and its filled with decades of independent research from the largest team of beta testers ever compiled - owners and DIY'ers. And that includes people who are engineers and scientists by trade, who - given the opportunity and time - are often more effective at locating and/or solving factory design issues on an internet forum in the space of a week than the automaker is in solving the same problem in a year. Let's not forget the fellows with machining and CNC abilities either, who can build superior parts too.
Try digging up resources like that for new stuff. Nope.
My stuff is "proudly FIXED in America by my own two hands." And
that's when I can rest easy and be proud of my gas-drinkin', piston-clunkin', air-pollutin', smoke-belchin' four-wheeled buggies from Detroit City.
The Dodge brothers almost owned Ford.
Better than almost owning Chevy.
-Kurt
