It’s not “American made” that’s the problem,
it’s “union made” that is the problem.
Alabama has Honda, Hyandai, Toyota, and Mercedes plants. Your Ford has as good a chance of being made in Mexico, China or any other country as a Honda, Toyota, Nissan does of being made in America now. The lines are blurred.
DH and I have owned Fords and a Chrysler. I’ll never buy another Chrysler. We bought a Caravan back in the day when we our kids were little and at a little under 20,000 miles the head gasket blew. It wasn’t even 2 years old. Then there was another constant problem with the engine. If I have to slow down to make a turn it would just shut off. Which is a whole lot of fun in heavy traffic situations because it would just die in a turn. I’d shove it in neutral to crank it and pop it back in drive and try to not look at the people swerving around me, flipping me off or cussing me out because they had to slam on their brakes and were stuck behind me after the turn. Anyway 2 Transmissions, 2 Air conditioner compressors and 2 motors later (not even 75,000 miles) it went to the junkyard. I have never been so glad to be rid of any vehicle in my life. I didn’t think any vehicle could bring out pure hatred for a car like a Vega I had as a teenager did but the Caravan topped that.
We own a 92 Camry, a 95 Camry and a 99 Camry - all are over 200,000 miles. The 95 and 99’s both have over 300,000 (dh used both for work) We are still driving all of them.
We do have a 79 Ford F100 that’s in pretty bad shape but would still start with some tweaking and sweet talking. I joke you’d have to hold your mouth just so to get the old bomb going but it would run.
it’s “union made” that is the problem.
Bingo. There it is in a nutshell. Unions encourage laziness, inefficiency and selfishness. If the American car companies could avoid hiring union labor, the quality of their products would likely increase dramatically. The problem is the unions.