You would be surprised with the quality of the cars in the last decade. The one thing I have to give it to Ford over GM is if they have a problem, they fix it during production. My father was a quality control engineer in the 1990's with Ford. When they had failure problem with parts, they would stop producing cars until replacement parts were brought in. This wasn't necessarily just another batch of the same parts. Sometimes they had to redesign the part and get a test quantity to make sure the part worked, before continuing full production. I had Corvettes for 14 year, and modern ones from 1987 to 1999. The problems I had persisted from year to year, even after several model years. Ford is not perfect, but quality and fit and finish has improved dramatically. Perception becomes an issue with US auto makers. They were forced to have much higher standards or they would have gone bankrupt. Ford reacted first of the big three to get that point, Chrysler second, and GM last. Lucky for me my Shelby is far more reliable and cheaper to maintain than my Corvettes. Lee 66 # 869