AJ drives a Mercedes 2 seater sports car (don't ask what type, I don't remember) and has, but doesn't drive, an ML-350 SUV.

I drive what my friends refer to as the Jankymobile, a 92 Civic VX, the ultra-fuel-efficient model that gets about 50 mpg. It is the 2nd '92 civic VX I've owned. The first one, after 185,000 miles, got rear-ended and then I rear-ended someone else a few months later, so I ended up with an accordion. I bought an Acura and drove it for a year or two, then I found a used Civic VX (same year as my original one) in 2005 with a very low 80,000 miles (low for a 13 year old car) and have driven it ever since. (I sold the Acura.)

And I agree with Bill that, for whatever reason, American cars (i.e., cars made by American auto companies, regardless of where they're actually built) seem to consistently have significantly higher incidence of repair issues and quality issues than foreign cars, even those foreign cars built in the US.

I think it's a mindset... the Japanese manufacturers have an obsessive focus on quality, and so perhaps it's the systems, quality standards, or whatever in Japanese-owned plants in the US that seems to enable them to produce cars with fewer quality and repair issues than their American counterparts.

BTW, my Civic was built in Canada. Go figure.