Design your ideal vehicle

I've been wanting to restore one of these as my all around vehicle for years but they're hard to come by up here . Straight 6 with a wooden bed, no a/c and crank windows  . This is my idea of the perfect truck .

53 Chevy

This is what I drove in Australia when I was over at PA.

Daily Bread wrote:

Casey Jones wrote:I would never buy a new one.

Too much expensive stuff to go wrong; and I don't have faith in Chrysler, or whoever owns Jeep today, in making quality stuff.

Go old or go home.  If it's a toy, it won't matter that it's old, if it's in good shape.  Get your transportation appliance to go to work in; and have your tricked out toy for your playtime.

I've got a Chrysler 300 thats a 2007 and other than front end bushings and tie rods ( the front end is too heavy for the parts they used) I've never had a problem with it . Power and plenty of interior space with a huge American old school trunk and I'll buy another if this one goes on me .

2007 was the cutoff. 2007 was when Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus and got out. Daimler destroyed that company, but at least they valued engineering, and did some themselves, as controllers of Chrysler.

I had a 2007 minivan I bought new, but I had it in some abusive situations, and it had 45,000 miles on it...and the Ultradrive transmissions they used in those, were getting a reputation for failure...so, with it looking good and running right, I sold it.

I would never buy one, now. Cerberus didn't have the resources to invest in Chrysler and they let it go into bankruptcy. Fiat doesn't know how to engineer durable cars. Jeep, from the early 1990s to the mid-20002, was one of the more-reliable American brands. I had a 1993 YJ myself - great car, even though it had 80,000 miles on it and had been abused. I ran it for 40k more, but I was job-jumping and moving, and the money I could raise off it was worth more than it was worth to me.

That was then. Daimler rejected the AMC four, one of the better small engines used in SUVs, an engine that Chrysler in fact used in other Dodge trucks...instead, they put the Neon engine in the Wrangler, where it just...didn't...work. No torque and not up to off-road abuse.

Fiat did worse, and found another engine design in their pile of failed engine designs. Jeep now, according to Consumer Reports, is one of the most-troublesome American brands.

Because Fiat. Because F-I-A-T means Fix It Again, Tony!