Have you ever put 100k or 200k miles on an american made car without any major problems?

[beachmouse]

We got 130K miles out of a 1995ish black Dodge Neon, supposedly one of the worst American cars of the 90s. Other than manufactured scheduled maintenance, we had an oxygen sensor go around 75K miles and the air conditioning regularly died over the winter for several years running. If we hadn't been living in Florida, we probably wouldn't have bothered getting it fixed again every spring. (The AC issue was apparently common enough in Neons of that era I'd call it a design flaw)

It also came to burn oil, which you just had to monitor. Except for the time when the repair shop tried to find and fix the oil leak, and then, in an epic screw up, failed to refill the engine oil after that service. We then drove the car to Orlando and back (800 mile round trip) with only a token amount of oil in the engine before we thought to check the dipstick and went all 'Oh Noes!!!'. And it kept running for another 40K miles after what could have killed it.

For all that we didn't like the car, it kept going through a lot of times when we couldn't have afforded a big repair bill or a new car. Its name- 'La Cucaracha' came because it just would not die when it had every reason to.

[BeauCharles]

I had an '89 Ford Taurus (parent's hand me down). It always had the engine oil and transmission fluid change frequently. 3K for the engine and just 15k-20K for the transmission service. It made it to 110K without drivetrain issues (before it was sold). A mechanic who did the last transmission service asked me if it had ever been rebuilt. I told him no and he was surprised. He said that many of them fail at around 50K miles. He said the inside of mine was clean as a whistle - no metal filings or gunk. We have have gone overboard on the frequency of the service, but it seemed to have kept major problems at bay.