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I don't think either is better, just different.

You say you think the Europeans have an advantage here, but you haven't mentioned a single reason why. There's no debate until you bring up some points. Until you do, I don't know what standards you're using to determine which side is "better".

In response to your reasoning on the Subaru Impreza imitating Porsche, I want to point out that those cars are very different (They don't compete with each on the market or on the racetrack). Subaru has used boxer engines in it's cars for years. Almost all of their cars have one. The boxer engine is as much a symbol of Subaru as it is of Porsche.

And you didn't seriously say European cars were more reliable than Japanese cars, did you? Put your reasoning aside for a sec and do some research. European cars tend to have wiring problems after a few years. Last time I checked, even American cars were beginning to surpass European cars in reliability according to Consumer Reports anyway.

You hear about how reliable Honda and Toyota are, when was the last time you heard anything about how reliable BMW or Mercedes or VW were?

You do have a point on the ease of repair, one of my friends has an older Golf and that engine bay looks so easy to get into. Newer Euro engines are much more difficult though. And of course, there's the fact that while ease of repair is nice, reliability means that it shouldn't need repair at all.

How's that for a counterpoint? I guess we can say that I'll be taking the Japanese side of this argument, and you took the European side?

If you want to keep this going, it should be fun. Finally a debate I'm actually interested in continuing.

Bear in mind that like all other debates, opinion is entirely subjective. I can think of reasons why anything I like is better, but it should be fun.

Oops. crying I totally forgot to include that I was talking about older European cars. Newer European cars anger me (except for Porsche, and granted, they're just as hard to fix as all the others, but there's a lot of things they haven't changed yet, which makes me glad), such as the new Beetle. Sure, the body looks kinda nice, but what made VW suddenly decide to scrap the boxer and put in an inline-4... IN THE FRONT!? I'm going to agree that these days, car companies aren't what they used to be, but the same thing can be said across oceans and continents.

Although parts for Japanese cars are dramatically less, new Toyotas and Hondas are guilty of the same things new European and American cars are of: the impossibility for someone who isn't a mechanic having the ability to fix generally any components on the car so that dealer mechanics can make more money, and thus, the company yielding more profit as well.

I drive a Japanese car. Two of my dream cars are Japanese, even (I'm driving one of them right now), but knowing that I can use VW parts (which are very common and surprisingly cheap) on most 1980-1995 Porsches, why do you think that my number 1 is the Porsche 911? Granted, even the older 911 is a little up-there in terms of cost, and I'm not entirely able to use cheap VW parts only to repair every aspect of it, but being able to get a small, LH drive car with a twin turbo (depending on trim), RR flat-6 engine and actually being able to work on it normally.... that's pretty awesome. (To establish a little credibility in knowing this: my friend's dad is a VW mechanic and owns a '94 911 Type 993. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time over there learning about it.)

Japanese cars are definitely better in terms of expense, as long as you don't own a new one or an much older one (like, pre-1970), namely because of either steep mechanic costs or impossible-to-find parts, respectively.

For me, reliability not only means how well the design and parts given last, but how convenient it is to replace/rebuild said parts when they do eventually gimp out; in other words, how reliable a car's mechanical design is to allow one to perform routine maintenance and occasional repairs without having to take them to a dealer mechanic or a shop to have work done and be charged enough money to buy another car.

You won't see that on any car these days, but for me, if it's an 1989 or older European car (namely common ones, like the VW Beetle and whatnot), you'll actually have an easier time finding parts for them, depending on the car (say, an 1983 VW Cabriolet compared to a 1977 Honda Civic). If it's anywhere between 1990-1999, Japanese cars will take the cake on that one.

Believe it or not: VW Beetles break down... ALOT, but for those who've actually owned them, this becomes, oddly enough, an advantage, not only because of the abundance of aftermarket and original Beetle parts, but because of how convenient it is to fix them and get them moving again. Most of the time, a rusty, old, non-working Beetle is in that shape because the owner simply got tired of repairing it; not because of how much it cost to fix it and how much time it took. I've seen stock Beetles reach the millions on the odometer readouts (some of which having ORIGINAL parts on there, like most of the interior components, body, and timing gear), which can't be said about a lot of cars. The fact that the Beetle (in addition to VW's other old cars, like the Karmann Ghia and Bus, which used the same engine) is that magnificent, and overall, European, tells me that Europe, at one time, knew what they were doing.

In the end, it really depends on what car you're talking about. In the long run, you'll encounter high repair expenses for, say, BMWs, Ferraris, and whatnot, in addition to uncommon Japanese cars (here in the US) like Daihatsus and Honda NSXs.

As for American cars, I don't have a lot to say about them. The older Ford Escort's not bad, and a lot of much older American cars (especially classics from the 70s and 60s) actually have somewhat easy-to-work-on engines because of mechanical simplicity. I've seen a few other, specific good American cars other than that, but for the most part, American cars are the lose in terms of repair simplicity and overall reliability.

Yeah? How many VWs and Audis do you see with over 200,000 miles on them? I'm an emissions inspector. People have to take their cars to me every two years. For every 4 Japanese cars I see with over 200k on the odometer, I see one European car.

If you don't believe me, there's data logged at just about every magazine that reviews cars.

If you think about it, a lot more people own Japanese cars than European cars here in the US, too, so it's natural that you're going to see a lot more Japanese cars in any field; and that's because slightly older Japanese cars get the most bang for the buck when it comes to reliability.

My roommate drives a '91 Audi 80 with 230,xxx on it, and don't get me started on his dad's collection of old VWs and Porsches.

Well the diesels are biggrin