[SVTSHC]

Originally Posted by DKPJester

For the time frame you are referencing Japan was in it's heyday and America was in nearing the bottom of it's long decline in terms of car build quality. If that was when you were buying American cars I can totally understand why you would be leery of them. Speaking as someone who now lives in the Detroit metro area where EVERYONE drives something from the big three, if you haven't checked them out in recent years you owe it to yourself to try to do so with an open mind.

I haven't driven an American car personally since my first car which was a full sized pickup, but I have ridden in and driven around in some late model mustangs and focuses lately and I have to say the interior design and fit and finish is largely very impressive. A far cry from the dark ages. And to be honest, as much as I love my FR-S, the interior squeaks and rattles and after approximately 8 months the paint is in worse shape than a civic I drove for 8 years. I have to scrape some surface rust off the fender and get some touch up on it before that becomes a nightmare.

While I think the FR-S is more fun and engaging to drive, if I was looking for a relatively inexpensive track monster I'd be all over a Mustang. The $ to performance ratio on those cars is astounding if you can learn to tame them a bit. The fact that the big three, Ford in particular, have made such an impressive turnaround, the fact that the new Mustang looks to have shed some weight and gained some new styling and power plant options and the fact that Ford has had some recent killer cars like the ST has me excited to see where they are headed. Might still not be the car for me, but it should be an impressive machine. Just my 2 cents.

Friend at my old job just picked up an ST and had it tuned. Dude is in absolute love with the thing and if I had to pick one person to hate Ford or any domestic manufacturer forever it would have been him. Was a big VW guy but after test driving the ST his mind was made up.