What went wrong??

I think the first thing that went wrong is all the additional competition. In the good old days, toyotas, datsuns, and hondas were jokes. Then when people started getting shafted at dealerships for warrenty/repair work, they looked elsewhere. Toyota and Honda would accomodate them. Now look where we are at.

As was noted above, about problems with new cars with hardly any miles on them, I just recently bought a 2006 Dodge truck and at 36K miles it already needs brakes and ball joints. The truck I'm getting rid of is a 1996 Ford F350 I bought new and has 375K miles on it. It has the original shoes on the rear and is on it's 2nd set of pads up front. I replaced the ball joints at 310K miles only because I had it apart already, they were still ok. I hope I'm not making a mistake getting rid of my old Ford, as these newer cars surely aren't cheap to buy, then having to do repairs that you would have to do normally with an older vehicle.

The last new car we bought (also the last car we had bought) is a 2000 Dodge Durango. Very reliable car, although they have a bad reputation, never had big problems with it (a couple of power door locks and power window motor). When we bought this car, you could still option it somewhat. We are looking to get rid of it with the new clunker bill (it has 190K on it) and have been looking for a replacement that gets better gas mileage. I think we are going to get a Ford Escape. Checking these things out, they virtually have no options, as was noted previously. Here's the car, this is how it comes, do you want it or not. Also, we've noticed, at least in our area, that dealers have very little inventory on the lot. Times sure have changed and for the worst, at least in my opinion.