[zhdc1]

Doesn’t track with me.

Live in Central Europe. Most of the people we know either own their cars outright or take public transportation.

Many companies north of the border (Germany) offer company cars as an incentive, which iirc are leased, but these eventually hit the resale market as one year or CPO vehicles.

Most cars also have a fairly long anti-corrosion warranty.

That said, reliability issues were more a matter of 1. US style cost cutting (remember Daimler Chrysler?) 2. getting caught by surprise by the horse power wars of the naughts and early teens. Engines and associated parts were rushed to market without proper testing.

These issues have largely been reversed. Modern BMWs are almost/as reliable as Japanese manufacturers while MB is starting to close the gap.

[sokoloff]

> remember Daimler Chrysler?

Sadly, yes. “In the phrase ‘Daimler-Chrysler’, the Daimler is silent.”

[zhdc1]

It was the opposite, to be honest.

Chrysler knew they were toast. They either had to be bought out, mortgage everything for massive capital investment (which is what Ford did), or eventually go under.

Meanwhile, Daimler executives wanted a way to get American compensation. A ‘merger’ that would turn them into an ‘American’ company was their preferred option.

Of course, the Chrysler executive team was eventually shown the exit, the company was run from Germany, and it turned out that Daimler’s leadership was making a number of other major mistakes (this is around the time when reliability went down hill, and it had nothing to do with Chrysler).