Renault quality...

[ayd]

Love Renaults - I own possibly what was classed as one of the most unrelaible - the Renault 5 gtturbo, and it's never ever gone wrong on me, 70k from new, OK heavily modded now and hardly comes out but it was my daily driver for a few years and was flawless

[Betaphile]

Toyota got royally stung in Oz in the late 70s/early 80s by having to use a Holden 1.9 engine in the Corona to meet local content regs, and they ended up buying their way out of the contract early. Apparently the engine re-introduced Toyota buyers (and dealers) to oil leaks...

Urgh, the Starfire. Pretty vile engineering abortion that one - basically a 'red' Holden six with two cylinders lopped off, which is pretty much how it went. Yuck. That particular Toyota-Holden tie-up predated the others (Nova, Apollo, Lexcen) by a few years; surprising that Toyota wanted anything to do with GM-H again after that, but needs must I suppose...

[r.welfare]

Button Plan - something to do with local content regs I believe? I wonder if a Toyota Lexcen is any better put together than the Holden Commodore on which it's based...where we've had tie-ups over here (Rover 200/Honda Concerto etc), the Japs have always had extra Quality Control staff at the end of the UK production lines to check "their" cars with fine-toothed combs...