Many good points there, but the import vs american reliability is a myth. If you look at the care taken in total dollars over a 10 year/150,000mi ownership span from new to then, american cars cost just as much as imports. Those quality figures most people use are actually initial quality, which is more or less a gague of fit/finish and reliability in the scope of a typical lease duration.

There are people that buy trucks to look macho, but those are the minority...SUVs tend to be the opposite. Anywho rural areas and trucks go hand in hand...part of it is that depreciation value you mentioned....it's not SUV bad, but it is more than a car. Part of that is as the years go by, the truck bed will start to rust, tailgates will need repaired/replaced, etc. Trucks are ultility vehicles, and built for such use....to make things worse, the average selling price of fleet vehicles goes into the "book values", which means that your vehicle's value is being based on fleet vehicles which are nowhere near the same condition.

However, a good 2500 or 3500 chevy, ford F250 or F350 will have pretty low depreciation rates as far as trucks go....those are proven workhorses, and people pay good money for them because with maintenance, they are incredibly cheap to operate...700,000mi out of a 3500 is not unreasonable....it may involve an engine swap, but that's just par for the course on any automobile with that kind of mileage....at those mileages, you're looking at chassis wear more than anything.

Part of the resale value issue is people are replacing cars faster than ever...what ever happened to buying a car, driving it for 8-10 years then replacing it? Actually....what happened to cars that don't fall apart on year 6?

For the record....I've yet to have seen a happy Kia owner. Hyundais...some are rather good, Toyota....they actually had a major fiasco a while back wherre they cheated the JD Power figures by issuing TSBs instead of recalls....this made a reliability figure that was below Chrysler look best in class (since there were no adavertised firings over this, it's prudent to consider their reliability average until a vehicle platform has proven itself over at least a 5-year period). Given Chrysler's issues was mostly due to mechanics doing the wrong things (like the infamous Dexron instead of ATF+3 fiasco when the solenoid actuated fully-hydraulic transmissions came to market in the early 90s, which was also in part due to someone at Chrysler putting incorrect info in the owner's manual too).

We can go on and on about it....I just don't like misconceptions about cars. Truth is the overall brand reliability figures are within single-digit percentages of each other. It's just people seem to reinforce their opinions by only remembering stuff that corresponds with it, instead of looking at the whole pie. Even Toyota has made some outright horrible cars in the past....and some unlikely companies have produced good cars as well.