[kipchak]

My hunch is the memory of bad American sedans from the late 90s to early 2000s has either stuck around longer. I think now much less of a difference now but back in the day recall seeing more Sentra/Civic/Corollas on the road into old age than domestics.

I think recently it's been a bit of a chicken and the egg problem for ford and sedans, they don't sell enough volume to justify redesigns and they aren't redesigned so they're not (at least perceived as) terribly competitive.

[anikom15]

It’s far older than that. The reputation existed since at least the Pinto fires.

[kipchak]

Ironically though Ford would go on to do pretty much the same with the Explorer's tires and the fiesta/focus' transmission[1] but as I understand the Pinto was pretty much typical for compact cars of the era (they were all death traps) and the data used in the Mother Jones/60 Minutes exposes was inaccurate.

"Perhaps the most illuminating data comes from NHTSA fatality rates per million vehicles for 1975 and 1976. In the published chart, the Pinto is responsible for 298 deaths per million cars in 1975, making it on par with the Chevrolet Vega (288) and Datsun 510 (294), but considerably safer than the Datsun 1200/210 (392), the Toyota Corolla (333) and the VW Beetle (378). In 1976, the Pinto’s 322 deaths per million cars was slightly higher than the Chevrolet Vega (310) and AMC Gremlin (315), but better than the Datsun 510 (340), the Datsun 1200/210 (418) and the VW Beetle (370)."[2]

[1]https://www.freep.com/in-depth/money/cars/ford/2019/12/05/fo...

[2]https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2017/10/17/misunderstood-ca... citing [3]http://www.perishablepundit.com/docs/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pi...

[bsanr2]

People judge by how many older cars are still on the road. I see Tauruses on occasion, but not as often as I see Accords and Camrys.