Who's the Cadillac of Hi-End Audio?

I know a lot more about cars than I do about audio equipment so here are my thoughts...

German:
The best high performance designs in general. Even those with modest specs present a cohesive approach to design and provide performance fundamentals before luxuries or features. At my budget end of the spectrum I would analog German cars to equipment such as Rotel or NAD - simple pieces with good performance for the money at cost moderately above garden variety mass market.

Japanese:
"Bland Quality". These products are generally well built and efficient but fail to excite most performance enthusiasts. Clinically there's little to fault with Japanese cars. I consider such cars to parallel audio equipment that is resolving and presents a flat frequency response but is otherwise uncaptivating.

American:
Design for specs and impressive behavior on a 20 minute test drive (i.e. excessive throttle response upon initial toe in of the accelerator). When I think of an American car I think of a mass market stereo with sharp treble and deep boomy bass. It catches your (not my :) ) attention on first impression but after sampling better products becomes tiring and artificial.

I stand by my original comments which labeled Japanese cars as a whole unexciting - I also cited their high build and design quality (and by association reliability). My main objection to the Japanese cars is that in driving them I feel like the design philosophy was prescribed by a focus group rather than an engineer. By this I mean the Japanese cars try to offend nobody (with the exception of a few sporting models such as the RX-8). Drive a German car such as a BMW, Audi, or Mercedes and the car feels like it was carved out of a single piece of metal and has an angular purpose.

Excitement in my view has little to do with cost or even quality of design (although I do cite the quality of Japanese design and build). I've driven an Acura RL and Lexus LS430 and ES300 and been bored to death while the comparitavely crude Miata is a blast by comparison. I believe that for similar reasons we are instructed to let our friends demo the music they like on our systems and not a technically perfect audiophile disc.

I do agree with the generalization that German cars are more expensive to operate than Japanese cars. I chalk this up to higher performance requirements and more intense operating conditions. This quite simply requires a more intensive upkeep program regardless of how the owner drives. Anyone familiar with aviation can attest to this.

Having said all this - I (a college engineering student) currently drive a 1995 Civic owned by my uncle since new. I got this car on the basis that it was supposed to be reliable and cheap to operate. So far this has held true.

My previous car was both more reliable, cheaper to operate, and performed better... it was a 1987 Audi 4000S - bought new by my dad for his business travel.

You know I'm not interested in debating why I like car X more than someone else likes car B, but I think generalizations should be taken to be exactly such and exceptions should always be minded.

In direct response to the commentary about my knowledge of audio, I can't dispute that my audio knowledge is relatively dismal. With respect to motor vehicles however, I have designed, built, tested, and driven small scale formula cars while I've also been exposed to and driven high performance cars in a track environment.

I won't dispute the fact that the performance advantages of German cars aren't *necessary* any more than a $30k system is necesary over a $1k system. If it's good enough for a user and it makes him(her) happy then I wish them the best. However, it's another fair generalization that a high performance car brings benefits to lower echelons of the operational envelope. Many audio parallels can be drawn here and I will leave illustration to the users unless specifically requested to elaborate.

None of my claims have yet spoken poorly of Japanese cars from an objective standpoint. However it seems a popular opinion of users thus far that as a whole these cars are somewhat bland, of high quality, and appliance-like.

With regard to JD Power and their awarding process, this organization sells the results of their studies to manufacturers. This kind of behavior is heavily discouraged and is not tolerated in this particular community (i.e. dealer plugs in the form of "reviews" and "i'll give you a 30% discount if you refer 3 friends"). I have no intention of directly questioning the integrity of JD Power, but even if their tests are unswayed by market conditions some of the award categories are a little questionable and probably unnecessary. I am reminded of a Chrysler commercial a few years ago (maybe 5 or 6) where one of their vehicles was ranked "Number One in Initial Quality". If I'm going to leave my car on the showroom floor I suppose that's fine. If I'm going to drive it I would prefer to see a better measure of the vehicle's ability along with a pedigree of high performance engineering.