Originally Posted by AuthorEditor
Why do we exhibit tribal loyalty to particular brands, or enmity to other brands based purely on what company a product comes from? We read statements here all the time like, "that filter brand is garbage," or "I would only drive a Chevy." It makes no sense when you look at the numerous products companies make and compare them. Sometimes one product from a brand is great, but another product from that brand is beaten by another company. Or maybe a particular oil is perfect for your ride, but it would be useless in my ride. Or, a more common scenario is that several products are nearly identical in performance, but there will always be people saying , "I would never touch that stuff with a ten-foot poll." It seems like many threads become shouting matches between different brand tribes with no reasoning. I look at shopping for parts like tools. My toolbox is a mixture of expensive tools from various brands for jobs that require expensive tools or ones that will last a long time, then some of my tools are cheap ones that just get the job done at a less expensive level. Sometimes I need a tool for one particular job--it makes no sense to spend a fortune on something I use once every few years. Other tools are oddballs I picked up because they are particularly good at what they do. I can't imagine just picking one tool brand and then never buying tools elsewhere. Shouldn't oil, filters, cars, trucks, and all the other vehicle stuff be chosen or the merits of the product? Does the brand really tell us anything?
Because of past experiences correlated with statistical data. At least, that's me.
EX: Chrysler is trash.
I owned a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited/HEMI/QD2 and it broke often and the bushings rotted and so forth. Junk. I Googled, and got Consumer Reports, TrueDelta, JD Power, etc. data, and they confirmed that Chrysler has a bad reputation for quality. Ergo "Chrysler is trash" is my opinion, based on personal and empirical data.
ETA: I literally read only the first post that I quoted. Looking up, I can see that maybe I'm not alone...