The myth has for years been that European and Asian cars are made better than the ones that Detroit turns out. That may have been true when your father bought his cars, but not so much anymore.

The auto industry recognized the quality problems it had back in the 1980's and has spent the last two decades rebuilding its quality and its reputation for American-made excellence. It was a hard lesson, sure, and GM and Chrysler felt the worst of it five years ago when they filed for bankruptcy. But they came back.

How can you tell the quality is up for American-built cars? Federal safety investigators track recall statistics and they show that during the last two decades, the quantity of recalls of foreign cars has been going up while the quantity of recalls for US-made cars has been going down. Take a look at the Toyota debacle, for instance, where millions of cars were recalled during the last 5 years of production.

Massive Asian Recalls Getting More Common?

Almost any list of most common lemon cars is topped by Asian manufactured cars anymore, often in the top 3 or 4 spots before any US made car shows up on the list.

We've seen the same thing in our lemon car cases here at Burdge Law Office, where we have concluded that the only reason for the quantity of lemon US cars seems to be the higher quantity of US-made cars being sold.

Still, when you have a lemon it doesn't matter who made it - it's still a headache, a heartache, and a walletache too. So shop carefully and before you buy a new or used car, check with the federal recall website to see what the last few model years of that car have been like. That way you don't waste your money.