What Brands Have a Poor Reputation with Some, but a Great One with Others?
How many of us actively look forward to a trip to the nearby convenience store? How many of us would shine up our car for a gathering at such a retail establishment?
The answer might surprise you.
Hot dogs of questionable repute and sugary Slurpees do not apply here, as 7-Eleven has become a sensation with a younger generation of car enthusiasts for all the right reasons. It starts with the retailer’s well-deserved success in Japan, where premium quality food and beverages are readily available. One such Japanese 7-Eleven even has craft beer. The is why cars (especially modern Japanese classics) and 7-Eleven go together like peanut butter and jelly for enthusiasts of a younger class of classic.
It has come to the point that even die-cast car aficionados have their own 7-Eleven-themed building to make their own 7-Eleven dioramas. The yellow, green, and red signage of 7-Eleven is now synonymous with a specific generation, and a specific car culture.
At least among a certain subset of folks, things have certainly changed for this brand, one that used to be associated with low quality food, and sketchy activities in their lots. The 7-Eleven pivot might not have made it to your area yet, and the old reputation may still hold; a similar scenario likely holds true for several automotive and automotive-adjacent brands. So this is where you come in, as we want the Hagerty Community to answer this question for us:
What Brands Have A Poor Reputation With Some, But A Great One With Others?
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Dollar Store.
I was disappointed the 99 cent stores all of them closed, good for inexpensive toothpaste, soaps stuff like that.
Dollar Stores are now $1.50 Stores…
Replacement for the dime store, or as Bing Crosby referred to it, “the five and ten.”
Every News Channel. 50% love 50% hate.
Many auto companies, tires, oil. and additives all live in that love and hate zone.
I have seen personally arguments over oil that rival Politics and religion. I had two customers on the rack for oil changes and they started to argue over Quaker State. I had to put the one car on the ground so the customer could come back later. he was so mad I though he was going to hit the other guy.
I just posted the Corvette Zora was here in Akron Ohio for testing at the Goodyear test track. That did nothing but a long debate over tire brands by people with no real clue what they were arguing over.
FYI the Zora Corvettes were not at Goodyear and just passed through town just mins from my home. I wish I had known they were here. The video sounded good.
Good post, though a sad commentary.
“That did nothing but a long debate over tire brands by people with no real clue what they were arguing over.” Sounds like our current political environment!
And don’t forget that Amzoil guy that always chimes in.
That’s a staple of almost every car argument on the Internet!
Not taking sides but that is an understatement. LOL!
I certainly agree on the oil thing. Some folks will argue their brand to the point of becoming a shouting match.
I, too, have seen this personally. And there are even two sides to the big picture: “X, Y, Z brand is best” vs. “B.S. – all oils are the same”.
they are all the same pretty much its the additives that separate them.
And some of those additives are just color.
Land Rover.
It’s the vehicle brand that people who have never driven/owned one love to tell people is awful.
They’ll tell you they’re unreliable (sometimes true) followed by same old stories about their buddy that had one.
“Have you ever owned one?
“Well, no, but my buddy…”
I’ve had three wonderful post-P38 model Rovers, which racked up well over 400,000 combined miles with nothing major needed than a new starter and alternator.
Will there be little things along the way? Absolutely.
Is it worth it?
Oh yeah.
90% of Range rovers are still on the road. The other 10% made it home or were towed home. Old joke but not far off. I used to work at a dealer for them as a mechanic
3 Land Rovers with a combined 400,000 miles? Appreciate the math. Sounds like my 3 BMWs with a combined 600 bhp…
I think I’d rather keep my 1 Landcruiser approaching 400k. Just sayin.
I didn’t realize the 7-eleven was still around. Haven’t seen one, up here in Minnesota, in decades.
Ran outta state by Caribou Coffee!
Not familiar with Minnesota, but they are everywhere in the northeast.
In my area, 7-Eleven had a bit of a decline largely due to lack of consistency from store to store. Around the same time, Wawa took off and pretty much pushed them out of the way
On the general note… two off the top of my head are Quadrajet and Allante. I will say that most of the haters in both cases have no actual experience with them.
Oooo, Quadrajet is a great one. If you wanna get in the middle of an argumentathon, take one side or the other in a group of car guys from the ’60s or ’70s!
We called those Quadrabogs
Have you ever worked on one?
Oil additives – you have to be my age to remember this one:
“You’ll be for B4 before you drive 6 city blocks!”
A competitor of STP (a/k/a “Stop That Piston!”)
I’m of the age old enough to remember STP, but too young to know why I would have ever wanted to use it. 😆
If you had a car to sell with noisy valve train……..you’d get a day or two of quiet
Before assembly lubes became readily available (or even a thing?), I used to use STP to put stuff together. It was sticky enough that it tended to keep bearings in place, etc. until I got things together and torqued. Other than that, haven’t had any real use for it for decades. However, there was not more than a handful of race cars (or any type) that didn’t have at least one STP decal on it back in the day, and even pretty much today.
My ’65 MG 1100 relied on it to keep the oil pressure in the green. Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe it was the indicator which was a bright red light on the dash.
I used my 1972 Pinto to tow a 5’x8′ fully loaded U-Haul trailer from Traverse City to San Francisco. I alternated between adding a can of STP and a quart of 30 weight motor oil at each fill-up.
7-11s around here are mostly seedy and employee turnover is very high. There’s only one I really trust and it’s on a major roadway. Of course I live in a town that was rural 20 years ago but now is growing into a full-blown bedroom community of Washington, DC.
7-Eleven is headquartered here so they are on about every corner. I don’t like going to 7-Eleven though because you smell like one after leaving. 🙂 Quiktrip is hands down the best convenience store in the market I live in. QT also guarantees their gas and are supposed to have one of the best gasoline additive packages on the market.
7 Eleven bought all of the Marathon Oil C Stores…will be rebranded soon.
I think Kia/Hyundai falls into this category.
That’s funny about the 7-11. I had seen those dioramas of 7-11 for sale on the internet, but I had no idea of the context. It is strange that in countries other than the US, convenience stores actually have good food. In fact, our family has been to Europe (Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, UK, France) several times in recent years, and some of the best food we’ve had has come from convenience stores or train stations.
+1, It is remarkable to compare KIA today to the KIA that comes to mind from 20 years ago.
Agree absolutely on the train stations – esp Denmark and Switzerland.
You get real food anywhere in the EU. None of the stuff you can’t pronounce that gets added to “food” in the USA. On the other hand, we found the coffee in the Netherlands to be abysmal.
The best meal I had in Germany was in a truck stop. That was in 1969, and I still can’t duplicate it.
Chevrolet. If you buy their trucks, their big SUVs (Tahoe and Suburban), their sports car (Corvette and Camaro), you enjot them. If you buy their front drive anything, it is a failure. The jury is out on their EVs.
I put well north of 200K on two consecutive FWD Buicks… so we can add them to the list
Never used 7/11. We never had many anyways here in Ohio
The new gas stations that have all sorts of things have been invading and taking over for them. They started small and now Sheets and many others are now opening. Wawa and Buckies are now coming to Ohio I hear.
The two stores I hear everyone hates but they all shop there are Walmart and the Dollar store. One is so cheap they still shop there and the Dollar is close especially if you live out of town and we have no where to shop close.
Subaru.
We love our 2019 Subaru Outback 3.6R Touring. One of the best cars I ever owned. Had BMWs. Mercedes – but this Subaru is great.
I guess your mbs and beemers didn’t have much getup and go.
On my fourth outback (2019) with 80K on the clock
My son is driving a hand me down 2015 with 220k
#1 son just bought a new WRX
Traded in 2013 Impreza
Brother in law has an Outback
His daughter has a Forester
My niece Erin has a Forester
Definitely drinking the kooolAid
Got an 06 Forester we call “old smokey” for a good reason.
UHaul. They actually aren’t terrible now but, boy howdy, ten or 15 years ago they were just about the worst company in the world to deal with. They would happily hand out reservations to anyone who requested one, regardless of how many vehicles and trailers they had available, and it was Thunderdome rules for sorting it all out at the front desk. I know more than one person who literally had wheels fall off their truck or trailer. It’s still the case that your final bill is almost completed disassociated from the daily rate.
U-Haul: the company that simultaneously advertises the space above the cab as “bonus space” while also using it as part of the measurement of the box. They tell you it’s a 17-foot box, but it’s really 14 feet with 3 feet of “Mom’s Attic.” The other companies don’t do that. I would never use U-Haul for a non-local rental.
I really like U-Hail’s motorcycle trailer.
Yep! Just used one to fetch a twin cam 88 in Wichita, KS. $15 plus the insurance and tax. Who does anything for fifteen dollars anymore? We tried to figure how many times they would have to rent them before they showed a profit. Funniest part, I own a motorcycle trailer, but its out at the farm ,so it was cheaper and easier to hit U.H. on the way out of town.
To paraphrase Will Rogers: “I never met a car I didn’t like”, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve been stranded by the best of them
Great comment.
Pretty much anything you purchase has haters/lovers. My personal belief is thst you can get a great or lemon of any brand or item – just a matter of luck.
Yes, U-Haul was, maybe still is, a shoddy operation. Rented many a truck or trailer from them and others, U-Haul was always the one with somewhat dirty truck interiors, missing hardware, sputtering engines, etc. Once, a 24-ft U-Haul I was driving decided to detach the manual shifter from the transmission. It came right out of the floor while in 2nd gear. Pulled to the center turning lane to stop and a police car pulled in behind me. When I showed hm the shifter, he laughed and said “start off and stay in 2nd gear, I’ll have my lights on behind you. There’s a U-haul depot just over the top of the hill we’re on.” We did and that depot didn’t want to unload our truck and load another one, so they cannibalized another 24-footer and put its shifter in our truck. We were very lucky that day both with the officer and having a U-Haul depot just ahead. Only use Ryder or Penske now for rentals.
Several years ago I knew two young mechanics who worked at the local u-Haul location. I pity the poor investors who own individual trucks, trailers or cars in their fleet. On a slow day the boss would call the young guys to his office and say ” go make some work orders” which meant take a cat bar into the yard and start smashing windows, headlamps, grills, mirrors etc to drum up some work orders which get charged to the owners of those rental units. Corrupt.
To be fair, the situation you describe sounds as though it has little to do with UHaul and a lot to do with slimy management.
I agree with Kyle. We have two local UHaul outfits and one has always been WAY better to deal with than the other. I’ve also dealt with one in Denver and one in Salt Lake – both were horrible, but the one in Portland was the best ever! Individual managers/employees can make or break a reputation.