Observe how rapidly Hyundai has entrenched itself in the US market. I owned an 89 Excel with a standard transmission. it was underpowered and cheesy, but it was well designed and easy to work on. For example, you could remove the dash cluster in ten minutes. A 1989 US car was vastly more complicated, and yet the dash cluster was not really much more sophisticated that the Hyundai's was. Every year, Hyundai has made cars that are more and more reliable, and they are generally rated as almost as dependable as Toyota, and considerably cheaper. They also have a warranty that US cars don't have: ten years or 100K.
The Chinese will probably take longer than this to have a good, cheap car, but it is probably inevitable that the US auto industry will have to specialize in luxury cars as Mercedes and BMW have done, because the cheaper segment of the market will not be cost-efficient for them to compete in.
That Pep Boys estimate probably was based on a 'flat rate' book, which states the number of hours that it might take a one-armed chimpanzee to replace the water pump. They then billed that fanciful figure at $125 per hour, with a 200% markup on the parts. It would have taken them a day to get the job done, at least, and there is no guarantee that they would have done a better job than you did.
Newer cars have this big dumb "engine cover" which is designed to keep you from even knowing what your engine looks like.
It is a far better proposition for me to repair my 17 and 25 years old Benzes than to buy newer ones that I have no hope of fixing, because every operation involves at least resetting the computer.
