The problem comes from not the multiple night mares but from rather the expensive repairs, a guy on here went to the dealer to do a brake job and he got a bill that was nearly 1000$ or more for 4 rotors and pads... something you can do at the comfrot of the curb in front of your house in a matter of 2 hours with some hand tools... now where is the sense in that...
About a year ago when my car was somewhere in the 60K miles the water pump started leaking, so I went to replace it the thing was around 50$ from the dealer and the guy asked me for 600-700$ after which I told him to go shove something large up his back end and went around shopping... with the part in hand I found a shop that did it for 150$ total of 200$ parts and labor... so saved myself 400-500$...
A few of the reparis are simple and dont requre any special work so you can do them yourself... and save all that money... and to be honest the car is not so much of a terror, its just that people expect it to behave like a piece of gold... well go buy an econo box but dont complain when that thing gets into trouble and you end up paying similar amounts of money to fix it....
I mean in all reality in europe the car is fine, it has a great reputation of being reliable, and often cranking more then 200K miles on it, they even use them for Taxis and Police cars... kinda like the crown vics over here...
At least the problems are common and mostly known... with the exception of a few...
Oil Cooler, Heater valve, Water Pump, Tie rod ends, Coolant Sensor, I am sure that there are a few others but cant think of them right off the top of my head... and once you take care of those the thing is golden...
I have put over 50K miles on my car in two years and the car is not even driven in the snow, for the most part and have had nothing but luck with it, I mean occasionally something brakes but I go out and fix it... no biggie... shop around for cheaper parts and you should be good, just do most of the work yourself, its really not that hard... I am a computer guy and I never learned to be a mechanic but I do learn from peopl, I get out there and I work on it, and I never approach the car with fear, in fact because I know the problems of it, I am considering gettin another at some point in the future....
My friend has more problems on his 3 series, my Neon has had more problems then the catera... and problems that are totaly random, at least with the catera they are mostly similar...
Dont fear these cars, and dont think that the new CTS and STS are better, they are even worse when it comes to reparis... and my dad is not a big fan of the new Cadillacs, he says the quality under the hood went down... same goes for Toyota and Honda... Ford seems to be picking up at the moment, or so he sais...
Good luck with the lawsuit hope it works out for ya...