Hi all, in the "What you did to your vehicle today" thread a conversation started between @FLyInG 2 YoUr SoUL , me and some other user, in order tOK not clog up that or the general discussion thread i want to create a new thread to find our personal experiences with various car makers across the globe. The main point of the topic are: How cars vary in reliability for different owners of the same model? Why some automakers have a very good reputation in europe and a bad one in america or different countries? Vw for example or Vauxhall vs Opel Do you have any experience of reliable 'unreliable' cars? Share It Do you know about any particular flaw of a precise model? Show it here I hope a good discussion will start on this thread
How cars vary in reliability for different owners of the same model? Fiat Marea Fivetech. Some owners love it, some consider it a bomb. It's a car you have to know how to handle. Why some automakers have a very good reputation in europe and a bad one in america or different countries? Vw for example or Vauxhall vs Opel Peugeots and Citroens are seen as too fragile and expensive to maintain here in Brazil, despite it's popularity around the world. Do you have any experience of reliable 'unreliable' cars? Share It A guy I know used a Peugeot 405 for fishing for lots of years. Aways broke down, but it only had a rest when it threw a piston. VW Beetles are REALLY common around here, about half the people hate it because aways broke, the other half love it because never broke. Do you know about any particular flaw of a precise model? Show it here My dad's Chevy Corsa Classic (B) went though a lot of skid plate unbendings. The panel bended and touched the exhaus, making horrible noises at speed. My car is considered a grand's car, but I see a lot of sportivity in it's lines and it's full 50 cv of raw power. LOL
1) Well, that's a really complicated answer. First of all, the terrain and climate that a car is exposed to on average will have a huuuge impact on what will fail first and how long it will take. There are cars that were made in the 1930's still sitting in the desert with only minimal rust (but no interior or rubber/plastic to speak of), and cars that were made in the mid 2000's rusting to nothing in places that rain and snow often. Likewise, a highway driven car will receive different wear than a rural car, which will both be different from wear that a car recieves from sitting unused for too long. As for mechanical stuff, the crude answer is that lack of maintenance will kill a motor, and hard driving will kill a transmission. General neglect or very harsh driving can break just about anything and everything given enough time. Simply put, keep your car clean, maintained, garaged, and drive it like you hate fun if you want it to last, and it will. 2) Different countries have different market demands that automakers strive to meet. Some countries want their cars as strong as possible, so they forgo frivolities in favor of tougher mechanical parts or pay extra for them. Other countries (or just regions in general) just want cheap luxury. Some countries are just better at keeping cars alive than others who prefer to just get a new one when the old one fails. That whole climate vs longevity of use applies here as well. 3) Nope, buy anything can be kept alive if you just keep up with maintenance. 4) EVERY car has a weak point that will inevitably fail first. Just look up any make and model and you will find out what people start to have problems with the soonest. For my trucks, one is known for cracking heads (which is the state that I got it in), and the other is known for spinning bearing when the oil pan is dented. Both are known to have very difficult carburetors to tune. That being said, I learned through recent experience that the GM 3.4L V6 that was used primarily in their vans is notorious for blowing the rear head-gasket very prematurely. This essentially totals the car. To make this worse, they are also known to be difficult to fill with coolant, causing mechanics to assume that the blown gasket is actually air in the system due to a failure (water pump, thermostat, radiator, heater-core etc.), which leads them on an expensive wild goose chase. If you ever come across one, steer clear. We've had 4 vehicles with this motor come into the shop that all turned out to have blown head-gaskets. None of the owners opted to actually fix them.
I've owned half a dozen hondas. The only engine failure came when I had a 2.0 crv engine in a civic, that spun a rod bearing on me. The Honda transmissions of that Era suck because they were designed by GM. figures that's the week point. Body rust was the hondas achiles heel, along with the synchros.
Something I have noticed with the Ford and Mazda collab: the same engine that gets praised on mazdas, gets hate when on Fords. To me it's odd, but I have experienced it myself. The engine on my Mazda 626 is absolutely fine, even though I trashed it for two years, hitting the revlimiter daily... The same engine in my first Probe however was completely ruined, even though it had 100 000 km less mileage. Even the block was worn out... I have two theories about it: 1)Ford Probe 2.0 is a "sports car", meaning it has had hard usage all it's life, as opposed to the 626, which I may have easily been the first owner to really trash it. 2)Maintanence. I have seen so many Fords that owners refuse to service. Running tens of years without maintanece, even without an oilchange, it's only natural to have issues then. Mazdas however seem to be driven by people who do service their cars, so they last longer.
In Germany Opel also has a bad reputation since it's owned my GM. They try quite much to get better, but the IMO silly ads they have (thier slogan is "OH!") don't really help with that.
I briefly owned a Mazda 3 hatch with a 2.3 duratec in it. Engine ran great and made great midrange compared to my current Honda.
My Volvo 244, despite people thinking it sucks cause it's old, runs better than my friends ford Ranger, which has 50,000 less miles and breaks down %100 more than my car
How curious. Here people love Opels because they're German, hence they must be reliable and well built. Even the korean-designed-and-built Antara... Italy is the only european market where the Antara didn't flop spectacularly, likely because of that. Badge snobbery is really a thing here.
all i can say is ldv vans are bloody... swearing cannot describe how truly shocking they are. there is a reason they have stopped production
I have to admit that I've never, ever seen a Antara here in Germany, in fact this is the first time I hear about that car. Yeah, that's how good they advertised thier vehicles . There is this this saying in Germany, "Jeder Popel fährt nen Opel", "Every snot drives a opel". It's quite a old saying already, still beeing kept in people's heads. No idea how the quality really is since I've never been in a Opel, but in fact there are still many 80s/90s Benz (mainly 190E), BMW (E36), VW (Golf 2, Polo) and Audis (80, Cabrio) on the streets, but no Opel out of that time area. Maybe that's just because those are/were more beloved and better maintained though. I'll go to Italy in a week, will check what's going on on the streets then Btw, how do other German cars sell?
German cars are pretty, but a nightmare to work on and they need work more often than even American cars. German engineering takes a back seat to German design to horrible effect.
You'll find them littered by Pandas... and silver Volkswagens. Strictly in silver, mind you. It kinda depends on the segment, but they're generally well received. From the D-segment up, the market is literally dominated by the german premium brands (Mercedes, BMW and, to a lesser extent, Audi), while A and B are FIAT territory. C-segment is kinda mixed, with an higher degree of variability.
I created this thread but i didn't express my idea, imho: Volvo cars are undestrictible wherever you buy them You'll always be happier with an 'unreliable' car that seems to be reliable than a 'reliable' car that brokes oftenly I like the Mazda MX-5 I respect high-tech cars with reliability issues, a BMW 850csi will always be a perfect piece of engineering even if it's not the most reliable cars ever made It is basically wrong to say that a manufacturer is unreliable and one is not, every carmaker made bad cars and good cars I like the Mazda MX-5 Automakers have little role in reliability, the first miles of ownership and the maintenance of the owners are way more important I have a soft-spot for the Nissan Varietta in my heart I think that whoever buys a car without knowing anything about cars cannot criticize reliability of cars, ignorance made them choose bad cars Final radical sentence: all new cars are very reliable but won't last as long as old cars
In the Philippines,most American and Australian cars are really terrible at surviving our tropical weather,an example of how brutal our weather is at the Philippines.
