French cars are perfectly reliable, never go wrong and are superb in every way.
Thats what I keep reading whenever you dare show doubts about the reliability.
Even when a french car does go wrong, its all in the mind dont ya know :-) and if it does happen, its only to bring your relationship with your dealer closer than ever before.
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Over the years we have owned quite a few French cars but we won't be getting any more. The quality has got worse with each generation.
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There are too many variables in publicly available reliability statistics for them to have any influence over my choice of car.
Different brands of car are bought by different types of person. The way individuals use their car and the faults they notice will affect the reliability statistics.
In my experience, it is the maintenance of the car that makes the most difference to reliability rather than where it was made. Unfortunately, the dealer who last serviced my last French car was useless.
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Different brands of car are bought by different types of person. The way individuals use their car and the faults they notice will affect the reliability statistics.
I don't really buy into this opinion -- it's said a lot in relation to Honda but the fact is that in the USA and some other countries, Hondas are bought by boy-racers and they're still considered among the most reliable cars on the market.
Most cars are reliable today. There are a few brands that are significantly better than average, and a few significantly worse. Other factors, such as how well they are looked after are far more important when you're considering the "middling" brands, and I doubt there is a massive difference in the chances of you getting a bad VW, Ford, Vauxhall or Hyundai.
I tend to look at the raw *reliability* (not cost of ownership as advertised) figures from Reliability Index, Tuv and ADAC, rather than the rather skewed data from the like of JD Power, Which and Top Gear. The latter do have useful information but it is hidden under a mass of subjective irrelevance such as plastics quality, dealer service etc. All I want to know is, how often does a particular model break.
In general, the only ones you should really watch are the ones that consistently occupy the bottom 10-20% of the surveys -- no-one can reasonably argue that the wealth of anecdotal evidence doesn't amount to anything.
Even then, this is only a reason, as far as I am concerned, to make the sell much harder for these cars -- I won't dismiss them out of hand. Citroens and Fiats, for example are very cheap -- this makes the gamble potentially worth it as you can pick up a much newer car for the same money. Likewise, VWs are so expensive second-hand that they'd have to be extremely good for me to even consider one -- and quite frankly they're not. Honda, on the other hand, seem to be worth spending the extra on to me.
French cars are not terrible. However, there is a mass of evidence to suggest that some larger Renaults (Laguna, Espace, Scenic, Megane) made between 2001 and 2005 are particularly bad, and they'd have to be exceptionally cheap before I'd consider one. They aren't, so I won't.
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>> the rather skewed data from the like of JD Power Which and Top Gear.>>
How is the data from, say, Which? skewed?
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How is the data from say Which? skewed?
All of these customer satisfaction surveys have a tendency to bundle in things like; the customer's opinion on whether his car was reliable; the dealer service (whatever that is); peripheral/non-reliability related issues like snapped bits of trim and so on.
Indeed, I've seen a number of occasions where the highest-ranked car in the JD Power Survey was not the car that had the highest reliability figure -- yet the survey claims to be a reliability survey.
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>> All of these customer satisfaction surveys have a tendency to bundle in things like; the customer's opinion on whether his car was reliable; the dealer service (whatever that is);
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Nope.
The Which? reliability survey
"uses statistical analysis to group makes into reliability bands - based on breakdowns, faults and niggles"
Where is that 'skewing' or 'bundle in things'?
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>breakdowns, faults and niggles<
To me, niggles are no more than that - they don't imply unreliability. More something like not enough cupholders.
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I've seen the form that Which hand out.
One of the questions is; "how reliable have you found your car to be?"
Err, how is this 'statistical analysis'?
Which might be less subjective than most, but it is still not as scientific as the like of Tuv or ADAC -- granted these relate to German breakdowns rather than British ones but they are still reliable.
In any case, the Which? results reflect what everyone else says -- Japanese excellent, Korean good, Skoda good, Ford/Vauxhall average, Renault and Fiat shocking.
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I've seen the form that Which hand out. One of the questions is; "how reliable have you found your car to be?" Err how is this 'statistical analysis'?
How would you expect Which? to obtain their statistics? Come round each owners house and check the invoices for each car and owner?
When those statistics are obtained, they are analysed. Hence the phrase 'statistical analysis'
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"How would you expect Which? to obtain their statistics? Come round each owners house and check the invoices for each car and owner?"
That's the way Tuv and ADAC effectively do it -- they look through the statistics (that is to say, numerical data) and run it through an algorithm to come out with a factual comparison of how good a car is.
Which? do not. They give you a set of questions and ask you to grade between 1 and 5. Some of these questions are highly subjective. What one person considers to be reliable, another does not.
"When those statistics are obtained, they are analysed. Hence the phrase 'statistical analysis' "
But when those 'statistics' are based on subjective data, they are inherently skewed. A study that deals with real breakdowns is far more realistic.
Opinions are never as reliable as fact.
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>>How is the data from, say, Which? skewed? (drbe)
For a start, the stats are survey based and all the respondents are Which? subscribers - not, if I may say this without giving offence, typical purchasers of anything except Which?magazine. Secondly the response rates are unknown, but the respondents are self selecting and likely to be a minority of subscribers.
I once managed a warranty scheme (for domestic appliances not cars). I had very good visibility of in-guarantee failures, with 100% of appliances on risk, and of extended warranty claims where over 50% of some appliances types sold were on risk and repairs paid for from the claims fund. I can tell you that the failure rates were significantly higher (sometimes more than double) those confidently reported by Which? Which? knows this. Furthermore, although there was some correspondence in the rankings of failure rates and repair costs by brand, there were some puzzling differences, which I put down to reporting bias by the respondents.
Having said all that, you can buy the most reliable brand and still have a problem. When our washing machine needed replacing, I looked up the very reliable breakdown statistics; I bought a cheapish brand that had half the average failure rate, with roughly a 50/50 chance of a breakdown over 5 years. It broke down about once a year for 3 years, and the total spent on repairs exceeded the original cost when I threw it away when it was four years old.
Back to cars - even warranty insurance records can be misleading. One of my insurance contacts operated a car warranty scheme for a well known German make. They could never make a profit, the claims always exceeded the premiums collected. As it happened, a close relative at that time worked in the service department of of of the dealers of this particular make. When I told him, all was explained. Sometimes, when a valued customer objected to paying £500 for, say, a new seat motor, they would 'help out' themselves and the customer by putting through a claim on a different car's extended warranty.
By all means look at all info available and see if a pattern appears. I go back to my original suggestion - browse the technical forum here and check the car-by-car as well.
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I once managed a warranty scheme (for domestic appliances not cars). I had very good visibility of in-guarantee failures with 100% of appliances on risk and of extended warranty claims where over 50% of some appliances types sold were on risk and repairs paid for from the claims fund. I can tell you that the failure rates were significantly higher (sometimes more than double) those confidently reported by Which? Which? knows this.
With domestic appliances I have come to the conclusion that, unless you buy the very best (Miele, Bosch, Siemens etc) a washing machine (say) *WILL* fail within five years (whereas the best merely *might*).
My approach therefore is to buy the cheapest appliance I can get my hands on (usually Beko or Indesit) and get the 5-year warranty for it -- SEP (someone else's problem).
were some puzzling differences which I put down to reporting bias by the respondents.
Oh absolutely. For cars, you can quite easily see a Honda owner being too embarrassed to admit to his car being a heap, and likewise you can see a Citroen or Renault owner being too proud (you know how protective some owners can be).
Back to cars - even warranty insurance records can be misleading.
That's why I mentioned ADAC -- the German AA. These deal with the cars they see, knackered, at the side of the road. That's true unreliability!
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>Over the years we have owned quite a few French cars but we won't be getting any more. The quality has got worse with each generation.<
I have a 99T 306 and an 89G 205, so quality is still high :-). But that wasn't the reason I didn't move into the 7 series - I just decided Pug had lost the plot (tho it is reported that the 208 GTi has recovered a bit of style/elan).
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Has to be said, I just think Pug's are ugly (as a pug :D), so I probably wouldn't buy one even if they were deemed reliable ;)
Luke.
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>I just think Pug's are ugly<
I agree with you - as long as you are talking about 307, 208 etc. The 205 was a classic, as HJ confirms. Ford's Fiesta was a pretty close copy.
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