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Are long life servicing regimes to blame for below-par reliability?

A lot of higher mileage BMWs and Audis suffer reliability issues, and in you replies you often state that so called long life and filled for life servicing is to blame.

Yet these manufacturers steadfastly refuse to change and modify servicing regimes.

These manufacturers have cleverly structured themselves as high end, but aggressive sales focused companies.

BMW for example sells more 3 series cars than Ford Mondeos.

Ultimately will these companies could suffer the Ryanair affect and sales suffer, as car reliability suffers (multronic gearbox failure, turbos, dmfs, swirl flaps, coil packs, auto gearbox failure, etc) The dealer goodwill policy is often not as generous and these companies could learn a thing or to from the likes of Toyota. What's your view?

Asked on 15 November 2013 by privateinvestor

Answered by Honest John
They are in the business of selling cars. They can't do that if their cars last forever. So they build in limited life to certain components that creates an income stream for themselves and their dealers. And calculate that by the time their cars reach more than 7 years old, many owners will find them uneconomic to repair and scrap them. Whether those owners move up to newer used cars or to new cars still makes another new car sale. I don't know about the analogy with Ryanair, but see this: www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/miscellaneous/2013-11/au.../
Tags: reliability
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