Is it just me or have the good old fashioned 'rock solid' reliable marques gone forever?
Mercedes and VW used to be synonymous with quality and reliability; no more it seems.
Now it appears that the 'if it's your money, buy Japanese' adage is slipping, as I read more and more about manufacturing economies biting into the historical reputation of the likes of Toyota and Nissan.
Is there a single manufacturer that can claim the crown?
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All the reliability & satisfaction surveys would suggest that Japanese is the way to go. Some of the superficial stuff is not as over-engineered as it used to be (which is a pity) but reliability is generally excellent. Toyota and Honda still make some of the most reliable cars around.
Hyundai seem to be coming up fast on the rails and are already a very respected marque in the US (where brand prejudice counts for far less than it does here).
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Yes, Jap stuff is good. Even when maltreated and not serviced it seems to keep on going. Toyota/Lexus, Honda etc. I personally like Subaru. You look at the engineering and think that they've done it the best way possible. I occasionally look at some Impreza's that have been re-turbo'd, remapped etc (1.5 bar boost, advanced etc etc) - just about ready to melt a piston but they keep going (mainly)!
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A more reasoned argument as to why cars seem to be less reliable
1) we expect them to be because that's what the ads say and everything was better in the 1960s/70s/80s!
2) we now expect cars not to break down because everyone we talk to has one that doesn't.
3) much more info available. Websites such as this make moaning about awful cars so much easier. My dad had a rot box of a Vauxhall Viva - number of people he told probably no more than 10, now he'd be on websites saying don't buy one and getting a huge audience.
In this last week I have heard of a Golf with a clutch failure after 90,000 miles, a Yaris needing £1,000 spending on it, a Chrysler needing £1,700 of repairs and a Volvo needing a new turbo. Without this website you wouldn't know about any of them, but I could tell the tale of each one in such a way as to make you not want to buy any of them!
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And I could tell you of - in the last 25 years or so - 7 Renaults, 1 VW, 1 Audi and 1 Mercedes, all reliable (so far in the case of the last-named). Anyone can produce examples of good and bad of each make - but what the satisfaction surveys (although flawed) do give a general guide to is the proportion of cars of each make that give satisfaction.
I think we can take from the surveys the probability (no more) that if you buy a Skoda or a Japanese make you have a better chance of getting a good one. With a Fiat, Alfa, Renault, Peugeot or Land Rover it's much more of a gamble - but of course there are some good ones.
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Since 1979, I have had (from brand new)
1 x Fiat, 2 x ford, 1 x BL, 2 x Vauxhalls, 1 x Peugeot, 2 x renaults, 1 x VW
Only the BL and the VW left me stranded requiring the AA/RAC man.
(the BL did it rather a lot mind)
Excluding the BL, I have had 1 clutch, and 1 gearbox.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Statistically, all caars are less likely to leave you stranded at the roadside these days than previously. But some makes are less reliable than others. In the past 20 years, I have owned the following cars with the following faults that were nothing to do with my ownership: -
1987 Fiat Uno - leaked oil speedo from speedo cable drive and leaked water into the car - source unknown
1988 Golf - no faults
1988 Ford Orion - central locking always on the blink
1992 Astra - no faults
1992 Cavalier - no faults
1992 BMW 730 - occasional electrical gremlin
1992 Honda Accord - corroded radiator at five years and 90,000 miles.
1993 Honda Accord - no faults
1993 Saab 9000 - cam chains went rattly, engine seized later
1996 Peugeot 605 DT - cam belt snapped causing £1500 repair bill
1998 Merc 200 - constant minor leak from PWS pump and faulty battery cell.
1999 Volvo S80 - clunking from gearbox, intermittent emmissions fault; cause never traced; air con would freeze up
2003 Subaru Forester - no faults
2005 Subaru Outback - no faults
So a wide range and you can see a pattern....
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My Seat Toledo TDiSE 1.9 110 bhp has proved itself to be far the best car I have ever owned. I bought it new towards the end of 1999. The car never let me down and it has now done 141,000 miles. I owned two VWs before which gave me excellent service. Very recently it needed a new head gasget and valves..I think I had overfilled the oil on a few occasions.It is now running incredibly well. It does around 60 mph on long runs and cruises effortlessly.
I firmly believe that Mercedes Benz are now cracking the whip and upping their quality. They went trough some terrible years. Now they have a new boss. The new C Class just launched has been very carefully tested. After thorough investigation, I am planning to buy a new C Class. I recently hired an older shaped C Class and I loved it.
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I think, to be fair to Nissan and especially Toyota (and VW for that matter who have taken a kicking over the last few years in some quarters), their cars are expected to be more reliable so when niggles do start to surface (and it has to be said that the vast majority of "faults" reported on new cars amount to nothing more than niggly daft things), they get blown out of all proportion.
I would [i]expect[/i] that if I bought [i]any[/i] new car, that it would not let me down in any way that would stop me from getting to my destination in the first three years.
And in all honesty 75% of even the worst models will do just that.
Luck of the draw as always, but the likes of Honda have fewer bullets in the barrel.
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In general you only hear from the minority of owners who are dissatisfied, and who want everybody to know about it. The majority of owners, who are satisfied, don't usually say anything. These days most cars are reliable.
--
L\'escargot.
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I have always owned and got very good service from VWs. As you can see from the previous letter, I have owned a Seat Toledo TdiSE from new and it has proved to be far the best car. I worked and lived in South Africa for 18 years.In South Africa they almost worshipped Toyota. The sales slogan out there was: " Everything keeps going right Toyota". In those days they were mostly telling the truth.
Do you remember the large old Toyota small truck they tried to destroy on " Top Gear". It was even blown up in a skyscraper demolition, also drowned etc etc. It still started!!
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My old 1994 Ford Mondeo never let me down. Apart from tyres / exhausts / service neccesaries, a spade connector was needed in the immobiliser circuit at a cost of 90p. That's the only thing that ever went "wrong" with the car. Always started first time, even when buried in snow, happily drove 400 motorway miles a few times a year without a squeak or rattle. I work with Audi / BMW / Merc drivers who laugh at me 'cos I just bought me another Mondy!
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I can vouch for Hyundai - my mums V6 Coupe still has yet to develop a fault, although the Scorpion alarm which is fitted over here has broken after less than two years and is being replaced, but its not a Hyundai unit, so its more poor choice than build on Hyundais part - its not an isolated problem on these cars but range wide where this particular model of alarm is fitted.
Other than that, 25,000 trouble free miles - these cars deserve any reliability credit.
My Suzuki van has now tipped 15k and nothing at all has gone wrong.
My sister has a Y reg Suzuki Vitara GV 1600 - same story although hers has 48k and still solid as a rock - she loves it.
I have a customer with an R-reg Golf GTi with just 55k on the clock and perfect VW SH - oh dear oh dear - I clean it every month and almost without fail, everytime I go there, its either broken down or something has stopped working - and this has been going on for over two years.
My customer loves the car so they have spent way beyond the value fixing it, but in the last few months alone, coming on for 2 grand has been spent - really gotta love a car to do that!
It dispells tha VW reliability myth in a big way and thats despite being lovingly looked after.
I have several customers with Subarus, mainly Foresters around teh 5 years old mark - all love them unconditionally and do indeed, take them offroad. They seem to represent the same ingrained solidity that Merc enjoyed in the 70's/80's.
Merc - been done to death and its well documented, but they seem to be making a comeback now, not a moment too soon.
Fiat - well my experience so far is of a reliable but inherently fragile car - I think if your gentle and look after them, you can cox them into old age, but its an effort rather than a given.
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It seems impossible to get accurate figures.
Customer satisfaction surveys are very subjective and inversely biased by expectation.
The Warranty Direct figures seem a good method but you have to look at individual models rather than manufacturer. The Astra is up with the Japanese but the Vectra is right down the bottom, despite sharing many components. It's also historical and may not help with new car purchases.
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The Warranty Direct figures seem a good method but you have to look at individual models rather than manufacturer. >>
Some of the apparently reliable Japanese manufacturers do not come out so well in the WD surveys in part because it accounts for repair costs as well as number of faults, after all most people with rather have two faults that cost 25 quid each to fix than one fault that costs £200.
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My X-reg Hyundai Accent has following faults - 1 faulty e/window, faulty ABS sensor, faulty immobiliser (sometimes)
Heard that Hyundai's quality improved markedly post 2003.
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My X-reg Hyundai Accent has following faults - 1 faulty e/window faulty ABS sensor faulty immobiliser (sometimes) Heard that Hyundai's quality improved markedly post 2003.
It's well known that the Accent had some "issues" when the then-new model first came out in 2000. By 2001 these were mostly fixed, and the Accent was thoroughly debugged by 2003.
Hyundai reliability in general has been good since the late 90s, earlier for the larger models. In fairness the bugs with the Accent were mostly electrical niggles, as you have experienced. But still, I wouldn't have a new-shape 2000 Accent!
I don't think there's such a thing as a genuinely unreliable brand any more -- some models, and some engines are duff, but entire marques are not generally affected.
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Having owned a number of different brands over the years (VW, Audi, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, GM, Saab) the only brand I can hand on heart state is up there at the top on reliability is Honda. I appreciate people will beg to differ and there are those who would not touch Honda after having a bad experience but this is a company that IMO still prides itself with engineering expertise over manufacturing to a price.
It's cars are not the cheapest but they still stay fairly competitevly priced because of its production system and lean expertise - not at the expense of using cheaper/inferior quality parts.
The attention to detail they pursue when designing even the smallest part is remarkable really.
I love that classic story about the Honda quad bike found buried in the snow in the arctic after 2 years and it started on the 3rd attempt and was able to drive normally. This sums Honda engineering up for me.
They do not get it correct every time but from my own research into manufacturing they seem to try alot harder than everyone else.
I would like to try Subaru though.
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