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Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?
Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that global competition is squeezing lemons out of the market and forcing automakers to improve the quality and reliability of their vehicles. With few exceptions, cars are so close on reliability that it's getting harder for companies to charge a premium. 'We don't have total clunkers like we used to,' says Dave Sargent, automotive vice president with J.D. Power. In 1998, J.D. Power and Associates found an industry average of 278 problems per 100 vehicles, but this year, the number fell to 132. In 1998, the most reliable car had 92 problems per 100 vehicles, while the least reliable had 517, a gap of 425. This year the gap closed to 284 problems. It wasn't always like this. In the 1990s, Honda and Toyota dominated in quality, especially in the key American market for small and midsize cars. Around 2006, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were heading into financial trouble and shifted research dollars from trucks to cars after years of neglect and spent more on engineering and parts to close the gap. Meanwhile Toyota's reputation was tarnished by a series of safety recalls, and Honda played conservative with new models that looked similar to the old ones. Now it's 'very hard to find products that aren't good anymore,' says Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the Edmunds.com automotive website. 'In safety, performance and quality, the differences just don't have material impact.'"
if bad cars have gone extinct. take a seat, it will be a while before he's done laughing.
The author has obviously not driven a GM vehicle lately. Let me count the problems with my two year old Pontiac...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Of course lemons exist.
Lots of them. Its just that, now reliable cars number quite a bit.
but there still exist a set of people who think money can be saved by skimping on QC practices.
Its more of a mindset issue.
Other than that, if you have ever been part of a JD power survey, you would know what it actually is.
Here is an interesting link
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/41820-my-experience-jd-power-quality-survey.html
So another question is.. are the right questions being answered?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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Intelligent Design for this one...
But seriously, shouldn't this be the likely outcome of Free-Market economy (well mixed in with some sensible safety regulations)?
...is the price of gas.
An absolute minimum of 92 problems per 100 cars is considered reliable?
Driven toyotas for decades. My latest Sienna is so full of problems that I'm switching brands.
There are rumours that certain >20 yo Mercedes cars have engines that are supposedly able to reach 500,000 km without major problems, as opposed to the newer "turbo" engines. I do not know if that is true, but I have personally seen such cars, and they had no noticeable rust anywhere on their body.
Back then the general feeling was that Asian cars were better quality but based on this I always wondered how much was reality and how much unconscious bias.
Those stats could reflect people who purchased cars but just use them less; eg: more car owners are biking, walking and using public transportation in effect to rising gas prices.
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They don't seem to explain the metrics or methodology in this article. How do you measure problems per car? Is this reported to the dealer? Is this new cars only or does this metric effect long term reliability, where American made cars usually lack. Even a Kia usually holds up fairly well for the first year. If you aren't measuring how many have major failures and the number of minor failures on 3, 5, and 10 year old models then these numbers are fairly useless for my needs.
In-car 'infotainment' and navigation systems are now becoming more common, so what we have gained in mechanical reliability we can make up in the endless sorrow of interacting with dubious software...
The Year Of Steering Via The Command Line...
.. at least underneath.
I don't know how it is like in the US, but in Europe almost all the car manufacturers have consolidated. Cars are a commodity now. The cars from many different brands (e.g. VW, Audi, Skoda) all have the same chassis and parts. They all have the same body shape (more or less). Usually the only difference is in the body panels, the interior trim and the badge at the front.
As such you can pretty much buy any of the above cars, and you'll find that they all have similar reliability. For many people cars are just a method of getting from A-B, so overall the above is good news for them. They can pick based on things like warranty, extras included, financing options, etc.... while the cars are more or less the same.
For example, once upon a time in the west, Skoda's were considered lemons, now they are basically rebadged VW's with reliability to match. Now they are known as VW reliable cars, without the price tag and some extras that the VW's may have.
Not my thing personally, I prefer my cars unique, so I buy old cars built before the consolidation, but for the majority of people, it is a benefit.
That's why I bought a Saturn.
is the fact that most new cars are very difficult for the owner to repair themselves, given that many are highly integrated with computer systems. Shade-tree mechanics are going to disappear.
That and the fact that every new car seems to be built on the principle that repair costs are no obstacle, so if a car gets hit, its highly damaged, extremely expensive to repair, and much more likely to be a write off - meaning you need to buy a replacement.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I just swapped in my 2006 Passat for a 2012, after a pretty poor showing in terms of reliability over the last few years, and I have to admit - I'm much more impressed with my old busted '98 Jeep Cherokee. I know it's an apples to oranges comparison, a German sedan vs an American SUV, but the Jeep just won't quit.
Of being stranded on the side of I95 in the dead of summer with steam pouring out of the hood of a behemoth Ford.
. . . .an industry average of 278 problems per 100 vehicles, but this year, the number fell to 132.
Sure, the average has been cut in half, but there's still an average of more than 1 problem per vehicle sold. How can they claim that "Bad cars have gone extinct"? I'd like to see that tagline when it's measured in under 9 problems per thousand cars.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
5 year old Hyundais still rust to the ground, many Mazdas too. Whos to say the 2012 Hyundai Genesis won't be plagued with wheel well rust by 2017...
AP reports that global competition is squeezing lemons out of the market
Wrong. I can't remember the last time I saw a TV commercial pimping the reliability of a car. Then again I don't watch much TV. The cause is ever more stringent emissions testing.
Whats driving out bad cars is aside from purely cosmetic issues its almost impossible to have a mechanical problem yet pass the "smog check" tests and get/renew license plates. They've been getting dramatically more stringent where I live. They use to wave anything thru with a warm engine and no current codes regardless of test status. As long as it "runs", even just for 5 minutes, just clear the codes in the DMV parking lot if necessary and you used to be all good. Now, until the 05 model year you are only allowed 2 test fails and 05 and newer you are only allowed one test fail, in addition to the previous no failed codes. It takes "about a week" or "half a tank of gas" to pass the evap test so basically you need completely perfectly flawless operation for a week or so in order to pass.
I had some problems last time because my thermostat was failing so it was just a little too cold for the computer to be satisfied therefore it refused to run the catconv test and the egr test and I believe one other test, leading to a fail, although I had no codes. Would have passed in '10, failed in '11 due to bad test results.
It's all meaningless anti-environmental political grandstanding BS because my 30 MPG car, even if horrifically detuned would still pollute less than half what a sloburban or a tiny manhood compensator pickup truck would at perfect tune. If they cared about the environment etc then my car would auto-pass without any testing ... I could pour crankcase oil directly into the exhaust to make a smoke screen and still be cleaner than any diesel truck I've seen.
The point of this is you can't drive a car with license plates in my state unless its basically in perfect mechanical condition. Or if it isn't, you've got less than two years until your plates are (permanently?) pulled. Value engineering has finally figured out how to get 99.9% of cars to pass within the manufacturers guarantee period so the dealer doesn't go bankrupt on repairs, but they haven't figured out how to make them fall apart the very next year after the guarantee expires. Give them time, they'll figure it out eventually.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
What I would suggest from my own reading of the J D Power surveys is that the gap at the top is much narrower, with a number of high quality manufacturers including the Germans, the Japanese and a few others fighting over quite small differences. If you buy a Merc, a VW (even if it is called a Skoda), a Porsche, a BMW, a Toyota or a Honda, you're unlikely to complain. Buy a recent Korean car and the same is likely to be true. And then you get into the long tail (I may have missed some good ones, I agree).
A modern clunker is better than an old clunker, true, but the customer dissatisfaction is going to be just as great. It's all relative. In the early 80s many American cars were...well, they got traded in after a year and the next owner was the QA and rectification department. But people accepted it. When a lock fell out of the door of my boss's car - sorry, Chrysler- he just said "Well, it's 11 months old, not worth fixing". Twenty years on, a lock broke on a colleague's ten year old Merc and he complained that German engineering wasn't what it was.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4orHdycJl4
renault authorised service centers don't even acknowledge it as a problem. in fact, one of their mechanics tried to pass it off as a feature.
i am at a loss for words
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Over the last couple of decades, the auto makers have outsourced more and more of their parts for their cars. The big guys off of the top of my head: Mannesmann VDO, Walbro, Bosch, Seimens, etc.. make parts for everybody. And the car makers make parts for each other. For instance, my Chevy has an Isuzu transaxle.
When you have everybody using the same parts, quality is going to converge.
It's much cheaper to outsource for a good part than it is to make your own shitty one these days - Hallelujah!
Here's the bad news - the push for plastic to be put into things that shouldn't have plastic, like transmissions in order to cheapen the product and improve margins. (The public line is that they're using plastic to lighten the cars to improve mileage.) And of course, more and more parts are being made in poor countries. There are still American made parts, but they're under HUGE amounts of pressure to reduce their prices (quality be damned!) and send their manufacturing overseas.
Car makers are becoming more and more marketing and branding firms and assemblers instead of die hard manufacturers. It won't be long before a car maker will just buy the frame and everything from VDO and just place their own body on it ; which is like what car makers already do with their luxury brands: place a luxury body on the frame of a mid-range car.
The problems have disappeared from the developed world, but exist in the developing world
Theres the TATA Nano with a much higher than usual self immolation rate
There is Skoda whose quality is not even worth mentioning,etc...
Actually, in the 90's it was all done on UNIX workstations.
Today it is done on Windows.
"Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?"
So the Italians stopped making cars? Next thing you'll be telling me is the British threw in the towel too.
Before anyone flame baits the post have you ever owned an Italian or British car? Italian cars are rated in "parts per mile" and British cars are infamous for electrical problems, among others. I love old Lambos and Jaguars but you'll be replacing parts before your first oil change. It took selling out to Ford as in FoundOnRoadDead, to fix the Jag electrical issues. Lambos are wonderful cars so long as you leave them in the garage and don't actually try to drive them. Notice I haven't mentioned the former Soviet countries? How about the Tata Nano? India's answer to the Soviet crap cars. Thankfully the Yugo died a silent death but cars like the Nano are carrying the torch. Yes cars from the big three and the Japanese cars are better than they used to be but there's still plenty of scary cars to go around.
GM and Ford make ugly cars. The Taurus, the Fusion, the Focus, ugh. Same old, same old. Why, oh why? I would love to buy an American car but they all look goofy.
GM are still around.
The average owner has a salary of $170,000, yet still needs a $7,500 tax credit (possibly jumping to $10,000 this year) to buy that piece of shit. One Chevy Volt owner told me he bought it to support Obama and save the environment (in that order). But he doesn't actually like it, so he still drives his BMW most of the time.
Things still break. If a car is designed to be easily and cheaply repaired, people will fix them, and they will still be running in 20 years. Poor design can mean that it costs $800 to replace the alternator instead of $200, and people are going to start junking those cars much earlier.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
There's a big difference between "initial quality" reports and long term (5, 10, 15 year) reliability, though there is probably some correlation due to overall manufacturing control at the factory. Initial quality tells you if something was built correctly, for the most part. Long term reliability has more to do with the design and specifications of the car and its components. You can have a cheap car (or camera, or toy, etc.) that works fine out of the box and breaks in a short time due to cheap materials. Or you could have one built of high quality materials with fine tolerances that lasts effectively forever.
I work in the car industry. That means I am a hell of a lot more qualified than most
of you people to make an informed comment on the current state of the art in new
cars.
Cars now are junk, even very expensive cars. The "product cheapening department"
has found new ways to lower the production costs for cars, and this will come back
to haunt anyone who owns a car for more than a couple of years. Since only the wealthy or
the stupid buy new cars every couple of years, this means a lot of people are going to get
screwed by how the new cars are being built.
Such things as plastic intake manifolds, wiring which is as small as possible in gauge in order to
save copper, and even thinner body sheet metal all mean the cars you can buy today are more
of a disposable item than cars built a decade or more previously. Argue against this if you like,
but you will be wrong.
"American cars are just as reliable as foreign cars!" screams the American automotive industry.
A Chevy Cruze Eco. 40+MPG highway, 35 around town. Seats 4, and the rear seat isn't just decorative.
If I'd had another 5 grand I'd've gotten a VW Golf TDI.
Best Slashdot Co
If more cars today are built with high quality, then why don't all the manufacturers have 10-year warranties like Hyundai, Kia, and Mitsubishi?
Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?
Nah, they're just hibernating. Once the car industry settles down again to only 2 to 3 major players, they'll be back.
Whenever a /. headline asks a question, the answer is always No.
Almost all of them use gas, pollutes, are noisy. don't drive themselves, don't fly, don't have MrFusion, are bulky, dont just teleport to the destination. Oh, and there are too many of them, everywhere.
Now, for others definition of bad most cars today could be pretty good, or any past car could be a dream, going back to the Ford T. But at any moment you can claim that bad cars are gone, just adjusting your definition of bad or good.
The $48k battery pack must be replaced if it completely drains. Insurance and warranty do not cover this.
He Internet probably has a lot to do with it. It can easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars to design a new car. Now with the intenet if that new car is crap people will talk about it online. Think back to the pinto, once a very popular car. Who would have ever bought one if they knew they had a bad habit of catching fire in rear end collisions?
Fact of the matter is manufactures invest too much money in a new model today to risk producing something that is complete crap. In today's hyper competitive market you can't afford to keep making a bad car by offering an extra discount.
It's actually much easier to work on cars now. There's no such thing as a tune-up anymore - you just change plugs and filters. No more timing, points and distributor caps to replace. No carbs to fiddle with. If something goes wrong, buy a diagnostic computer that plugs into the ODBC port. In inflation adjusted $, it's way cheaper than what we used to pay for timing lights and other tune-up gear. Most of the diagnostic lights that come on are for oxygen sensor replacement. Brakes are mostly disk now. Way easier to work on that drums.
Have a look at your owner's manual and see how little needs to be done - and how much of it you can do yourself. Don't make the mistake of looking at the dealer's own maintenance manual that seems to triple the amount of service required. I laughed out loud when the guy at the service counter told me I was due for an "emissions system diagnostic". My reply: "Federal law mandates that the system be self-diagnosing and put up a trouble light on the dash if there's anything wrong. What on earth are you going to diagnose???". He went pretty quiet after that.
I have never, ever, ever met a Passat diesel that didn't have a dirty rear bumper spot right above the tail pipe. And I doubt the soccer moms that drive these "tuned their car to smoke."
Most recently I had bad luck with a suzuki. Never again will I buy something thats only designed to last until the payments are done.
But overall, yeah, automotive quality is light-years ahead of what it used to be just in general. Just sayin this as someone with 30 years of turning wrenches. Oh and BTW, older US designs actually *did* last a lot better even though they had horrible fuel mileage. Reason being that they were so completely over-built and fairly simplistic. Crude, even.
C|N>K
Mercedes had serious quality problems ten years ago, they were near the bottom of the industry, BELOW, American car companies like Chrysler. With a lot of work they have caught back up with the pack. Fortunately for Mercedes, they have always had great PR which compensated for the fact that they built cars that were bad and expensive for several years.
...but then they got a bailout.
Mind the frickin' laser...
J.D. Power and Associates is an industry shill. You pay them money, and they come up with fake statistics and give you an award. "Best midsized fuel efficient sedan in the upper north-east for the first 2/3s of 2011!!!" Their stats are almost entirely made up, and even then they just fish around in them until your product comes out on top in some obscure way so they can give you a bullshit award. Likely this article is bought and paid for by some automotive industry association that's trying to bolster slumping sales. There are plenty of Lemons out there. Any Volkswagen, Jaguar, The "hummer", and on and on. Granted, the industry is getting better, but the fact that cars still last less than 10 years on average should be rather telling.
J.D. Power chronicles user-reported problems during the first three years of car ownership. That says nothing about whether the vehicle will be running after 10 or 20 years. To my mind, that's the real test of a car's engineering: how well does it stand up to use.
Just ask anyone who drives an Audi, Volkswagen, or Porsche.
Kaizen is the term used for continua process improvement. It was used in the early 80's in Japan and has since ford other car manufactures to adopt the practice. Quality is no accident. It is a process.
With Kaizen working onthe mechanical components, the next major improvement is the electrical bonding of paint to the body. This produces a protective coating that does not rust easily.
These two changes alone are why we see so many more "historic" tagged vehicles on the road. This of course has resulted in a new phenomenon: Planned Obsolescence. With vehicles lasting longer, they need to increase your motivation for buying before the car dies. Before that, you used to get parts cheap. My truck (1980 Scout II) was essentially unchanged from 1972-1980, with only minor tweaks (grills, steering box shaft diameter changed, and a few changes like carbs over the years for emissions standards)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
By my reckoning, an average of 132 problems per 100 cars (as far as I can tell this is per year) is still dreadful. If I keep my car properly serviced and don't drive it into a wall I expect it to pretty much keep going year-in, year-out. 20 problems per 100 cars (an average of a problem every 5 years) would probably be acceptable.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Domestic manufacturers can make all the quality cars they want. I won't be purchasing one. My 1999 Nissan Altima is still going strong at almost 200K miles with minimal repair (replaced clutch and both half axles, rack and pinion, fuel filler neck) so no getting into the deep internals. Never garaged. When a company like Hyundai can splash into the American market and in (I believe) less than 20 years produce vehicles that are better then the big three domestics. It speaks volumes. I don't know of any US compact car I would take over the Elantra.
If you think 8.11 liters per 100 kilometers or a bit of 10km per liter on the highway is any good. When you do city driving, do you just squirt the fuel out the back for propulsion?
Apparently what you as the American public doesn't know is what efficiency is.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
European cars are completely left out the write-up. Is this some bad case of 'don't mention number two' ? I distinctly remember Volvo and Peugeot making a big show of their quality/safety statistics.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
My current two cars a 2002 V8 Dodge Dakota and a 2005 V6 Hyundai Tucson were both bought used with around 16,000 miles on them both have over 110,000 miles on them. The Dakota has never been in the shop for anything that wasn't routine maintenance and the Tucson was in the shop once for a sensor that was $160 with labor to fix. Couldn't be happier with these two vehicles though in the past I've had lots of problems with other cars.
"We don't have total clunkers like we used to."
He obviously hasn't owned a Chrysler product.
But seriously, I think what's happening is that people are just putting up more with crappy cars. When repairs cost a significant portion of a car's worth, and the vehicle will still "get ya there", there is no point in getting it fixed. If problems go unreported it can give the illusion that the product is of better quality.
Proverbs 21:19
did those French makers cease to exist ?
...the 2012 Jeep Compass practically flunked the EuroNCAP, while the 2012 Honda Civic passed with flying colors.
If they sold Tata, Lada, ZAZ, Geely, Chery, etc in the USA this story would never have been written.
It's very hard to find a new car in America under $10K (Least Expensive Cars of 2012).
If you want cheaper, you are stuck with a motorcycle.
There is a market for something with 4 wheels but without the safety profile of car. India has cheap cars, why not America?
Now, there would need to be some rules, including special safety rules for passengers under 18 (I would say "no passengers under 18" but motorcycles can carry kids as passengers), limits to the number of seats (I recommend no more than 1 passenger) and proof of financial responsibility for your own medical bills if you are in an accident and are at fault or the other party is under-insured.
Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to license them as "4 wheeled motorcycles with an enclosed cabin" but with an easier-to-pass license exam (in some states it's almost as hard to get a motorcycle endorsement on your driver's license as it is to get the original car-only license).
Well, at least in America you can get some good, safe used cars in the $5K-10K price range.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I couldn't be happier with my new car, now 3 months old. Not one hint of a problem, anywhere. I think it was made by Apple. (Oh God, here come the trolls.) Seriously, best car I've ever owned, and loaded with hi-tech goodies. Mileage is probably better than what you'd expect from 400 horsepower. 16-20 in the city and 28 on the interstate. One drawback -- all those Gs are beginning to make my wife a little flat chested.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
I'd rather have a car with 500 little problems than one big problem. Or are they counting a failed engine or transmission as 500 problems?
Every sports car these days is heavy as hell, hyper-complicated and usually quite large. If you want something light and simple that doesn't come in a kit it's gonna be over $50k (and even most kits will be over $30k once completed). Lotus Elise, TVR Sagaris, all too much money. There's nothing new out there for the non-rich enthusiast. The Toyota GT-86 looks like it might be the first decent new sports car (still a bit on the heavy side though), I'd buy one if I had to get a new car, but it's not $25kUS better than my current car so I'll at least wait until they depreciate. The Renault Twingo 133 cup looks pretty good too but the specs are almost the same as my current car.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Side terminal batteries that are a PITA for a jumpstart.
Sufficient current when turned off that trickle charging the battery without disconnecting it is a no no.
Latch mechanisms that kill the battery if you get the hatch almost closed.
This idiotic fantasy that I want the car radio to also be an information control center.
Requiring 3 different sized wrenches to remove the battery (Two metric, one standard, of course).
Engine compartment designed such that the whole damn engine has to be pulled to do work on the 1st cylinder.
The factory standard and dealer replacement bulbs that fail in under 6 months (Strangely the cheapest 3rd party bulbs installed after it went out of warranty have now lasted for half the life of the car).
Chrysler... I just never bothered again after having to go through 5 different sized wrenches to replace an alternator.
Ford's had some gems like parking lights where the whole front bumper has to be removed to replace them.
To be fair... I also complain that the current Toyota Tacoma isn't nearly as reliable as the 1999 one.
I'd kill for Hyundai to license the Hilux for distribution in the US.
Could any of it be attributed to the dealership/maintenance experience?
Just a guess, but maybe the Mitsubishi dealership had an edge in maintenance and repair, which improved the "reliability" of the car in some way, even if they had similar problems.
The Mitsubishi dealership probably had an inherent interest in Mitsubishi cars, and as a newer dealership was perhaps more highly motivated to see the product line succeed (ie, remembering the guys who got in on the ground floor of Toyota or Honda). Its mechanics and service managers were focused on the Mitsubishi cars. Even improved dealer prep (checking known dodgy bits) may have helped.
Whereas Chrysler dealers may have been weary of "corporate", tired of selling rebadges they didn't think would stick around. Their mechanics were old school guys who didn't like newfangled Mitsubishi engines or designs and focused less on knowing them well. The end result being a car "built the same" but missing that magic fairy dust.
You are ABSOLUTELY right on this one!
I was driving a Hyundai Genesis Coupe since early '09, when they were first available in the U.S. At the end of last year, I got that "3 year itch" to get something new/different, and I found out one of our area Cadillac dealers had a pretty deep discount on a 2011 CTS Coupe someone had just traded in with low mileage. I hadn't ever considered anything Cadillac built as being "my type of vehicle", but I saw the CTS Coupe and was immediately impressed. I wound up trading in the Hyundai, and by most people's counts, I made a "huge upgrade" in vehicles.
Well, as I tend to do, I got on the message forums for the car and did a LOT of reading in the weeks that followed. I learned as much as I could about the car, both good and bad. And right now? I'd have to caution anyone thinking of buying one of these cars to REALLY think long and hard before pulling the trigger on it.
The consensus on the forums, including a lot of input from guys who actually designed parts of the cars themselves, mechanics who have rebuilt a number of these engines, and more? GM quality *really* sunk to a low from the mid 2000's through 2009 or so, when parts suppliers feared not getting paid for the parts they supplied, and quality control was all over the place. After the bailout, quality suddenly shot up in 2010, when suppliers knew they'd be paid promptly for parts they supplied, and morale got a boost among everyone from assembly line workers to quality engineers inside GM.
(You can see evidence of this simply by looking up the Consumer Reports reliability scoring for the Cadillac CTS... It's pretty poor in 2008 and only marginally better in '09, but suddenly above average in 2010 and 2011 -- and no real major changes were done to the car between those years.)
Still, there are some serious flaws with the 3.6 liter direct injection engines GM uses across their whole product line, from the V6 Camaro to the Cadillac CTS I own to the Acadia crossover -- and it's clear they've done little to address them, despite using this engine for the last 4 years. Basically, they have a lot of issues with the timing chains stretching, causing your engine to need a rebuild -- sometimes with as little as 25,000 miles on it. GM continuously blamed it on the chains being "too soft a metal" thanks to parts supplier error, but the guys doing rebuilds on these say no.... The *real* culprit with this engine lies in its core design. For starters, with direct injection, the fuel gets sprayed right into the cylinders. It never goes past the valves like it would in most engines. Therefore, no matter how good the detergents are in your gas, they never get the opportunity to do their job keeping the valves clear of gunk. Meanwhile, the timing chain is kept tensioned hydraulically, using only oil pressure. There's no spring or other mechanism involved. And the chain itself has practically no margin for error, as GM designed it so its teeth are spaced much closer together than most chains. It doesn't take much for it to skip timing. So if your oil gets too dirty, or a little bit low and the hydraulic tensioner doesn't keep consistent tension on the chain? Recipe for disaster. Oh, and did I forget to mention? The 3.6 liter DI engine just loves to do a vanishing act on some of your oil. If you go 3,000 miles without checking it, it's very likely you'll be at least 1 quart low. That, in itself, is usually considered an "acceptable level of oil usage" by industry standards ... but combined with the issues this particular engine has, it's a serious problem, especially when GM says you can / should go at least 7,500 miles or so between oil changes!
If you're going to discuss Mercedes' vehicles it's important to distinguish between cars built 20 years ago, and Mercedes cars built today. None of the cars built today will ever make it 90 days without going back in for service. They're one of the LEAST reliable vehicles on the road. If you like service room free coffee, buy a Mercedes. (I learned my lesson, and talked to everybody else who also learned THEIR lesson.) Shitty, shitty vehicles today. They can't even keep their supercars on the road without an oil light going on. And it doesn't help that their sales staff think they should have egos. DO NOT BUY A MODERN MERCEDES!
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Isn't the underlying message that increased reliability is due to increased reliance on robotic assembly lines? Human error is taken out of the equation.
Google around for problems with DexCool - the "new" coolant GM has been using for 10 years now. I've always favored GM vehicles, but I will not buy another until they discontinue the use of this stuff and show a history of vehicles not having such issues for 10years/150K miles (my GMs have other issues too). It's bullshit, it's been going on for a decade, and they still insist it's not their fault and they still use the stuff. Fuck em.
One thing that gives me hope. I saw one supplier win some GM business where they were not the lowest bid. That's a refreshing change from my past observations of their purchasing people. It suggests there is more than one dimension to their purchasing decisions now. Hopefully it's real change, and not just politics causing a fluke.
I had a new Chevrolet car a decade ago which ran fine but when I ran into problems, I had one hell of a time trying to get them to fix it. I got treated like a number by the corporate customer service rep when I tried escalating. So I vowed to never buy a Chevy again. Now I own a Hyundai and bought it used. It had some problems up front due to neglect on the previous owner's part, but the warranty coverage and service I got were top notch. I haven't had any problems with it in the years since then and I'd happily buy another one.
Recalls are great. The company pays for the repairs instead of the customer. They acknowledge a problem. Management gets all pissed off and it causes people to get in trouble. At Toyota this supposedly leads to someone losing their job (not just an engineer, but a manager). Don't compare a product recall to a shitty product that costs the customers thousands of extra dollars in the first 5-10 years.
While mechanical failures may have decreased, design problems are all over the place, from Toyota's gas pedals getting stuck to the visibility-destroying A-columns in Dodge pickups. There is so much focus on appearance and stopping mechanical failure, they've stopped paying attention to how people actually drive and are decreasing safety because of it.
My wife - then girlfriend - had a 95(?) Cavalier. After ~50K miles we had to get rid of it. The headlights would turn off intermittently, and wouldn't come back for 20-30 sec. Dealership couldn't find the problem. There was also a leak somewhere in the fuel line they couldn't find. Or maybe it was somewhere else. The car would stink like fuel after a few minutes' idle. It was traded in just as something in the front end was going south. Horrible noise, the steering pulled, and the car shook at speed.
46 & 2
>> You can see evidence of this simply by looking up the Consumer Reports reliability scoring for This is normal in their reliability ratings though. The ratings indicate reported problems, and they always get worse as you go back in years. The one exception is redesign years. A lot of times you can tell when a model was redesigned because reliability ratings will go down in a later year, so something that was always rated good in the older years all of a sudden goes bad in a more recent year.
Cars are a classic example of fixing something until it's broken.
Why auto companies feel the need to invent a whole new engine for every model of car is beyond me.
the author has not looked very hard. I have a newer vehicle that has had nothing but problems, praise (insert deity of choice) for extended waranties. Less that 100K miles and well maintained; I have had the front axel, transfer case, transmission, instrument cluster and other electronics all die in the past two years. The manufacturers' forums are rife with people having the same issues.
'very hard to find products that aren't good anymore,' says Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the Edmunds.com automotive website
Um, BS.
Just in my circle of friends, family, and colleagues, I've seen:
Insulation crumbling off of wiring harnesses
Defective ABS systems where the ABS decides the car is in a skid and starts applying the brakes to each of the 4 wheels... Imagine this happening on a wet road driving at speed...
Differentials failing at speed. (on a well serviced car, not raced)
Automatic transmissions on cars less than 3 years old that sound like coffee grinders, or 1000 failing hard drives...
Defects in clutch systems where the clutch fluid turns BLACK in less than 4000mi of regular driving...
Seriously ... Look harder!
You offer no fact, no data point on which we could comment. thin sheet of metal ? much more deformable, means energy in accident is going into deformable aprt and not you. Plastic ? some plastic cost a lot and have very specialized usage for which metal or wood are worst off. Now if you offered a plastic SPECIFICATION and told us, this is what they put in manifold but as you look in this specification #XYZ , it is much worst off than #ABC but they spare 1$ per plastic manifold,I would udnerstand that. and could argue with that. but you offer NOTHING to be refuted. In other word your post was neigh useless.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In Europe we have the Consumer Affairs EU rapid alert system for all dangerous consumer products. Very interesting to do a search on car brands to see recalls and other problems. http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/dyna/rapex/rapex_archives_en.cfm I found it while having dangerous stuff happening with my Volvo V50 diesel spontaniously starting to accelerate on the high way. Searching for Volvo there learned me that Volvo definitely still has serious quality problems. I think cars haven't become that much better. The car companies have become that much better in covering up their problems.
I can back that up: just had a rear main seal replaced on a 1996 Camry. Still have a pesky valve cover leak though. Coming up on 259,000 miles, btw.
I used to work as an Advance Quality Engineer in the automotive seating industry. Part of my job involved regularly reviewing the JD Power results for the platforms on which I worked.
The most "amusing" results were when JD Power asked people to rate the ease of movement of the headrest, on a seat which had a fixed/non-movable headrest. (hint... you can't... at least not without "special" tools) Of course, people rated that the headrest was too difficult to move. (duh!) There were lots of questions like that.
I am not saying that JD Power has no value... just that you have to be careful not to take any survey too seriously. Too much depends on the validity of the questions.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
So basically my cherry '74 Stingray is a Coelacanth. Next on my list: a vintage Land Cruiser. I'll call it my 'possum(an ancient mammal).
*Groan* I did that joke ten years ago, dude! And mine was actually funny.
"Hey, you got a new car! Pretty nice! I see you're sticking with the same manufacturer."
"Well, I liked the old one. I've always been happy with Microcar's autos."
"Your old one was only two years old, if you liked it why did you buy a new one?"
"The manufacturer said I should upgrade. Besides, this new model has a cassette instead of an eight track. Wish it would play the other four tracks though..."
"Why didn't you just buy a new radio?"
"The manufacturer welds them in, and wires them so the car won't start if you take it out. Besides, the radio wasn't the only reason to upgrade."
"What else?"
"Ralph Nader says the old one crashes too often, but you know that nut. I've only had that old one one crash six times, and I was never in the hospital too long. But Microcar says this model is much more stable and hardly ever crashes. It's supposed to be more secure, too."
"Why did it keep crashing?"
"Dunno, something about the spark plugs interacting with the steering system, I'm no mechanic. My mechanic tried to explain it to me but these mechanical things are just too complicated. He says if I'd defrag my pistons more often it wouldn't crash, you get much more stability with a fresh tuneup. But I just said 'the hell with it' and traded it in.
"In fact, I'm taking it in to the shop right now."
"But it's a band new car, it needs a tuneup?"
"No, there's a 'feature' that keeps the door lock from working if you drive it more than six miles. I'm going to get the patch kit".
"I thought you weren't mechanical?"
"Well, they say this one's an easy fix and I can't afford another repair bill".
"Won't they fix it under warranty?"
"What warranty? This is a car! The EULA says they bear no responsibility for anything. I just hope I don't get in trouble with the law applying this patch."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, they weld the hood shut, and under the DMCA, opening the hood of your car is a felony if it's welded shut. You can go to prison if you get caught, even if they are tacky little welds that come apart by themselves."
"Boy, cars sure are weird. I'm glad my computer isn't like that, I'd never get any work done!"
1/25/2002 Springfield Fragfest
Free Martian Whores!
Gas prices in the US are not "artificially low". Like many other places they are artificially high, mostly because of our historical reluctance to tap our own supply, despite it being readily available The Market works amazingly well at providing for all and keeping prices low when the government doesn't get in the way.
I call BS.
1) Right now the price of crude is about $50 below the >$150/bbl peak of several years ago, while the price of gas is roughly the same as back then - shortly to be even higher we are told. This has more to do with increased "consolidation" (duopoly) in the industry, than crude oil prices. Lots of refineries are being *closed* right now. Duopoly is distorting other industries now, e.g., telecommunications. It's the era of the robber barons all once again.
2) There are no magic cheap-oil pink unicorns out there. Alternatives, such as, tar sands and oil shale, are expensive. Ethanol is a corporate welfare scam.
Political ideology is not an energy source, it's only an energy sink. Consider how much the current political campaigns are contributing to the entropy death of the universe....
I find it interesting that in a thread about cars there are no computer analogies.
About ten years ago, my 1994 Ford Ranger exhibited similar behavior (choking under sudden throttle pressure and detonation under high load at speed). I brought it to a shop which has a good reputation in town and they said there was nothing major that they could find wrong and said maybe I should try higher octane fuel. I then brought it to a Ford Dealership and they had it fixed it withing 30 minutes. It was a dirty mass airflow sensor - I had left the air filter housing partially open by mistake when changing the air filter. They cleaned the MAS and the truck ran like new. I still does run great (not *quite* like new) today.
Anyhoo, moral of the story: People at the authorized service center might have just been incompetent.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
...in a much heavier vehicle, and the results weren't pretty as you found out, but they did address the problem in later models. I'm not a huge Honda fan, but I do own one that's given me zero problems in 5 years.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
that is: "Mopar don't go far" since it has proven to be true for many years. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Counting "problems found" in new vehicles is not a very good measure of quality without quantifying severity of the "problem found". Hence Toyota, with 90-ish "problems found" per vehicle may or may not be more seriously defective than another maker's vehicle. A measure of quality should be a grade based on a cumulative score based on "problems found" and their severity.
If the answer is yes then the answer to the question is "No bad cars are not extinct and as long as GM and Chrysler exist there will be no shortage of shitty cars."
1. Junk the Hyundai
2. Buy a real car
I know someone who had a Hyundai. Mostly freeway miles, brakes needed replacing at 10K miles and the 100K/10 year warranty wouldn't cover it, since it "normal wear and tear" for the brakes to be shot in only 10K miles.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
In my RSS reader, under the title "Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?" was an advertisement for a vehicle under the "Great Wall" brand. I wonder if they have "bad cars" as keywords for their ad placement.
Don't get me started on temperature gauges!
Had 2 engines severely overheat, i.e. with smoke coming out. One of them is dead, sounds like it is trying to catch when starting, but never actually starts. JUNK.
What did the gauge read?
If it was in the red/at/past the H I'd understand.
But it was NORMAL, both times.
What good is a gauge that doesn't actually tell you it is burning up?!
Why they measure water temperature and not cylinder head temperature (i.e. what REALLY matters) I don't know. Planes have them.
Except perhaps so people have engines get damaged.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Try a Smart (Daimler AG), they are being sold in the US and are perfect for someone who is looking for a quirky and unreliable car. Highly recommended to anyone that misses the old days of American and British cars (and German stuff like Opel).
But long term quality is a completely different thing. As being said by others, you can run a new car very long without doing maintenance, at least you should be able to, but it's not something you want. Frequent oil changes keeps the motor healthy. Servicing the car also makes sure that everything is tip top. It's much better to catch a water leak when it's small, than to strand on the highway with a boiling engine. The problem with modern cars isn't necessarily the mechanics, but the electronics. I've seen 1 year old cars being stranded because of a moist computer (this is down to bad design). That's a problem that probably wouldn't have been an issue in most of the US, but here in Norway cars usually have it rougher. Rougher roads, a lot of salt in the air a long the coast, salted roads in the winter, holes in the roads, and lots of turns, everywhere. That's conditions that put it's strain on cars. With cars being taxed about 100% (or more for high power cars) they tend to be driven till they die. The average scrapping age of cars last year was around 10-11 for Hyundais, but Chevrolet was at 19 because of a relatively high number of classic cars, and the rest have big engines so they live a long life before they've depreciated enough to not being worthy of fixing when broken. As for car brands with a low to nothing number of veteran cars, I think Audi was the one with the highest age;17 years at scrapping.
I've owned two cars so far, both with high age and high mileage. I had an 88' Subaru 1800 coupe, it did rust quite a bit (didn't help that it was white), but mechanically it was holding up good. Had no big troubles except for changing two wheel bearings, brake master cylinder, HT leads and the battery. The car was retired at 155,000 miles due to my girlfriend breaking the rear windshield (by accident). Since then I've owned a 94 Audi 100 (C4, same as A6, but different engine/electronics/bumpers). It's now done 233,000 miles and is still going strong. I've driven it for four years and 65,000 miles. For both cars I've had a Haynes manual and a good batch of tools. I prefer doing the repairs and maintenance myself. That way I know it's been done properly and with care. The audi has swapped a lot of the major wear-parts, partially due to bad maintenance from previous owners though. Had to change all the springs because the car was lowered with a cheap-ass lowering kit (and one spring was broken), changed brake discs and pads, both rear calipers, ball joints, CV-joints, a couple of water hoses, and the gasket for the vacuum pump. The rest is basic maintenance really. Filters, oil, plugs, HT-leads, etc., nothing really serious, and it starts every time (knock on wood). I've helped a lot of people with different cars, and I have to say, working on the Audi is a pleasure compared to many cars. Things are thought out. There's room to work, and things are usually accessible without having to resort to dismantling half the car first. I do have a couple of issues design-wise though. First the chassis is designed in such a way that it easily develops leaking. I had the whole passenger side foot-well flooded with water due to this, basically a miracle the ignition circuitry survived. Did also develop the same problem on the other side. The problem was right below the windshield, under the fenders. Other problem: all the wires passing through the rubber gater between the roof and the rear hatch started to get broken, two where broken, and the insulation was coming apart on the others. The material in the insulation and the amount of wires combined with the movement they had when opening and closing the hatch resulted in this wear, I've seen this on another old A6 and another 100 as well, so it's not just my car.
But as bad design goes, a friend of mine had a nissan sunny, 1.3. When I helped him to change water on the car it took longer to bleed the system, than it took to change the front brake pads on an Opel Astra. And that was when following the procedures outlined in the official workshop manual.
As bad m
There is no Haynes available for it at all
There are probably plenty of good reasons for owning a Toyota over a Jeep (especially since they are owned by Chrysler), but access to Haynes data isn't one of them. I once spent a couple evenings laying under my car in the cold, cursing while I drilled broken flywheel bolts out of the crankshaft, cause a Haynes manual gave me incorrect torque specs. If you want access to reliable maintenance data for your car, turn to the factory shop manual, or Alldata (which contains all the same stuff.)
A friend of mine once had a job at the Honda plant years back in Lincoln, AL where they build the Odyssey. One day he got pulled off the floor to help them diagnose a possible quality control problem. Seems they had a bad run of valve retainers. My friend is the hell raising kind and he beat the piss out of that minivan, until it finally dropped a valve at 80 MPH near the end of the test track, destroying the engine. Damn near wrecked it trying to stop when the brake pedal went hard, lol.
But he changes the oil in his cars and motorcycles more frequently than the book says. Just because.
Your friend is a fool, because running an engine 30-40k miles on a single oil change (especially with modern engines and synthetic oils) isn't really that big of a deal. Now if the car had been driven 100k+ miles with such infrequent changes, then yeah, I'd be leery too. But never under any circumstances other than the HARSHEST conditions and abuse should anyone ever change oil *sooner* than the manufacturer's recommendation...which is usually 6k+ miles on most modern vehicles.
No, this is wrong. The oil only needs to be changed after it's no longer doing its job of lubricating the engine, not when the engine has passed some arbitrary mileage figure. You can actually drain a sample of the oil and send it off to be tested, to let you know *exactly* when it needs to be changed.....which is often far less often than most people assume. With a modern, quality synthetic oil, under normal driving conditions 10k is nothing, turbocharged or not.
A lot of Toyota engines failed due to a cylinder cooling problem. They were replaced by Toyota, but it was a big costly deal for user and company alike. These were in Camrys and Siennas (minivans).
But my Corolla has been exceptionally reliable. The new ones look really cheap though. The LE of 2012 has a flimsier interior than the CE of 2004.
Well, that's capitalism for you--think of all the factory workers that have no job now that they're not making lemons.
That's why we need unions to protect the lemon-makers!
2004 Acura TL w/Nav
All scheduled maintenance performed on time.
Well Maintained.....
Only problem is, the car is literally falling apart. It's on its 7th battery in as many years. Electrical problems EVERYWHERE. Latest entertaining issue is that the Air Conditioner only turns on when you hit a bump. (Seriously, I sh_t you not.) Last repair job was a full replacement of the transmission. The mechanic replaced the torque converter with one from a Chevy Corvette. I had no idea they were interchangeable, but he said the Corvette part is built better and he's never had to replace one a second time.
NAV system works when it wants to, Airbag warning light comes on randomly.
This was supposed to be a luxury car, but its a bigger pain in the ass than my first teenaged beater-mobile.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Almost forgot. Had to replace every single motor and transmission mount. Yes, dear readers, this car is cherry.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
We still won't be able to get half the fucking Honda drivers out there to actually drive the speedlimit, instead of 5-7 miles below.
Just watch next time your in a 55 and going 50 when there isn't much traffic, half the its going to be some asshole in a Honda.
Esp the brand new ones.
And its usually the electronics which fail, which eventually cause a cascade of problems.
Most EU mfrs, esp Mercedes, VW, Skoda are currently facing issues with electronics failing prematurely, esp in less than optimal conditions(exessive dust, high temp).
Since these conditions are "normal" in emerging markets like India, they have gotten the reputation of hard and expensive to maintain cars.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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If they sold Ladas in the USA I'd damn well buy one! A Riva would be a great car for Alaska.
3 year payoff, anyway. Figure another 150/month or so. Too much for me.
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My 1998 Honda Civic that I bought new in 1998 went for the first 5 years with nothing but oil changes with zero issues. 13 years into owning that car, the repairs finally became too expensive to justify, so I got rid of it. But that was a helluva good machine.
OK, yes, I know I'm a LOT older than the average /. reader (Hint, I'm starting to get mailings from AARP), but when I was a kid, when you needed to replace a set of pistons on an engine, your FIRST job was to measure the cylinders, and see if you needed 0 +5, +10 +20 etc pistons. Yep, the Mfg tolerances on the engines was such that car A's parts were NOT necessarly interchangable with car B's.
Modern machining, and in particular modern carbide tooling (one of the first real nano technologies - the particles use to make them are nano sized), and probably more interesting to the /. crowd cutter ware compensation build into CNC machine tools have allowed Mfgs to hold tolerances that are WAY WAY tighter than they were
BTW by tighter tolerances, I don't mean FITS, I mean tolerances - if I put a 0.50000 pin into a 1.00000 hole, I've spec'd a TIGHT tollerance, but a VERT loose fit
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I have an 07 cobalt. love the car, and it treats me well, but it seems like every time I take it to the dealership for inspection, they find something wrong with the front end suspension that has to be replaced. thankfully everything has been covered under warranty so far, but I still think there shouldn't be parts needing replacement every year on a car with only one owner. it's 5 years old now, sure, but look at it the other way. 5 years of parts being replaced already. wtf?
the electronic power steering was recalled and replaced for free, but it worked better with the original. now, if I'm sitting still or just start to move in a parking lot or something, it seems like the power steering doesn't kick in right away as it should. another problem, this past year, my sunroof started leaking pretty bad. it's not fun having a puddle of water on the drivers side floor every time it rains. dealership wouldn't look at it without charging me, and didn't have any info for me that would help. I took the head liner down, and there was a drain pipe that popped out of a rubber piece right at the sun roof. no clamps or tape or glue or anything. I stick it back in, and it barely stays. the movement of the car can knock those out, and it came from the factory that way? electrical tape fixed the problem. last rant for me, the sunroof switch has the crappiest bracket I can remember seeing anywhere. it's like they designed it up side down or something. when installing the switch, you hook it up and push the switch into the bracket until it's firmly seated. with this bracket, there's less than millimetres keeping the button from just pushing all the way up and out of the bracket. right from the start, each year, the dealership would fix this switch for me. a week later, it would be pushed all the way in and just bouncing around in there. even they said that bracket sucks and they should replace it with a better design, but haven't.
is it only technology advances that are making cars more reliable? they sure aren't building them with any new quality standards. nearly everything mass-produced is designed over and over to be cheaper to manufacture so they can make more money. this trend results in a flimsy sub-par product that does not last as long as it should. for example, home stereos and boom boxes. I don't know how many stereos my sisters had when we were kids. it was like every year for christmas they'd get a new one, then not long after they'd bring it to me to see if I could fix it. in my living room, I use a vintage pioneer stereo made in 1980, hooked up to a surround sound decoder. I love that thing. it's more than 30 years old and still sounds better than anything that costs double or more what I paid for that one. I suspect it will need a rebuild one day, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still working in its original state in another 20 years.
I bought a 1979 Datsun 210 new, kept it for nearly 15 years. It never stranded me, not once. Had to replace the A/C compressor, otherwise very little went wrong. At the 100,000 mile mark, I asked my mechanic how long he thought the engine would last. His reply: "Only 100,000 miles? It ain't even broke in good yet!"
A year or two later, in a silly fit of patriotism, I swapped the 210 for a new 1994 Ford Taurus. In the next ten years, I stupidly probably paid as much in maintenance as I did to buy the car. (Ok, this is likely a bit overstated, but you get the picture. I won't bore you with horror stories of replacing parts weeks after the warranty period for the new parts ended.)
Who can guess whether I bought Japanese or American in 2004? Extra points if you can guess whether I would ever buy (or even be given) another Ford.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
One + datum for Chevrolet if you please. My friend in essence left me his Chevy Suburban last year, an '01 LT 1500 4WD with the 5.3 Vortec and the 4L60E. He was crappy about the maintenance - even oil changes were occasional with him never mind tranny fluid or whatever; he drove it with the SES light on because in PA you won't fail inspection - and when I got it at 213K miles it mostly ran like a watch.
I have replaced some ticky tacky things, an EGR valve (salvage), the MAF sensor (salvage), the well known knock sensor problem, the O2s, oil at 3K, and the local stealership got me for transaxle and diff seals which Midas thought were of no importance. Was afraid once the transmission was going - took it to AAMCO for an est - he said these trannies don't go to 200K, I must have a rebuild/salvage/whatever - then he drove it a bit and told me to get that heap out of his shop and put a MAF sensor in it. Did so - prob solved (had just been cleaning it before that whenever it coded), never looked back. (As far as I know or he or anyone could tell me, yes, it was the original transmission.)
Have done a few lights, FR window regulator, mirror switch, and that's it - beast goes like mad, shames BMWs, gets 65psi at full throttle, handles fine, runs quiet as a Caddy, all the options, etc. Nothing wrong with this truck that the last owner (or his wife) didn't make happen, except the ABS light comes on and nobody knows why. Oh and the AC has a leak, probably in the evaporating coil so I have to tear apart the dash before summer.
This was out of the Mexico plant, FWIW. If all Suburbans aren't like this, then mine was built on a Wednesday and is a superb sales tool. I've only just hit 220K but hope for another 100K. Oh, speaking of sales tools, this dealer sucks. I found it had two open recalls - wherefore I went to them - and they stung me for those seals but still haven't called me that they got the parts for the fuel tank campaign. Hmmm!