"Luxury Brands" is a vague concept.
Maserati, MB S Class, Cadillac Escalade, BMW 7 Series are all luxuru vehicles but aren't supposed to hold up well. They are expensive luxury toys, and cant be used as work horses like Lexuses or Acuras are.
Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
11–20 of 148 posts
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#12A Cadillac is not just an expensive car, it is an expensive car to own. (Gas, repair bills, etc.) If you are a W-2 worker you have to be at work at a certain time and you need a car that can start every morning so you can get to work on time. Higher class people can afford multiple cars, take time off from work, take a cab, etc. The Cadillac brand is appealing to many lower class Americans so you often see them in "b…
Puzzled why you would mention this brand, as it's never mentioned in the article.
There seems to be a strange element of "smear the working class with themes tangent to whatever the discussion is" lately on HN. It's a bit troubling.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#13A Cadillac is not just an expensive car, it is an expensive car to own. (Gas, repair bills, etc.) If you are a W-2 worker you have to be at work at a certain time and you need a car that can start every morning so you can get to work on time. Higher class people can afford multiple cars, take time off from work, take a cab, etc. The Cadillac brand is appealing to many lower class Americans so you often see them in "b…
Higher class people can afford multiple cars, take time off from work, take a cab, etc.
It's a pattern. People with money will deliberately show they can spend more money. Those wide, droopy sleeves you sometimes see in historical shows? Rich people simply bought clothes that used more fabric, just so they could show they could afford it.
The Cadillac brand is appealing to many lower class Americans
According to the actress who played "Snoop" in "The Wire" the appeal of Cadillac in lower class urban neighborhoods was entirely gone by the 2000's, and replaced by the Lexus.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#14I've driven a number of older Toyotas and (fingers crossed) that seems to be my experience.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#15Lexus came in #1 followed by Porsche but that didn't make for as good of a headline I guess.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#16Isn't this well known? Toyotas have legendary reliability
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#17Automotive EE here. In the last 5-8 years there has been a DRAMATIC change in the way vehicles are tested and released. Everyone has become much more focused on electronic features - while at the same time almost everyone is completely outsourcing electronics design and firmware. Cars hit the lots with 10 new flashes waiting. When I started, it was a BIG DEAL if you had a lot held up somewhere in Detroit because of a…
That's some interesting insight... I wonder where it'll all end up... it's kind of difficult for markets to function well with things so utterly opaque to the average consumer. I wonder if it'll end up regulated, or if the fear of lawsuits or something else will knock people in line.
That said, the best answer is clearly to ride bikes more! A lot better for the environment, your wallet, and your own health!
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bike...
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#18This article seems to be written using results from a J.D. Power report. J.D. Power's methodology is commonly known to be extremely flawed in that they weigh all "issues" equally. So an engine failure is the same severity as Bluetooth not connecting.
Furthermore, tiebreakers are broken in pretty nonsense ways, and many suspect it's by whoever pays the most. For example, they crowned Buick the most dependable brand, but by their own ratings, both Lexus and Porsche scored higher.
If you rank by only mechanical dependability by their own numbers, the ranking is as follows (alphabetical w/in tiers):
10: Lexus, Toyota
9: BMW, Buick, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Infiniti, Kia, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Porsche
8: Audi, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Mini, Subaru, Volkswagen, Volvo
7: Acura, Cadillac, Dodge, Fiat, GMC, Mitsubishi, Ram
5: Chrysler, Jeep, Land Rover.
So the old adage still holds true for mechanical reliability, Japanese > German/European > American/British.
Also, the luxury brand of an automaker falls pretty damn close to where the non-luxury brand lands: Lexus/Toyota, Buick/Chevy, Hyundai/Kia, Infiniti/Nissan, Audi/Volkswagen, Cadillac/GMC, Fiat/Dodge/Ram, Chrysler/Jeep. Which would make sense since they share mechanical parts, but not infotainment/luxury features. When infotainment/luxury features are factored into the dependability score, it leads to the conclusion the article is trying to draw.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps because Cadillac is a brand by GM, the manufacturer who also makes Chevy. Cadillac is the luxury brand of GM which would compete with luxury brands.
Ditto for Infiniti (Nissan), Acura (Honda), and Audi (VW). I realize none of those brands are useful for making unrelated demographic-based comments, however.
For the Volkswagen group, I would list Bentley, Lamborghini or Bugatti as their luxury offerings. Audi is more middle class and sold in large numbers, at least in Europe.
Re: Toyotas and Chevys Are Holding Up Better Than Most Luxury Brands
#20This comment seems wrong to me: There is no inherent reason why a more-expensive car should be better or worse in terms of reliability than a less-expensive car, so my guess is they’ll track each other fairly closely going forward. If the metric is per car faults, then surely more features mean more opportunities for defects, given an equal attention to quality across all features?
The shift is a combination of mass-market cars catching up in overall quality and less new technology in these vehicles that can increase the chance of something going wrong
Part of it seems to be that there aren't more features in luxury cars. If you look at the graph, we're seeing mass market cars getting fewer problems and luxury cars remaining relatively flat.