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Who makes the most reliable new cars?

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941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#941
As a toyota driver, and owner of among other toyotas an early 201x 4.6L tundra, the fact that the tundra is the worst Toyota surprised me. Considering mine is probably the best toyota I've owned, it is literally at 170K+ Miles with little more than standard maintenance (tires, brakes, oil, air filters, a belt and plug change, and a couple of fluid flushes) and having all 4 of the $.50 DC motors in the electric locks replaced.

But, I guess that is in part because toyota just redesigned the tundra with a lot of fancy junk, while mine is a near base model that was produced for more than a decade and had most of the "bugs" worked out by the time I purchased it new.

But that happened with the tachoma/4runner, too right? A couple of years back, the redesign had drivetrain problems, which presumably have been worked out now.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#942

Nissan has been the General Motors (i.e. a manufacturer of mediocre cars) of Japan for a long time. Its low ranking doesn't surprise me. Likewise Volkswagen has been the GM of Germany for a while too. No surprise there either. But Mercedes coming in 29/30? That surprises me. I've never owned a Mercedes but I thought they had a reputation for reliability.

I've owned two and my parents have also owned two. There appears to be a boom and bust cycle of reliability with them.

We still own one - a GLC300 from its first model year (2017) and it's basically been perfect. Zero problems beyond some cosmetic stuff w/ a seat rip but that's wear and tear. I care more about mechanical.

On the other hand, the E-class sedan we owned was nothing but trouble. I remember looking at some of the reported reliability data and it seemed like every 3-4 years, you'd have this cycle where the first year had great reliability and then it degraded over the next 2-3 years. When they released a new trim, reliability was back up.

Note - this is heavily anecdata, but having talked w/ other folks that owned multiple MB's, they felt it was similar.

My theory is it has something to do with the models manufactured in Germany versus the ones eventually offshore. Something doesn't translate as they offshore manufacture.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the fuel economy is definitely not a selling point even on the standard WRX. Couple that with a strange urge to engage in spirited driving and you’ll be getting your mpgs down to the teens or low twenties. Re 1: I really hope they bring out a refreshed version, but I have a feeling that may not happen for a while… at least while batteries weigh what they do. Maybe a full EV version some day? Re 2: yeah the STi w…

Are you modded or tuned at all? I've admittedly fallen into that rabbit hole, and been steadily getting drawn into mechanical engineering. The WRX is such an easy platform to hack on, it's crazy. It's right up there with the Miata, it seems.

I haven’t added any mods to this car just yet. Wanted to pay it off and not worry about voiding any warranties, but I’m itching to get to it. My previous car was an ‘86 e28 (528e) and I spent many hours working on restoring it, I even chipped it haha. I also had a 2016 fiesta st (fwd isn’t all that bad after all!) I can’t tell you how many hours I spent looking for a good 70s 2002, for a nice e30, for a clean Miata, before deciding to get the WRX. I just wish factory FA20F had the same purr as the EJ models did.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#944

I've had a regrettably excellent experience with my 2015 Mazda. Easily the most reliable machine I've owned. Which is unfortunate because it's a soulless, joyless shitbox and I hate it. It just starts every single time, but it's not fun to drive. I see dozens of the exact same model on the road every day and they're all boring. The interior is fine, the handling is pretty good, the power is fine, fuel economy is fine…

What was your prior car?

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#945

Does this account for driving habits? I’ve just purchased a Subaru WRX, and I can’t fight the feeling that the reliability score is in some way influenced by the hoards of idiots that flock to this car for its tuning and hooning potential.

It's certainly related when you consider Pickup Trucks and the more "sporty" or "outdoorsy" SUV's. People that drive pickups, at least a substantial lot, do manual labor for a living. They're rough on their vehicles. And people doing outdoorsy stuff with SUV's are putting them in harsher conditions than just driving to work and the grocery store.

That said - if my assertion is true, the Tacoma is truly a wonder with its reliability and so on. No surprise given it is the mobility platform of choice in Mid-East and Africa for militias and local armies (i.e. Toyota Hilux).

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#946

My 3rd Gen Toyota 4Runner is old enough to drink and outside of routine maintenance requires almost no thought. "It's time to get a new car" given that car safety has drastically improved and I have two younger kids in that thing a few times a week but I'm honestly having a really hard time giving it up, something so reliable and plainly functional. New cars with all their computers and smart technology only look lik…

> it's almost always something simple and relatively cheap

That's a key point. Reliability might be good these days, but long-term repairability is very low.

It's come to the point that even a mind-dumbingly trivial change like changing a brake light bulb or a battery can't be done (on a BMW, surely many other brands) without access to factory repair computers.

So when the factory stops supporting your particular model, what then?

I firmly believe that a century from now we'll still have historical cars from the 1950s-60s running around, but surviving cars from the 2020s will be extremely rare, since they can't be repaired beyond factory support.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#947

My 3rd Gen Toyota 4Runner is old enough to drink and outside of routine maintenance requires almost no thought. "It's time to get a new car" given that car safety has drastically improved and I have two younger kids in that thing a few times a week but I'm honestly having a really hard time giving it up, something so reliable and plainly functional. New cars with all their computers and smart technology only look lik…

2000 4Runner 2x4 (I think last year made in Japan) 320k miles. Still original alternator, starter and every other major component (transmission, rear end, etc). I am not sure but may have replaced water pump about 10 years ago but I could be wrong and it still might be original. Just tires, brakes, battery and religiously change oil every 3k. Has a little hail damage but other than that looks new and feels dependable…

Yes, 1999 Tachoma, is largely the same thing, although there is a laundry list of things that need to be done as basic maintenance, which I assume is the same on the 4runner since they are basically the same vehicle. Mine needed rear axle seals, timing cover seals, and I did the water pump preventatively as part of the timing belt change, also because I have the warm climate version, the starter is too small and eats the starter contacts every ~70K or so miles, and last time I just swapped in the higher current starter instead of doing the contacts for the 3rd time.

It also has grease fittings on the drivetrain that, if not greased on a regular schedule (read maybe every ~10K miles), will squeak, the mass airflow sensor needs to be cleaned on nearly the same schedule as even tiny amounts of contamination throws it off and the gas mileage will suffer and eventually the 5ZVFE will knock because of it. And because it doesn't have auto tensioners on the belts, they need to be checked and adjusted every 40K or so, etc. Lots of extra maintenance that some of the newer Toyotas don't seem to require. And of course, just about all of the toyota truck/4runners/etc of that era a super sensitive to brake and tire wear issues which turn them into vibration machines if not kept in perfect alignment/wear/etc because apparently the suspension/etc are so lightweight. Plastic headlamp fog is another one.

While yes, things that seem to wear out on other vehicles seem to be designed for the vehicle's life (alternators, wheel bearings, AC, cabin controls, etc).

(ex my 201x 4.6L tundra, which is plugs every 100K, brakes, tires and fluids, oh and hell the battery on that thing even lasted 2x as long as it was labeled for, I just replaced it last year)

Anyway, many of those items can be ignored for a long time if the vehicle is treated like a 20 year old beater. Things like the rear axle seals can leak into the rear drums and largely be missed until someone notices that the rear diff has been run for 100k miles with barely any fluid, and is cooked. The same is true for the valve covers; they seep in the back near the firewall or onto the exhaust manifold. Unless you look for it, there won't be enough oil lost between changes to notice.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you do maintain them in that certain way, they can be brilliantly reliable. Problem is, many people (especially in America) don't. And getting the proper fluids for them can be a pain in the ass in America, since BMW LL oil is basically impossible to get anywhere except dealerships and specialty websites. I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German b…

> I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German brands, that's why they're used as taxis in many countries. Oh, my sweet summer child. I can tell you still have fond memories of the pre-2010 Mercedes era ... Who's gonna tell him?

It's less that I have fond memories and more that I know little about M-B other than general sentiment of other car enthusiasts. I'm a big BMW fan myself, and I'm perfectly fine with seeing BMW taking M-B's place as the "reliable" German brand, I just didn't know that was happening to this extent.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#949
post #823

Toyota is amazing for making reliable cars but writing truly shitty code. IIRC, a lawsuit a few years ago about Toyota's faulty brake system revealed that Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables. It's also interesting that Japanese companies follow ISO this and CMM that yet they develop slowly and produce shitty software services ev…

> Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables. While the "single file" part is not great, using all global variables in an embedded system can be a good thing. I've worked on a critical piece of software for aircraft that did this deliberately, for safety reasons. One of the most important criteria for that software is determinism, whic…

As an embedded engineer I’ve never heard of this and it seems… unwise.

Yes, we avoid dynamic memory allocation but using globals for everything?

Assuming C:

For inter-file access static variables with getters/setters achieves the same thing and makes it easier to split/test

I’ve never went as far as not using local variables in functions but you could use static here too to avoid the possibility of two functions sharing the same variable.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#950

Years ago http://reliabilityindex.com/ had a fantastic list of the repair costs of used cars, collected by a UK car warranty insurer. They took it down for reasons I’m not aware of but it was basically this but for used cars (and Europe-focused). It let you see repair costs per brand, model and generation . There’d sometimes be mad regressions in quality between the old and newer generations of the exact same car - n…

“ Porsches and Audis had insane repair costs, compared to eg similarly sized Volkswagens” It’s a known thing that those brands share parts between models, but the price will be substantially different if you buy the “Porsche” part vs the (identical) “VW” part. The price discrepancies don’t necessarily indicate they Audi/Porsche are less reliable.

> The price discrepancies don’t necessarily indicate they Audi/Porsche are less reliable.

No but once you express reliability not as "chance of breakage" but "repair cost", which IMO is the key metric for someone considering a used car, then it does. Especially when you also factor in the behavior of the average Porsche driver on the road, which means more wear and tear.

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