961–970 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My base level Kenmore washer and dryer are over 20 years old. When it's time to replace them I would only consider Speed Queen.
SQs are reliable, and pretty robust. However, it is important to know that the top-loader agitator models and are popular on the Internet use quite a lot of water and are pretty hard on clothing. You may keep the SQ longer, but a modern front-loader may allow you to keep your existing clothing longer.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Finnish transport and communications agency publishes yearly statistics about inspected cars and their three most common reasons for failing inspection as well as the percentage of failed inspections by car year and model.[1] The graphs on the site itself aren't that interesting but the provided excel sheets have some neat insight especially on the slightly older cars. In Finland it is required by law for all car…
This is a very interesting data source. So let's say for "Model-specific statistics on faults detected in passenger cars during inspection in 2022 by year of entry into service (in Finnish)", I should be looking at column "Hylkäys-%" sorted in ascending order to find the models with least failed inspections? (I don't know Finnish, used Google Translate)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
out of curiosity, what was your prior car?
'05 Ford Focus with a 5-speed manual. My first, and unfortunately last manual transmission. It had the sporty red trim interior and I replaced the CD changer with an android head unit and gave it a matching red theme. Then I wrecked it, and the cops stole it by forcibly towing it to one of those scam tow yards that charge $500 a day. I had to bribe the guy at the yard just to get my personal belongings out of it.
Edit: While I'm still dubious about these metrics I was ranting about an entirely different company here. Sorry. A very similar report has been making the rounds recently from JD Power, probably part of a marketing campaign of some sort. The JD Power list is even more hilarious because it is book-ended by two brands: Dodge and Chrysler. Also it suggests Alfa Romeo for reliability. https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-j…
> So expensive cars that cater to fussy people score poorly compared to cars bought by people who only care about reliability and getting from point a to point b and don't pay attention to their car. That sounds believable, except that Lexus is at the top of the list, and they are definitely a "fussy people" brand. Meanwhile Chevrolet, Ford, and VW are near the bottom.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ 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.
I'd say the thing I'm worried about is more how often I find myself not able to use the car.
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…