Long Term Reliability / Dependability

CR for example has reported one car made by GM as having high marks . . ."but the EXACT SAME CAR MADE IN THE SAME PLANT BY THE SAME WORKERS WITH THE SAME PARTS under under the Pontiac badge as having below average".

My graduate work was in applied statistics and I had the same question some years back. I couldn't understand why the Ford Maverick had much lower marks than the Mercury Comet when the two vehicles were the same cars except for nameplate. I wrote to CR and the answer I received was "this is the way the data came out". Well, then, why did the data come out this way?" I finally found the answer while reading Popular Mechanics in the barber shop while I was waiting for a haircut. Popular Mechanics surveyed owners opinions of a particular car. In the article I read, PM had surveyed owners of the Ford and corresponing Mercury vehicle. In the demographics of the owners, the Mercury owners were 7 years older than the Ford owners for that particular pair of twins. My guess is that the same the was true for the Ford Maverick/Mercury Comet pair. The younger owners bought the Maverick and probably drove them harder and didn't have the money to spend on maintenance. This age factor, IMHO, contaminates the results.

One of my vehicles is a 2006 Chevrolet Uplander which has a poor repair record according to CR. The only problem I have had was with the sending unit for the fuel gauge which was replaced under warranty. Maybe the reason that I've had good luck with this vehicle is that I am an old geezer, drive reasonably and follow the maintenance schedule.

n the article I read, PM had surveyed owners of the Ford and corresponing Mercury vehicle. In the demographics of the owners, the Mercury owners were 7 years older than the Ford owners for that particular pair of twins. My guess is that the same the was true for the Ford Maverick/Mercury Comet pair. The younger owners bought the Maverick and probably drove them harder and didn't have the money to spend on maintenance. This age factor, IMHO, contaminates the results.  

If you are looking for a new car, then yes this could be considered "contaminated" results, but if you are buying used those are good results. It says the Ford buyers don't maintain as well, on average, as the Mercury buyers. Good to know when looking at used cars.

My opinion for what it's worth:

10 years ago you could buy a vehicle that would run relatively maintenance free for 200,000 miles. I did that with 3 consecutive F150's in the 90's.

Back then, the trucks were relatively simple and a monkey could maintain one. The last one I had I ran 295,000 before selling, and it's still on the road today. The truck had a 300 6 cylinder engine 5speed manual tranny. About every 100,000 miles you had to put spark plugs, new coil, cap and rotor on it. That was the extent of a tune up. I went 200,000 miles before the timing gear broke. About every 80,000 miles I had to put brushes on the alternator. About every 50,000 front brakes, and in 295,000 I changed the rears once. I did have an AC compressor go out right around the time I sold it, and never did put a clutch in it. Other than that, I didn't do a thing to it but put oil, filters, and gas in it. I changed oil every 5,000 to 7,000 miles, so no I didn't baby it. By the time I sold it, the bed was beat up pretty bad, seat ripped and the red paint had turned pinkish. I never did find much that went wrong with either of those 3 trucks that common sense couldn't fix or understand.

That said, 10 years later, they (the manufacturers, all of them) have engineered early retirement into these vehicles. If you look at Ford's progress on their diesels, I know of several 7.3 IDI's with in excess of 500,000 miles on them, relatively trouble free. The 7.3 Powerstrokes were a bit more complex, but still there are many still in service 300,000 to 400,000 miles later. Having owned a 6.0 liter and knowing several people that have one, you would have to be insane to voluntarily own one of those bastards past the 100,000 mile warranty period. Why? There's way too much garbage on the engine and the only people that can service them is a dealer. The new 6.4 liter Ford is even worse.

With the 7.3 IDI and 7.3 Powerstroke, any competent diesel mechanic and most guys with reasonable mechanical skills could work on them and parts are fairly reasonable save for injector pumps on IDI's and HUII injectors on 7.3's. Even still, you could send either off to the diesel shop and have them rebuilt reasonable in cost.

The 6.0 is a pain in the but to work on mainly because Ford shoved the thing up under the cowl then proceeded to ad 40,000 hoses, pipes, wires and assorted junk that wasn't on previous engines. For many repairs on these things, the recommended procedure to get to the engine is to remove the truck's cab. Removing a cab is a half a day's job at best and then you have to put it back not to mention if you need to start it up and check for leaks, then find one and have to remove and replace the cab yet again. Basically this kind of garbage added hundreds of dollars in labor to the simplest repairs like changing glow plugs or pulling injectors to install new O ring seals. It went from a situation where you could take your 7.3 to the dealership and pick it up that evening, to a situation where you had to make an appointment 2 weeks in advance, then wait a week to get the truck back. If I'm taking my truck in, it's because it's broke, I don't plan 3 weeks in advance on it breaking, and I need it back ASAP not next month. It wasn't uncommon for my 6 liter to be in the shop 3 weeks to a month at a time although the first time I took their loaner Taurus through a strip job and back I did start getting it back a little faster.

The new gassers are no different. Where my 300 6 cylinder was easily servicable, my wife's Expedition with the 4.6 V8 isn't. Changing spark plugs has went from a $100 job to a $400 job and instead of a coil, distributor cap and rotor, there's an ignition control module and 8 coil packs on it. Yeah, a computer will tell you, but before I didn't need a computer to know my coil had gotten weak and I wasn't getting a hot enough spark out of it. Today I have to know which one. Things as simple as the old $12 air filters are now $60 items because they are some odd ball fancy shape that's unnecessary.

The long and short is it would take an idiot to own a 6.0 liter F250 past the 100,000 mile factory engine warranty knowing that a glowplug job that used to cost a couple hundred bucks and you could do it yourself for $70 will now cost you $1500 because the cab has to come off to get to the last 4 cylinders. The newer 6.4 version is actually designed for "Easy" cab removal. What they ought to have done is put the dang engine in front of the cowl so you could get to it and that kind of garbage wouldn't be necessary. Then there's that $2000 particulate filter on these newer trucks to reduce emmissions. The 6 liter Ford costs so much to work on that as I and a lot of other owners found out, Ford wasn't willing to bear the cost of fixing them correctly under warranty, yet they expected us, the owners to pay their unreasonable maintenance prices post warranty. If Ford can't/won't pay to fix these things, what makes them think I can or will?

The long and short is, IMO, we have reached a point with new vehicles that when the service bills become the responsibility of the owner and not the manufacturer (warranty runs out) it's about time to get rid of the hot potato before it burns your hands. When it gets to the point that every other month you are putting a couple grand into repairs and maintenance, it's no longer economically viable to continue owning the vehicle. That's sad, but it's the way vehicles are and have been heading for some time.

The idea is to shutdown independent shops and drive all the business to the dealers. The problem is, to a big extent, the dealer mechanics aren't significantly better than the independents, it's just they have the tools necessary for these more complex machines that are designed to stop you, me, and Joe's Garage from repairing our own.

A buddy of mine and I were discussing this in a round about way today. His wife had hit a turkey and knocked a headlight out. The headlight was in excess of $900 to replace. Anybody remember when there were 4 different headlights for every car on the road? There were round and rectangle light and in each there were high/low or single filament bulbs. They cost $10 or so. I remember having a boat that's trolling motor stuck out in front enough that in some odd turn angles it would knock the tail light out of my truck. You could buy a new lense at Napa for $15 and a bulb for a couple dollars. Today the tail lights are LED light and the lens is a module thing that costs several hundred bucks.

Honestly, this kind of thing is making leasing more attractive by the year. If it's going to come to the point that a tune up costs $3000, then IMO, we'll very soon be dollars ahead to lease it, let them take car of repairs during the lease and give it back to them at the end of the lease and let it be someone else's problem.

Skipper

Well, my perspective is as a tech who has been a predominantly "foreign car" mechanic. I've been offered a few jobs at a GM dealer and turned them down.
My experience has been with SAAB, VW, Fiat, Subaru, Honda, and Nissan multi-line dealers and everything else when running my own shop.

I can tell you that I have not seen one make any more problematic than another and if I had to pick one car that I absolutely love from a mechanic standpoint then it's a Subaru hands down. Why? Because of high maintenance and labor intensive problems. What's not to like when the flat rate time (spelled M-O-N-E-Y) is accruing?
(And I'm not a Subaru hater; I've owned 3 of them.)
My best paychecks were courtesy of Subaru and Nissan.

My point about auto complaints (even ones made to the BBB) is that 99% of the story behind the complaint is missing. You would be surprised at how many people will trash their vehicle at a young age and point the finger at the car maker/dealer/mechanic rather than themselves.
We had a guy with a 17k miles VW who had it towed in with 2 rods sticking through the side of the block. We had changed his oil at 5k miles so ergo, it was our fault. After much screaming and questioning our ancestry over several weeks he admitted he had not raised the hood since we had done the oil change. In a nutshell, the oil level had dropped dangerously low and that was it.
Wonder how this guy responded to a customer survey? (Got a million of those)

I gotta agree with Rocketman (I think it was rocketman), you need to write a book, ok. Something like "tales from a tech: America's love/hate relationship with the automobile"...and you could make predictions on where the automobile is going, etc...anyway, I'd buy it. :)

Jad,
That was me who suggested to OK to write a book and that I'd be one of the first to buy it but I haven't seen it on the store shelves yet. (grin)

go with what ya know.
you say you've had a great relationship with your current bmw 3 series. i've had a couple myself. (i change cars more often)and found them to be very reliable, hold their value well, good looking and most of all lots of fun to drive.
so what can i tell you buy another 3 series, in fact treat yourself to the convertible. you can get it w/ rollover bars, the top is well insulated against temp and noise and the fully automatic top is 1 button user friendly. go for it!!!!!!!!!!

A dose of reality...
We talk about reliability as a selling point....in reality it is the last thing that auto manufacturers want, or consumers for that matter. Selling cars that are too reliable and you decrease the turnover rate. Engineering gamemenship is the name or the game. The ultimate motor (electric) will never see the light of day from automakers by choice w/o IC back up. With upwards of 40% of their profit in maintenance, only John Deere, Kabota and the like are qualified as truley reliable vehicles. The "family car" is a joke where reliability is concerned.

Build a car like a hybrid locomotive and you eliminate transmission/braking problems with power to spare.

Look at the "family" farm equipment that is handed down from generation to generation to take your que as to what American manufacturing is truely capable of...... Henry Ford would "give" cars away just to own the parts market.

Toyota/Hondas are only as reliable as they have to be as it remains a selling point to steal GM customers. They all play the same game and cars are no different than other "replaceable" consumer goods.

and even now, a few of their newer vehicles suffer from transmission problems.

The biggest difference is not the make of the car but rather the owner and they care they give the car. Any car is a matter of luck some will do very well and some, even the next one off the line, may have a number of problems, but that difference is nothing compared to the owners and their care of lack of it when it comes to dependability.

I agree that the best, but still flawed, data on cars is Consumer Reports. It is flawed because it is based on owner responses. It would tend to follow that certain cars tend to attract certain kinds of owners. For example performance cars will likely get owners who may push their cars more and may well see more repairs than the exact same car that was owned by a more conservative driver.

And the higher end cars will have pickier buyers as well. If I paid 60 grand for a car, you better believe that I'll nit pick every little squeak, rattle and shimmy.