What second hand car to buy?

pitkin2020

The japs can produce a good car but so can the germans........ I know the japanese are a complete pain in the !!!! to work for, they will not accept a component that isn't 100% right even cosmetically. I used to work for a company that produced filters for all sorts of things but the items for japan had to go through 100% QC before shipping, if they found a single cosmetic flaw they would return the whole batch and could be 10k of units. Bare in mind the cosmetic flaw maybe a single speck in the nylon that has absolutly no issue with the performance of the product and isn't even seen when its placed in its housing.

jase1

mikey72 wrote: »

Maybe it’s you?
Short journeys ruin an exhaust.

Well given that the average journey I take in the thing is 30+ miles, and it had 65k on the clock at 3 years old when I bought it (85K now), I don't think short journeys are the problem. Low-grade components would seem to be more likely. For an OE exhaust to last about the same length of time as a Kwik-Fit special just isn't acceptable.

I'm not doing it again -- Fords just aren't that well built. I've had this now on three occasions with them -- silly little minor faults that plague the car every three months or so. Blooody annoying.

Kilty_2

Not a big Ford fan here either - we have 14 TDCI Fiestas (MK7) at work and they've all been in for niggly things a few times since new.

bigjl

But the germans will accept cars that rust to bits underneath in a few year though.

Anybody here looked at the average 8 or 9 yr old E or C class recently.

The problem was apparently caused when they moved over to more environmentally friendly paint.

pitkin2020

bigjl wrote: »

But the germans will accept cars that rust to bits underneath in a few year though.

Anybody here looked at the average 8 or 9 yr old E or C class recently.

The problem was apparently caused when they moved over to more environmentally friendly paint.

Mercs are really bad for rust what ever the model, the commercial range is awful for it. We were looking at the Vitos a while back and even 1/2 year old vitos were starting to show rust.

cyclonebri1

A._Badger wrote: »

Survey after survey has shown that the Japanese - now followed by the Koreans - consistently deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction than most (not all) competitors. But still the prejudice rolls on unabated.

It's not prejudice against Jap cars that I have a problem with, it's the perceived superiority, ie reverse prejudice, that is no longer justified.

But, then again I look after my cars and since an unfortunate experience back in the 70's with Leyland, I have never had a single unreliable car, jap, brit, german or frog:T

bigjl

I will add that my dad only had one car that was truely unreliable, a Fiat 131 Mirafiori yes that may be spelled wrongly. It needed bump satring when it was six months old, but that may be down to living in a coastal area perhaps.

But none of the Pugs and Renaults my parents owned where unreliable, the only cars they sold earlier than.intened were a Viva and an Escort Mexico, the Viva due to reliability issues the Escort due to hard seats, it was a 1996 Escort nit a mk1 or 2.


With all things considered i do think how a car is looked after needs to be considered.

Who was it said that the hand grenade issues with diesel Lagunas was found to be more to do with extended oil change intervals than the actual engine or turbo.

Remember Saab also came unstuck when they had 12k oil change intervals on the turbo charged petrol engines.

I do know that the LAS reduced the frequency of oil changes on the Merc Sprinters to 3000 miles and did the same to the Zafiras. (mainly CDTis) the issues where oil degradation due to diesel ending up in the sump and also oil turning in sludge at fairly low mileages since the oil was changed. There are certainly less engine blow ups now than there was back in 2006/7. The only change is oil change frequency and quality. They now apparently use fully synthetic oil rather than.the original semi synthetic. Though there was a rumour that the fitters had been using the mineral oil that they used in the V8's but that is only a rumour.

A._Badger

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

It's not prejudice against Jap cars that I have a problem with, it's the perceived superiority, ie reverse prejudice, that is no longer justified.

But, then again I look after my cars and since an unfortunate experience back in the 70's with Leyland, I have never had a single unreliable car, jap, brit, german or frog:T

Once again, the surveys suggest you are wrong. That's not a matter of perception.

Anecdotal evidence ('My Renault Espace did 2 million miles and I never had to...") isn't very helpful when trying to assess overall patterns.

There may be a degree of reporting bias in some customer surveys, but not in breakdown figures.

jase1

A._Badger wrote: »

Once again, the surveys suggest you are wrong. That's not a matter of perception.

Anecdotal evidence ('My Renault Espace did 2 million miles and I never had to...") isn't very helpful when trying to assess overall patterns.

There may be a degree of reporting bias in some customer surveys, but not in breakdown figures.

The problem though is that CS surveys are not reliability surveys, and the actual reliability results often don't reflect in the overall positions.

My comment about there being no (actually few) bad Eastern-brand cars does not mean that all Eastern cars are better than European ones, just that the incidence of bad models is much rarer. When a Jap car does start giving trouble there is a type of person who jumps on this and parades it as "proof" that Japanese cars aren't all that, conveniently ignoring the half-dozen European models with issues in the meantime.

For the record, I wouldn't trust a Japanese diesel any more than I'd trust a European one.

Biscuitlover

Really glad to see this conversation as we are in exactly the same boat. We have an R reg 2L Laguna which I must say has been a brilliant car. It has in the last year had to have a complete new exhaust but I'm guessing that's probably because of all the short journeys. Other than that its been a good car.
We wanted to get a smaller engine car to try and cut down on fuel costs. DH was thinking of diesel but I have now learnt on here it probably wouldn't make any savings, so we have ruled that out.
We are also interested in an Estate as we go camping 1-2 times a year and DH goes fishing a fair bit. We have been looking briefly at Astras and Peugot 307 with a budget of 1.5k. Any advise would be great.Thanks