Car manufacturers.

sinbad182

It's nice to see you're continuing the family tradition of driving clapped out little bangers up and down the country.

yangptangkipperbang

Tilt wrote: »

Fiat Supermirafiori (1980) 4 years old when I bought it. Both o/s doors suffered bottom corrosion.

I had one of those things before Fiat acknowledged that there was such a thing as rust !
Bought it new, within 3 years the drivers door had a hole in it about halfway up where it has rusted through from the inside.
Mechanically, it was good and nice to drive, but it was the ultimate rust bucket !

Gloomendoom

Land Rover

59 years old. Never fails to start and has never failed to get me home.

DKLS

I have had cars that many would consider unreliable, yet my most reliable car was an old and abused Alfa Spider, even a TVR only let me down once in 4yrs of ownership.
Yet a brand new 330 BMW decided to have terminal engine failure after 62 miles.

As to maintenance costs, I never doubt any cars ability to throw a big bill at any point regardless of marque.

Tilt

sinbad182 wrote: »

It's nice to see you're continuing the family tradition of driving clapped out little bangers up and down the country.

Hmm, can't see anywhere in Stoke's account of Fiats which would give you the idea that they were "clapped out little bangers" tbh. Quite the opposite it seems!

jase1

I have never owned an unreliable car as such (from a selection of Vauxhall, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Hyundai, Daewoo, Skoda and Mazda), and this has been over a few hundred thousand miles.

Some of the above have good reputations, some not so good, but my experience has been that the trim falls off long before I seem to get any reliability concerns.

The most unreliable of these was a Vauxhall, which did refuse to start on occasion and had a few electrical problems. It had done 200,000 miles though.

InsideInsurance

It depends what you consider "reliability" to be. Do you mean purely that the engine starts and gets you from A to B or do you also include if all the bells and whistles work correctly?

I had a Citroen that lived in Scotland with me for a number of years and it had a serious issue with rust, not bodywork but the underside of the car. One of the rods that connects the gear leaver to the gear box snapped and was a sub £10 self fix and that was the only thing that actually stopped the car being driven. Had other bits like the exhaust that needed replacing due to rust but that didnt technically stop the car being driven.

My VW had serious water ingress issues which were never fully sorted but was all done either under warranty or as a gesture of goodwill from VW UK but never stopped you driving it - just sometimes you couldnt get into the boot or close the windows.

The Ford Fiesta Mk1 was only 6 months younger than me, serious issues with bodywork rust but ran perfectly - was one of the few in my year at school with a manual choke, 4 gears and functioning quarterlight windows.

Ford Probe I only had for a short time before the insurance become unaffordable but had no problems at all.

Current car I've had since May and only problem to date is the passenger seats electronics played up so it wouldnt go as far forward as it should but was trying to go too far back (almost as if it had forgotten where it was on the runners). Evidently not an issue that effects daily driving.

The only time I have been in a car that has broken down was in my parents Ford Sierra that had gone round the clock twice already (though was not that many years old) and the clutch failed but my mother always rode the clutch when she was driving anyway.

Ionkontrol

Petstalk wrote: »

Peoples thoughts on different car manufacturers/reliability/build.
Maintenance costs ect.

What preferences people have/why?

Sounds like a lazy student who cant be bothered to do their own research.

Stoke

sinbad182 wrote: »

It's nice to see you're continuing the family tradition of driving clapped out little bangers up and down the country.

What a lovely comment, of course, if you'd read it properly, you'd have seen that the Punto GT was brand new, hence the seized window was fixed under warranty. Does that make it a clapped out banger then? What's a warranty on a FIAT three years? I'm guessing anything but a 2 week old Mercedes Benz is a clapped out banger to you. Actually, you sound such a snob that anything but a Mercedes Benz is just a banger to you.

The Cinquecento was also brand new. Simply a replacement for the Punto.

The Uno was the only second hand Fiat my family have owned, as you say, a clapped out banger. Still, it ran very well.

The Seicento has only 19k miles on the clock. As you can imagine, it hasn't been taken down to London.

What exactly is your problem with me? Other than the fact I drive a VW Lupo? It sounds like you've got a real problem with anyone who doesn't drive something that falls under your own expectations. May I ask what you drive, or is that going to be too funny it's practically a parody?

Bufger

I had a couple of Rover Metros. They did have occassional overheating from radiator failure but you could always fix those things on the roadside. When i did need to replace a rad it was easy to do and only cost me £25!!

I had a Fiat Brava and a Fiat Stilo. Both had electrical issues and i'd never own a fiat again.

I had a Kia Ceed that was really boring to drive. 2 years into its warranty the engine harness rubbed through and cut the engine out, this was a manufacturing issue that took a while to produce the failure. Fixed under warranty. A year later the turbo blew and it took me 2 months of arguing with Kia to have it replaced under warranty - In the end I was talking with their director of aftersales and service.

Now I own a 10 year old Seat Cupra turbo. Its got water ingress issues and a few other niggles but its fun to drive so i dont mind too much.

If you really want to know from stats then check out the JD power scores. Some manufacturers that previously had bad rep are really turning things around. Jaguars now have much better reliability with their new models for instance, the problem with that is the older models that are affordable are the unreliable ones.