Unreliable cars and "money pits"

JackeeBoy

In 3-4 years time, I am going to treat myself to a decent car. I have been working since I was 16 with the longest break being 7 weeks between jobs and feel like I buy something that I want for once. I have recently taking a liking to BMWs but every car YouTube channel I watch or knowledgeable person I speak to tell me to stay away from such vehicles. If/when I do get a nice car for myself, my preference would be to buy it as I don't see myself being overly keen on trading it back in in a few years.

My question is, when people take the !!!! out of the reliability of a car like a BMW or Range Rover, is it more hyperbole than reality? Are the majority of BMW and Range Rover drivers driving around find with a small minority becoming a victim of their suspect engineering?

angrycrow

They don't all break its just that when they do the bill tends to be thousands. Russian roulette with a car.

It's also a matter of personal taste, I would rather drive an AUDI than a BMW but the next person might prefer a Merc.

oscarward

when Choosing a car I check besides the obvious,
Reviews by owners
Distance to nearest dealer
Delivery time
Servicing cost

Then go and buy what I always wanted. :-)

Joe_Horner

Very few (if any) modern cars are unreliable if you stick rigidly to the servicing requirements and use them in the sort of way the designers intended (so, for example, using a modern diesel for a 3 mile shopping run once a fortnight is asking for trouble!)

How tolerant they are of missed servicing / shortcuts / not-quite-the-specified fluids and so on varies quite a bit from make to make and even model to model.

My old (L registered) 525TD will accept just about any oil or fuel I throw in it and just keep going. A new one may well end up smoking on the hard shoulder treated like that.

As a general rule, as makers push the limits in terms of weight (thinner bits), power output and technical wizardry, servicing becomes more critical so a new BMW is likely to be more fussy than a new Lada (if there was such a thing) simply because it's pushing closer to the limits in the first place.

shinytop

I had a 2013 320D that did 185k miles in 4 years with absolutely nothing going wrong. It was serviced as per requirements by an independent garage from new. Definitely not a money pit.

tacpot12

You can't really pick one manufacturer and say they are reliable. All quality makes have had problems at some time or other, so you really need to research the brand, the model, and the engine carefully to identify the cars that will be reliable and that will be in your price range.

Make sure you understand how important servicing is to the car. Some are so bulletproof that even if the servicing has been patchy, they will still outlast the average car. Other are very sensitive to being serviced regularly. With this information, you know whether to pass over a cheap car with a patchy service history or snap it up.

daveyjp

If you have an itch scratch it. You will either do well or curse the decision.

I've had itches I've scratched, ignoring everything which says don't do it, buying with my heart and regretted it quickly.

Now we only have Japanese cars because I now prefer reliability and friendlier dealer staff over glass palace 'free' coffee and smarmy youngsters in sharp suits.

shinytop

tacpot12 wrote: »

You can't really pick one manufacturer and say they are reliable.

I certainly wasn't; I was saying the one BMW I have ever had was reliable.

Goudy

A lot of this is down to perception.
Most people who spend £85k on a new Range Rover, spending a couple of thousand a year on servicing and repairs outside of warranty it's going to bother them.

Trouble is, years later when these cars are older and a fraction of the price to buy used, there's no warranty but the servicing, parts and repair bills are the same.

So something like repairing the air suspension at a couple of thousand on a car that's still worth 40 or 50k might not be perceived as bad value.

Spending the same on something that's worth 10k or so is more than likely perceived as a big cost and it being a money pit, particularly when replacing the springs and shocks of a more conventional car will only be in the hundreds.

It's one of the main reasons cars like this depreciate so much.

And yes, Lada still knock out new cars.
https://www.lada.ru/en/
They share some Dacia/Renault stuff like the Granta and Largus, but they're still churning out the Niva though it's called the 4x4/Bronto.

Jonesya

tacpot12 wrote: »

You can't really pick one manufacturer and say they are reliable. All quality makes have had problems at some time or other, so you really need to research the brand, the model, and the engine carefully to identify the cars that will be reliable and that will be in your price range.

Yes you can, there's surveys which look at percentage of owners experience faults, typical repair costs, age at scrapping etc. And the results are pretty clear, certain manufacturers are more reliable than others.

Typically the Japanese manufacturers are consistently the most reliable, Toyota and Honda scoring very well.

tacpot12

Jonesya wrote: »

Yes you can, there's surveys which look at percentage of owners experience faults, typical repair costs, age at scrapping etc. And the results are pretty clear, certain manufacturers are more reliable than others.

Typically the Japanese manufacturers are consistently the most reliable, Toyota and Honda scoring very well.

I'm aware of such surveys e.g. JD Powers, but the problem is the results change over time. A survey done in 2019 about cars upto three years old is going to tell you little about a car built in 2011.