Are new cars really as bad as they say?

WellKnownSid

vacheron said:

As an aside, my mum took her 9 year Honda Civic to the our local main Honda dealer this week for a service and MOT(who she has a long relationship with as a repeated customer with 3-4 cars bought through them). 

During her visit chatting with the staff, she was categorically told to hold on to her car for as long as possible as as the new cars are not a patch on the cars from her era, by both the branch sales manager and the workshop manager! This sounds conveniently coincidental, but I swear 100% this is true! 

Funnily enough I was once given the exact same argument by a Honda dealer in Manchester back in 2006.

I also remember being told by a university lecturer that "the new students are not a patch on the old ones" in 1994.

I guess it's a change thing?

Myci85

I completely agree with the comment above about the danger of the touch screen control panels in newer cars. With my cars I've had (all fairly old second hand ones at c80k miles when bought) I've been able to adjust temperature, demist the screen, alter the radio station/cds etc with barely a glance across as I learn and can feel where the controls are. I had a hire car when mine was being repaired after someone knocked my wing mirror off, and the hire car had a touch screen for all the above. Just trying to get the heaters on whilst driving was dangerous for the amount of time I had to take my eyes off the road to watch exactly where I was putting my finger on the screen!

In terms of reliability, I would never have a brand new car, but a few years ago when my 2004 plate Audi was starting to cost upwards of £500 each MOT, I bought a 16 plate Suzuki, after a LOT of research into different makes and models and scrutinising past MOT histories to figure out how well they'd been looked after in the past. This car was 6 years old when I bought it (quite new for me!) and I'm very happy with it. 

With regards the EV argument, and people saying they should last 100k before needing a new battery, every car I've ever owned has taken me way beyond 100k (the audi my partner is still driving and it just passed 200k and still going strong), so I couldn't buy a car knowing that within a few years of ownership I'd have to fork out for a new battery. That would make the maintenance cost of keeping an old car running pale into insignificance!

vacheron

WellKnownSid said:

vacheron said:

• Custom built and shaped digital dashboard screens and numerous embedded controllers, which when they fail 8-10 years down the line, and aren't being manufactured anymore, will basically consign your entire car to e-waste!

The vast majority of which can be fixed with some basic component-level repair, much of it DIY-able on the kitchen table if you have SMD soldering skills.  It also bypasses the 'coding' issue you mention - because you'll be putting the original part back into the car.

I have the soldering skills you mention, having replaced SMD, PLCC and BGA devices (both personally and professionally) for decades, and while this level of repair is certainly possible, nobody can repair an OLED dashboard panel with 200+ PPI resolution that was designed as a custom fit product for a specific car dashboard 10 years ago, once the OEM manufacturer (LG, Samsung or whoever) decides that it is not economical for them to manufacture them anymore.

No dashboard lights = No MOT
No MOT, and the car is basically e-waste.

I'm sure the manufacturer will hold up a few devices as spares though (in whole built up dashboard modules), which they will hold the whole supply of for their main dealers to supply to desperate owners at extortionate prices until their stocks dry up!


Even today the situation is bad enough. My fathers 2008 Toyota Auris failed an MOT because the green indicator arrow on the dashboard was not flashing (all the external indicators were fine). 

Toyota's solution was a new dashboard module at a cost of £1,250.
My solution was to re-solder the 0805 green LED on the dash PCB (also at his kitchen table) at a cost of... £0.

If they feel they can charge this for a simple SMT board with passive discrete components. What will they think they can get away with for a whole new digital dashboard! 

WellKnownSid

vacheron said:

WellKnownSid said:

vacheron said:

• Custom built and shaped digital dashboard screens and numerous embedded controllers, which when they fail 8-10 years down the line, and aren't being manufactured anymore, will basically consign your entire car to e-waste!

The vast majority of which can be fixed with some basic component-level repair, much of it DIY-able on the kitchen table if you have SMD soldering skills.  It also bypasses the 'coding' issue you mention - because you'll be putting the original part back into the car.

I have the soldering skills you mention, having replaced SMD, PLCC and BGA devices (both personally and professionally) for decades, and while this level of repair is certainly possible, nobody can repair an OLED dashboard panel with 200+ PPI resolution that was designed as a custom fit product for a specific car dashboard 10 years ago, once the OEM manufacturer (LG, Samsung or whoever) decides that it is not economical for them to manufacture them anymore.

Yes, but the chances are you'll be able to find the equivalent dash at a scrap yard and be able to swap the panel itself.  You will definitely need to do that for one of these...

vacheron

Myci85 said:

I completely agree with the comment above about the danger of the touch screen control panels in newer cars. With my cars I've had (all fairly old second hand ones at c80k miles when bought) I've been able to adjust temperature, demist the screen, alter the radio station/cds etc with barely a glance across as I learn and can feel where the controls are. I had a hire car when mine was being repaired after someone knocked my wing mirror off, and the hire car had a touch screen for all the above. Just trying to get the heaters on whilst driving was dangerous for the amount of time I had to take my eyes off the road to watch exactly where I was putting my finger on the screen!

Precisely.

I had a Mercedes C300 Hybrid as a company hire car recently which basically has an iPad as a centre console. The screen graphics and text were tiny, the touch zones to activate the features were equally tiny requiring 2 or 3 goes to tap the exact correct area at arms length while jostling about in a moving car, and there were multiple menus to get to almost every basic setting!

By comparison, I own a 2015 Mercedes with real buttons in the centre console area for all the important and regularly used HVAC and radio / navigation functions, along with a tactile jog wheel in the centre console which allows me to achieve the remainder of the screen functions while barely taking my eyes off the road. 

Coincidentally, there was a very recent YouTube video with Jeremy Clarkson (love him or loathe him) talking to Harry Metcalfe from Harrys Garage (and founder of Evo Magazine) and discussing how two multi-millionaire motoring journalists who have driven almost every car imaginable, now both have personally chosen to own 12 year old Jaguars and 15-20 year old Range Rovers as their daily drivers. And most of their reasons were the same as I, and so many of my friends and colleagues, also share.

paul_c123

VW reverted to physical controls on the Golf 8.5, after a somewhat disastrous foray into touch controls (on the steering wheel). So I think over time, we'll see some sensible middle ground on the use of touchscreens from most manufacturers. They are basically necessary on newer cars because of the amount of selectable features they now have - to have a button for each would produce a cockpit like a 1960s 747.

There is also a long history of parts prices not really reflecting the actual cost of components from manufacturers. If you added up the price of all the parts, the whole thing would cost 40-50x more than the new price of a car itself. If you actually understand the aftermarket parts industry, you'll know that while yes there's cheap rubbish parts out there, but there is a middle ground in between the inflated manufacturer prices too.

Unfixable items will become fixable over time. Remember when DPFs were first seen, and everyone feared a DPF failure because it cost so much? Nowadays there's companies cleaning DPFs for reasonable sums. And ECU repair, electronic dash repair etc in a thriving aftermarket industry.

What's killed new ICE cars is the emissions requirements, which means an engine has so much extra stuff (EGR, complex crankcase ventilation, cam variators, twin turbos, etc etc etc) they're more complex than ever to fix. Electric cars will be a big step change different. While there's far fewer parts, they will (at least initially) cost far more too. But there's an industry building up of specialist repairers to serve the needs of customers.

Older cars might be simpler to maintain but they're..................old. So we're reaching a point where parts availability will drop off (at least from the manufacturers) and many items reach the end of their service life, so its not such an obvious choice.

Barkin

vacheron said:

WellKnownSid said:

vacheron said:

• Custom built and shaped digital dashboard screens and numerous embedded controllers, which when they fail 8-10 years down the line, and aren't being manufactured anymore, will basically consign your entire car to e-waste!

The vast majority of which can be fixed with some basic component-level repair, much of it DIY-able on the kitchen table if you have SMD soldering skills.  It also bypasses the 'coding' issue you mention - because you'll be putting the original part back into the car.

My fathers 2008 Toyota Auris failed an MOT because the green indicator arrow on the dashboard was not flashing (all the external indicators were fine). 

Indicator "tell-tales" (audible and/or visual) are a minor defect, so it shouldn't have failed on that alone.

vacheron

Barkin said:

vacheron said:

WellKnownSid said:

vacheron said:

• Custom built and shaped digital dashboard screens and numerous embedded controllers, which when they fail 8-10 years down the line, and aren't being manufactured anymore, will basically consign your entire car to e-waste!

The vast majority of which can be fixed with some basic component-level repair, much of it DIY-able on the kitchen table if you have SMD soldering skills.  It also bypasses the 'coding' issue you mention - because you'll be putting the original part back into the car.

My fathers 2008 Toyota Auris failed an MOT because the green indicator arrow on the dashboard was not flashing (all the external indicators were fine). 

Indicator "tell-tales" (audible and/or visual) are a minor defect, so it shouldn't have failed on that alone.

Good to know for the future.

To be fair I didn't research it in any depth, the main dealer told him that he "needed to get it repaired" before they did the MOT, and that was the quote he got to repair it. So he took it back after its service and we popped the cluster out, added a blob of solder, and he re-booked it in for the MOT the next day. 

Another main dealer example: I was quoted £640 for our Tiguan (including 2.5 hours labour) to replace the entire clockspring assembly in the steering column when all the steering wheel lights and buttons stopped working.

Took the steering wheel off, disassembled the clockspring, trimmed off and re-terminated the last cm of the internal ribbon cable (which was slightly torn), and re-assembled.

The entire operation, including removing the steering wheel / airbag, disassembling and re-assembling the clockspring assembly which VW would have just replaced, and refitting the wheel took me 35 minutes from start to finish. They quoted me 2.5 hours!

... and people wonder why I dislike main dealer servicing and am apprehensive of them gaining a monopoly position by the way they are designing new cars. 

WellKnownSid

vacheron said:

Barkin said:

vacheron said:

WellKnownSid said:

vacheron said:

• Custom built and shaped digital dashboard screens and numerous embedded controllers, which when they fail 8-10 years down the line, and aren't being manufactured anymore, will basically consign your entire car to e-waste!

The vast majority of which can be fixed with some basic component-level repair, much of it DIY-able on the kitchen table if you have SMD soldering skills.  It also bypasses the 'coding' issue you mention - because you'll be putting the original part back into the car.

My fathers 2008 Toyota Auris failed an MOT because the green indicator arrow on the dashboard was not flashing (all the external indicators were fine). 

Indicator "tell-tales" (audible and/or visual) are a minor defect, so it shouldn't have failed on that alone.

Good to know for the future.

To be fair I didn't research it in any depth, the main dealer told him that he "needed to get it repaired" before they did the MOT, and that was the quote he got to repair it. So he took it back after its service and we popped the cluster out, added a blob of solder, and he re-booked it in for the MOT the next day. 

Another main dealer example: I was quoted £640 for our Tiguan (including 2.5 hours labour) to replace the entire clockspring assembly in the steering column when all the steering wheel lights and buttons stopped working.

Took the steering wheel off, disassembled the clockspring, trimmed off and re-terminated the last cm of the internal ribbon cable (which was slightly torn), and re-assembled.

The entire operation, including removing the steering wheel / airbag, disassembling and re-assembling the clockspring assembly which VW would have just replaced, and refitting the wheel took me 35 minutes from start to finish. They quoted me 2.5 hours!

... and people wonder why I dislike main dealer servicing and am apprehensive of them gaining a monopoly position by the way they are designing new cars. 

The right to repair movement is quite strong in most parts of the world whilst the profit in parts ensures a steady stream of copies and indeed hacks to get around the software.

IMHO fewer people are prepared to service or repair their own stuff these days which plays into the hands of importers, supported by finance which makes it easier to just chop a problem in rather than get it fixed.

Alanp

There are companies out there that can repair/replace individual battery cells, ( on EVs) so it might be cost effective to keep EVs on the road for longer, what might be problematic are the over the air updates for modern cars, as with phones, they eventually can’t be updated anymore…