(originally posted in 2010 at the other site) ADAC is the organization that responds to essentially every automotive Panne (breakdown) in Germany. And with the Germanic proclivity for thorough record keeping, they have kept them all, and analyzed them more thoroughly than any of Freud’s patients ever were. Did your mother have a flat in 1983? ADAC knows. And they’ve been using it to publish annual best and worst reliability rankings since 1978. If you caught the Toyota Starlet post, you’ll know that it was the queen of the ADAC numbers, and the bane of Mercedes and the other (once) proud builders of the world’s most presumably durable iron. Since ADAC doesn’t have an easy way to see all thirty year’s worth of the good and naughty, my Germanic side kicked in and I spent a chunk of last night transcribing them unto a spreadsheet, because…well, that’s just how Germanic I am, at times.
A few caveats: The category definitions changed slightly over the years, but they’re close enough. Also, these only show the winners in their respective categories, not an overall ranking. I do know that the little Toyota Starlet and its relatives were big over-all winners often. And to anticipate your concerns, ADAC notes mileage on each vehicle of every call in order to adjust the raw data. And they do the actual response under contract for many of the manufacturer’s mobility program, so they’ve got that covered too. The Germans are very thorough.
I almost left off the most recent decade because there are some questions about whether the numbers are becoming increasingly irrelevant and less reliable due to a number of circumstances, one of them being the growth of emergency roadside services by manufacturers, although quite a number of those are contracted to ADAC.
But the number from the eighties and nineties are generally considered by the automotive manufacturers as quite accurate. The reality is that mechanical breakdowns have been dropping pretty steadily the whole time, so that the relative difference between cars is/was becoming less relevant. Or is that an excuse by the Japanese makes because they don’t show up as often? The German brands are certainly trumpeting their recent improvements. You be the judge.
Please note too that cars with very limited sales numbers in Germany are excluded, in case you’re wondering where that Austin Maestro is.
Very interesting, but could you please post some more recent data?
I, and many others, have much less faith in the more recent years of these stats. Manufacturers have learned to game the system somewhat, the number of actual breakdowns has dropped, and more often it’s a weak battery or such. After about 2005 or so, take it with a grain of salt.
So no, I’m not going to take the time and dig up the more recent ones. You could google it yourself.
Dammit! I was ready to give lots of weight to this as I’m eying the dreiliter A2 for my next car.
Awful lot of Renaults and Fiats in the “worst” columns. Older Hyundai and Skoda models may have an excuse, but anyone in the business in a big way for a century should have car building figured out by now.
Reliability reports on the Fiat 500 in the US fit with the German data regarding that brand’s models.
Acquiring Chrysler won’t help Fiat on this front!
Not many Brit cars listed in the right half. Are they unpopular in Germany, or just mediocre? Consumer’s Union usually has “Insufficient Data” for Jags & Land Rovers. Past experience (bias?) suggests what “Sufficient Data” would say.
Unpopular; too low in numbers to generally be included.
Not many Brit cars listed in the right half. Are they unpopular in Germany, or just mediocre?
I see the Rover 200 in the 2002 “worst” list. The volume Brit auto industry has gone extinct. The Rover brand died in 05, according to Wiki. The specialty brands like Jag and Range Rover may be too low volume on the continent to make it onto the survey.
Acquiring Chrysler won’t help Fiat on this front!
Agreed. Combining a weak, low quality US producer with a weak, low quality, European producer does not look like a gene pool that will challenge Honda any time soon. On the other hand, if Marchionne takes the right approach with his merger talk, sees Chrysler as a short term investment and sells it to GM, who would like to get their hands on Jeep, Fiat would make a few tens of billions of profit on the deal.
GM is very unlikely to purchase Chrysler as it will lead to too many factory shutdown and not only federal government, Michigan government alone wouldn’t let it happen anyway.
But on the other hand, I can imagine they would manage to let larger Maserati and Chrysler share the same platform in the coming years and maybe Dodge can get a simpler version too.
Mary Barra has already told Sergio where he can shove it.
I think Sergio forgot about British Leyland.
GM is very unlikely to purchase Chrysler as it will lead to too many factory shutdown and not only federal government, Michigan government alone wouldn’t let it happen anyway.
First, FCA sells more Jeeps than any other nameplate. Toledo and Jefferson North would continue as is, building Jeeps.
Dundee Engine is a JV with Hyundai, so it would keep running to supply Hyundai US production.
Some other stamping and parts plants would continue, making Jeep parts.
GM would make lots of soothing noises about their “commitment” to Chrysler and Dodge, then quietly wind the brands down.
GM would not even need to buy out huge numbers of Chrysler and Dodge dealers, like they did when they killed Olds. As part of the bankruptcy proceeding, Chrysler closed vast numbers of dealers and forced others to carry all four brands under one roof. The dealers would still be in business without Chrysler, Dodge or Ram brands, because they would still have Jeep, which is the largest seller anyway.
Among Chrysler Group’s 2,090,639 US sales in 2014, 692,348 is Jeep, 574,155 is Dodge, 469,139 is RAM, and 308,785 is Chrysler. If GM buys Chrysler, it would be using 100% price to buy just one third products measured by vehicles if eliminating rest brands but Jeep, and the rest buyers aren’t more likely to stay within GM than anywhere else. Chrysler still holds good number at minivan, full size sedan and trucks and it shouldn’t be neglected.
Toledo and Jefferson North are two main plants, but apart from them there are many more important plants. With Oldsmobile gone, the economy of Lansing nearly went to the track of Hamtramck ( I think MSU played a positive role here ) and if Chrysler Group can’t maintain operating as a whole, the whole Michigan will scale down to a similar level of Flint and Saginaw ( and by that time I think I’d either moved to UP or Canada )
if Chrysler Group can’t maintain operating as a whole, the whole Michigan will scale down to a similar level of Flint and Saginaw
Actually, Chrysler has been dying for nearly 40 years. Bailed out in 80. Iacocca performed a miracle getting it turned around, but, iirc, he went on an empire building binge buying Gulfstream in 85, and Lamborgini in 87. Sticks in my mind that, by the time Daimler Benz bought the company, it was not doing terribly well, again. Then D-B tired of losing money on it and sold 80% to Cerberus, for a fraction of what D-B had paid in 98. Cerberus finished the job of running the company into the ground.
Fiat’s initial share of Chrysler was free. They paid around $4B for the part of the company held by the VEBA. D-B had originally shelled out $36B for the company.
GM can make claims about how it will hang on to Chrysler’s market share, as well as it’s own, so there will be no net loss of jobs
No monopoly worries. The combined market shares of the two today, 18% and 13%, is less than what GM held by itself in the 70s.
In spite of FCA’s sales growth today, their products continue to dominate the bottom of reliability and customer service surveys. The lousy ownership experience will eventually catch up with them, just as it did in the 70s.
Marchionne is one of the smartest guys in the business, and he wants to sell Chrysler at the peak of it’s value.
Mary Barra has already told Sergio where he can shove it.
I saw the report of that e-mail too. She may have been thinking he was talking about taking on all of FCA, thus adding loss making Fiat to their loss making Opel/Vauxhall division.
Dangle just the US operations, and the answer might well be different.
Since ADACS seems interested in only breakdowns, am I correct in inferring they’re not directly comparable to Consumer’s Union reliability statistics? For example, a malfunctioning electric window doesn’t require towing.
Some consistencies can be seen, however. For example, Audi reliability has also overtaken Benz in the States. The otherwise excellent S-class got the dreaded ● in a recent CU summary.
Right. and right.
The S-class probably suffers from what Click and Clack used to call the Sir Edmund Hillary school of auto design – they built technology into it because they could rather than any consumer-focused reason.
If only it had been more like a Toyota Century or Lincoln Town Car, sticking to long-proven, appropriate levels of tech for a big, often chauffeur-driven model while something more sporting served as the tech flagship…
The reliability of Toyota Century is unknown due to the limited numbers and access. If it proves to be cost effective to maintain and has easier access, I would like to pick it as the replacement for my Buick LeSabre ( roomy, comfortable highway cruiser with reasonable maintaining cost )
I don’t really want to consider Town Car because seeing them 30+ times a day is too much even in many different color.
The V12 Century is a “halo” VIP limousine, more like the Cadillac Model 90 V16 of the ’30s than the mass-produced Town Car, which is basically a stretched & better-appointed Crown Vic.
Yeah, good luck getting a Century. Only a small handful of them have been built with LHD, mostly as Japanese embassy cars in major LHD country capitals like Washington, Paris or Beijing. Basically they’re on hand for when the PM or a member of the Imperial Family comes to visit.
BTW if you know any royalty fans (like my daughter), check out Japan’s two princesses.
I almost said Crown Comfort, perhaps I should have.
It’s odd that Toyota doesn’t develop a new, global generation of the V12 Century that could serve as a halo car for Lexus. But then, it would have the effect of making the LS “less than”.
If you think a more thorough analysis is required, I might be interested in lending my skills. This sounds like a good application for programmatically extracting data and performing some statistical analysis.
Thanks. I did this back in 2010. I don’t remember even exactly where I found the data; some German magazine or such. I don’t know what more you’d really be able to extract. It’s pretty old information. And it tends to support what is generally accepted about most of these good and bad cars; not a lot of surprises, actually. Except maybe the very dismal showing of the Opel Commodore.
The TUV rankings are interesting too. They don’t account for mileage, but they do list the average miles covered for each model. Certain German cars creep into the top rankings with the Japanese after a number of years that way, as Japanese cars are purchased by people that rely on their cars for covering huge mileage while Porsche 911s and Mercedes SLKs average about 5K miles a year in Germany.
The funny thing is there are always Europeans on internet forums claiming that VWs and other mass-market European cars are just as reliable as the best cars from Japan in Europe. Nope. Not even close. Jingoism is all they’ve got going for them in the mass-market.
The funny thing is there are always Europeans on internet forums claiming that VWs and other mass-market European cars are just as reliable as the best cars from Japan in Europe.
We hear the same claims from the big three “we are every bit as good as Toyota” they all claim. Open a copy of CR and look….nope.
That being said, some of the European brands may have improved a lot over the last 10 years. Looking at the Mk5 Golf/Jetta platform from 2005 to 14: 2.5L timing chain tensioner issue cured, oil leak from vacuum pump apparently cured, leaking valve body in the Aisin automatic possibly cured, door wire harnesses that fatigued and broke cured. Maybe not a Toyota or Honda, but better than the 90s, when windows came out of the track, timing belts broke before the scheduled replacement interval, smoking coil packs, water pumps with plastic impellers than crumbled…
Speaking as someone who lived with a LeMans for a few years, I find it interesting that the Kadett E appears to have been as much a piece of junk as its Daewoo offspring.
If my experience is any guide, the Daewoo might actually be better. Money pit that it was (mostly HVAC) it never left me or my ex stranded. She had that car for nearly ten years,
While no one likes cars with disabling faults, it’s especially demoralizing for ♀ owners. Moreover, I’ve seen firsthand that many mechanics don’t treat female customers with the same respect they give men.
Wiki remarks “In N. America, poor quality tarnished sales.” So maybe its gag name should’ve been “Pontiac Le Mons.”?
My ex is a high school teacher. Her BS detector is so sensitive it requires a GPS timing signal! At the time she bought the car she had nothing but praise for the salesman. Of course he tried to move her up into a Sunbird or an ex-rental Grand Am, but as a college student working a graveyard shift even a stripper Sunbird was too much.
With that in mind, he was completely honest with her about the LeMans’ reputation, but he also told her that if she followed the maintenance schedule to the letter it would last a long time. She took that to heart and he turned out to be right.
Ten years, 150,000 miles, two timing belts, a muffler, two a/c compressors, one a/c condenser, a heater core, a fan relay (sourced from a BMW dealer) and two missing hubcaps later we sold it.
She’s remarried now, and probably still damn proud of buying her beloved Jellybean. (it was a ’93 in that light teal that was popular at the time)
If anything was scheduled maintenance like timing belts, I don’t count it a defect. Muffler, maybe. I’m curious if the other problems were with parts from the same supplier, maybe they had dysfunctional management, like a clueless chaebol scion, for example.
I have a hunch that a lot of auto QC problems are with suppliers, not final assembly.
That sounds about right. I’ve told the story of the fan relay here before. It was a Korean copy of a Bosch item. GM had discontinued most LeMans parts not long after the car was discontinued and the neighborhood shop we always used had called their regular suppliers to no avail. Finally one of the techs looked it up in a Hollander manual and discovered that it cross referenced with a BMW part number. They called the local Bimmer store and we got the car back (with a genuine Bosch relay) the next day.
I have a hunch that a lot of auto QC problems are with suppliers, not final assembly.
Regardless, the company that builds the car owns responsibility for everything that goes into it. The now notorious Cobalt ignition switch was built by Delphi, but it was GM engineering that accepted the design, even though it did not meet GM’s spec for the torque required to turn it off.
Agree, I don’t mean to excuse GM et al. Besides plain negligence like that, I suspect there’s often a predatory relationship between outside suppliers & manufacturer, which the Japanese seem more able to avoid or not allow to affect final quality. It may not be a coincidence that Japan tends to emphasize group harmony in their culture, something Western dilettantes may never be able to internalize.
In regards to the Cobalt et all ignition switch Delphi was still a wholly owned subsidiary of GM when it was originally designed and first went into production.
In regards to the Cobalt et all ignition switch Delphi was still a wholly owned subsidiary of GM when it was originally designed and first went into production.
Must have been a long lead time. Delphi became independent of GM in 99. The oldest cars the NHTSA lists as being covered by the recall are 03 Ions.
http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Owners/Consumer+Alert:+GM+Ignition+Switch+Recall+Information
“Besides plain negligence like that, I suspect there’s often a predatory relationship between outside suppliers & manufacturer, which the Japanese seem more able to avoid or not allow to affect final quality. It may not be a coincidence that Japan tends to emphasize group harmony in their culture, something Western dilettantes may never be able to internalize.”
Takata, anyone?
I didn’t say group harmony (wa) is infallible!
True, you did not say that it was infallible and frankly the Takata mess is the most egregious example.
But, this kind of short-sightedness creeps into every society, IMO. How it manifests itself is different each time.
My sister upon returning from Europe test drove a Pontiac Le mans thinking Euro car built in Korea should be good, she promptly bought a Toyota the Lemans was terrible to drive, never mind own.
Thank you for devoting a chunk of your evening compiling this spreadsheet.
However, due to the unflattering portrait presented of the Citroen CX, or perhaps its owners and local service agents, I’ll forget I ever saw it.
What did J Stalin say, “it’s a long time ago and it never happened anyway”? La la la….
Well, the CX was competing with Mercedes and BMWs so being worst in its category doesn’t necessarily mean it was unreliable.
The Citroen listings are interesting, as I’ve owned most of their 1980s product range personally. Interestingly, mid-way through 1982 the CX was heavily revised, with proper rustproofing and generally better quality control, which is when it fell off the ‘worst’ chart. Today, its not completely difficult to find a post-’82 CX, but there are almost none left before the revision that are still in running condition.
Strangely, for some reason the BX was missing from the ‘worst’ chart during its early years- when you would think Citroen would still be working the bugs out, but showed up regularly through the 90s. I wonder if that is because Citroen improved their products from abysmal to slightly below average, while by the early 90s everyone else had actually learned how to make cars reliable? The inclusion of the 2cv is also perplexing, as it was quite reliable and well tested indeed, especially by 1982. Even a run of dead batteries couldn’t explain it, as the 2cv is one of the few cars that doesn’t need a battery to start.
The BX is basicly a reclothed Peugeot 405 yet only the Citroen shows up as unreliable when one badge proves worse or better signifigantly than its stable mate I call BS statistics
Like the Toyota Aygo doing better than their Citroën and Peugeot equivalents (by that I mean that these 3 are all exactly the same, coming from the same plant).
Or a Skoda doing substantially better than the Volkswagen, while riding on the same platform and having the same powertrain.
It helps if badge-engineered twins are built in the same factory. The NUMMI (Fremont, CA) Chevy Nova proved every bit as reliable as the Corolla.
Now, it’s Tesla’s turn to be in bed with Toyota at that facility. BTW, CU ranked the Tesla S “Average” in reliability, which is their threshold for “Recommended” models.
The ADAC Pannenstatistik is not only Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.
Here are some examples of what the Germans have to say:
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/adac-manipulation-experte-kritisiert-pannenstatistik-a-944440.html
Another one: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannenstatistik
And the link says: http://www.zeit.de/2005/21/ADAC
I only rely on my own statistics: Immaculate maintenance and treating my machinery with respect. So far so good.
Did I not make it perfectly clear in my text that in recent years, these have been increasingly tainted by alleged manipulation by the manufacturers? That’s why I chose not to use any of the more recent ones.
But that was not the case in 80s and 90s. It provides a useful look at historical statistics from that era.
Opel Omega must really sucked, it ‘dominated’ the worst full size for years and years. Yet somehow GM decided to re-badge the Omega as Cadillac Catera.
Got to give it to GM.
We had a ’93 Fiat Tipo. From new it needed WD40 to start if there was even a hint of moisture in the air, which there usually was in our coastal town.
I find discussions of reliability one of the most intriguing things on this site. I’d love to sit down with the management at Fiat or Renault and ask them what they’re thinking. I mean, they struggle to sell new cars (in the UK anyway, dunno about elsewhere) because their dodgy reputation gives them low resale values. It’s been going on for years, so I wonder just how much investment it would take to put it right?
The Tipo is a good example. After Fiat/Lancia got an appalling reputation for lack of rust resistance, the Tipo and its stablemates had bodies which were fully galvanised or had fibreglass panels and were the most rust resistant cars you could buy, which allowed them to last long enough for folk to find out how badly made everything else was. In elephant-memory UK, Lancia was still forced out not because of reliability but because people still thought they would disintegrate in 6 months.
Someone mentioned “jingosim” as a reason Europeans buy European cars, which has been mentioned several times before, and you’d probably find Europeans saying the same of Americans. It’s worth bearing in mind that although Japanese cars are more reliable, there often isn’t a huge real world difference, and cars often fill a slightly different role here. There’s no jingoism in a Frenchman buying a German car, it’s simply that for various reasons, European cars are far more appealing (in general) to European buyers. (FYI we have a Mazda and a Yamaha)
Re Fiat/Alfa: you are all talking about (now) ancient history. I can tell you that from what I hear from my friends in the motor trade, current models are nothing like the old horrors in the reliability stakes. Certainly the Fiat diesels are class leaders as far as reliability is concerned (how about an Alfa 166 5 cyl diesel which managed to make to to 647,000 Km (402,000 miles) before the engine died). On the contrary to what people are saying above, things like Toyota Starlets are bought here mainly by old age pensioners, that is, people who cover very little mileages, so that has to be brought into account (I am not saying they are unreliable, just not the wonder car the survey makes them out to be). What is though not reflected in the survey is that VW in Europe has not been as good as it should be and there are quite a few horror stories about – I think VW is going through a period similar to the one M-B had in the early 90s, and they need to snap out of it (maybe it will happen now that their management wars are simingly concluded). Opel is now reliable and the Inignias seem to cover high mileages without falling apart.
As a very experienced mechanic (working on all brands) once told me: Toyotas are mainly bought by old(er) people who treat their car as if it was made of gold and never put the pedal to the metal. They even don’t drive it in bad weather.
At the other end: Alfa Romeos, which are pushed very hard by mainly young people. Who generally don’t do decent warm-ups, but rev it like hell all the time, even is the engine is still stone-cold. And there you have your oil leaking alloy engine after just 50,000 km or so.
Exactly. Thank you Sir.
Yeah, and Alfas have a reputation for being more sensitive to correct servicing, correct oil etc – not exactly a Hilux.
When I worked for Avis, we knew when we got 9 new Puntos, 3 would go straight to workshop, but one of my colleagues had an ancient 1.1 Uno he picked up for nothing and was going strong with 160,000 miles on it.
I think there is a difference between durability and reliability, ie Peugeot diesels which go on forever but might need a couple of sets of ball joints or an axle rebuild during their lives, and European cars might be more prone to daft faults which aren’t particularly grave or expensive.
Whereas my in laws in Minnesota are effectively prisoners in their own home if their car(s) breaks down, I can’t claim to actually need a car which perhaps highlights why European buyers don’t recoil in horror at slightly suspect consumer satisfaction surveys, and why European cars can trigger some foaming at the mouth in the comments section here. (Occasionally)
Now that’s another good point. I actually _never_ had a Japanese car so maybe I’m one of those Europeans who accept doing on-going maintenance on a “when and if” basis. Things went wrong on my cars (all of which were old by the time I had them, with considerable mileages on the clock) but I considered them as normal wear and tear and repaired/replaced as appropriate. None of them ever stranded me or massively failed unexpectedly.
Editing to add, for whatever it is worth I actually had at my disposal for a while a Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo (not my car) and… the turbo seals went. 300 quid was what it cost to get a recon exchange turbo and about a couple of hours work, so that it stopped producing a smoke screen on full throttle (it was very useful to get rid of tail-gaters). Then with the added power the CV went…
“Toyotas are mainly bought by old(er) people who treat their car as if it was made of gold and never put the pedal to the metal. They even don’t drive it in bad weather.”
That was not too far off the mark of my experiences when I was selling Toyotas in the SE USA.
We had a much older, wealthier clientele than our Chevy store across the street. I can vividly remember the Service Manager telling a customer that the problems she experienced with her Tercel because she “wasn’t driving it right…” (Later, it was revealed there were flaws with the carburetor used on that model). She believed the excuse and started driving it differently…
So your source of one mechanic trumps the ADAC’s statistics. I see you’re a man who understands the power of numbers and the value of significant sample sizes 🙂
It may be true (although I have no stats) the Toyota has an older demo in Europe, but that’s probably now, and almost certainly not the case in the 80s, when Toyota and Japanese cars were the new thing. They were specifically bought more by younger buyers then, who were more adventurous and tired of the poor reliability of the home-town brands. Old folks back then did not buy Japanese cars; just like in the US. They were too conservative to try something that different. Of course, thirty years later, those once-young Toyota buyers are now older. happens to all of us, even Toyota buyers 🙂
Agree. While Scion started out with promise, attracting a much younger demographic than Toyota (mean age 39 vs. 54) & using hip marketing coupled with Saturn’s pricing model, sales were hurt by the economic downturn. Now, Toyota even allows dealers to drop the Scion brand w/o penalty.
My guess is, younger folks simply buy Korean instead since quality appears competitive now. Korea’s economic growth has been called “Miracle on the Han.” Japanese consumer electronics, once seemingly unstoppable, are now also-rans.
Abusing cars and neglecting its maintenance just mean a bigger chance to failures. That’s the bottom line here, which has nothing to do with “trumping the ADAC’s statistics”.
But you are correct. Frankly I don’t give a damn about statistics and surveys. I prefer to listen very attentively to the guys with decades of experience, regardless the subject.
Paul,
Certainly the times have changed. Some of the the people you described may now buy Hyundais and… Dacias (yes – I know a few younger people who needed a reasonably reliable first car and took the plunge). Next time you visit Austria, take a look around – you will very quickly notice who is driving the few new Toyotas these days (well, certainly in Vienna and Lower Austria – it is possible that there is a slightly different spread in Tirol – an active local dealer can do a lot). It also has to do with Toyota’s image here as a producer of worthy but infinitely dull cars. For what it’s worth, Toyota managed to hit 17th place in the 2014 Austrian top 20 selling cars list (http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/energie_umwelt_innovation_mobilitaet/verkehr/strasse/kraftfahrzeuge_-_neuzulassungen/index.html), way below Hyundai (4th!), Seat (9th) or dreadful Fiat (12th). There is not one single Toyota model in the top 20 individual models list. Again, what I say is _not_ that Toyotas are unreliable cars, on the contrary, merely that the driving habits of their (few!) owners have a lot to answer for the good reliability stats.
What is though not reflected in the survey is that VW in Europe has not been as good as it should be and there are quite a few horror stories about – I think VW is going through a period similar to the one M-B had in the early 90s, and they need to snap out of it
An interesting observation as my impression here in the US is just the opposite: VW seems to be getting it’s arms around stupid problems that deviled it’s products here year after year, generation after generation. As mentioned above, both the Mk5 Jetta and Mk5/6 Golf/Rabbit were getting a thumbs up from Consumer Reports. The company made running changes to resolve several chronic and expensive issues with the design. The Mk5 Jettas were made in Mexico, while the Golf/Rabbits we got here were made in Germany.
That being said, I bought a Mk5 Jetta (Golf everywhere else) station wagon a year ago, rather than wait for the “new and innovative” MBQ based Golf wagon that was just introduced, because I didn’t want to be VW’s beta tester.
Steve,
They might have started the process – common knowledge usually lags behind. The main culprits here seems to be the robotic g/boxes and turbos dying before their time.
The main culprits here seems to be the robotic g/boxes and turbos dying before their time.
In the US, the gas engine Golf and Jetta use a conventional 6 speed built by Aisin. The TDIs and a few high performance versions get the DSG. Apparently the DSG has an extremely expensive service interval every 40,000 miles. It’s completely possible that many owners simply skip it due to the cost.
Turbos are having issues everywhere. I don’t want any part of VW’s 1.8Tsi that replaced the 2.5L 5 cylinder, until it’s proved itself. Ford has had a series of recalls on it’s Ecoboost turbo engines. The Chevy Cruze with the 1.4 turbo is one of the most trouble prone cars in the country. The Cruze’s problems are not entirely the turbo’s fault, but it contributes it’s share of grief from chronic overheating, leaking water pumps and more.
The Opel Omega makes almost half of the “Full size worst list”.. that’s odd. Here in Brazil they were flawless.
I think yours had different mechanicals?
When a breakdown can mean include anything from flat tires and low battery no-starts to dropping and engine bearing or mishap that might call for a tow, you can’t read anything into the data presented here.
You may have a “Germanic side” (and what does that mean anyway?). Scientists and those who love accuracy in numbers exist everywhere on earth and the Germans have never had a lock on such things. You need to pick up a book about statistical analysis and sound, scientific data collection and interpretation before you run headlong into showing people something like this because this is junk data and always has been since 1978. First cut? Take out all the flat tire tows and see what that leaves you. What about weather-related breakdowns? Factors unrelated to how a car is designed and built run rampant throughout your numbers and you should know that.
Right; it’s sheer utter coincidence (and junk statistics) that certain cars show up repeatedly, year after year. Even decade after decade.
As a matter of fact, the ADAC stats do not include the flats and other things not relevant. The stats had considerable attention in being categorized to give the best possible representation of actual breakdowns. Sorry, but the Germans are a bit smarter in that regard than you give them credit for.
As I’ve said repeatedly: the ADAC stats from the last few years is increasingly suspect, because manufacturers have learned how to game the system. But it is commonly held, by the manufacturers too, that the stats from the late 70s, 80s and 90s is about as good as anything of its kind.
Are you feeling so sore because your favorite French cars didn’t do too well? It’s ok; it’s just a plot by the Germans to get back for the Versailles Treaty 🙂
Paul, does AAA collect similar statistics, or are they too lazy or decentralized?
They do review new cars in their periodicals, but w/o remarks about past model reliability. Actually they have lots of member services & travel packages (often having little to do with driving as such), so it would be disappointing if they ignored this issue.
According to the article, ADAC responds to every breakdown in Germany.
AAA only responds if the driver holds an AAA membership, and even then, AAA’s basic role is to reimburse the member for the towing expenses. It may also reimburse the driver for simple services, such as a battery jump or the changing of a flat tire. But that’s pretty much it, if I recall correctly.
Around here, AAA will dispatch tow/service vehicles for jumpstarts, tire changes or tow to a mechanic. And yes, for members only.
Paul, just as a matter of interest: can you expand on how manufacturers can game that system? ADAC (I would assume it is no different in this sense than the ÖAMTC or ARBÖ (for the others: the Austrian equivalents)) responds to private people (or companies) whose cars get stranded for whatever reason. Unless they report to the manufacturer (something I am not aware of) or give it some chance to respond, there is no manufacturer involvement whatever, so I’m puzzled how they can influence the data collection process.