Oddly they say that the 2020 Buick Envision SUV is the most reliable individual car model. Lexus and Toyota as brands have a commanding lead over 3rd Place Mazda.
Consumer Reports ranking: Most reliable used cars to buy (freep.com)
intercst
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I am developing a theory: cars are increasingly being designed to be leased. They hold together for about three years, long enough to satisfy the lessee, who then returns it and takes another new car off the lot. But woe to the second owner.
Example: Subaru engines, which use sealer, instead of gaskets. When the sealer dries out, in a few years, the engines start to leak oil. Replacing all the dried out sealer is an engine-out job. I have read prices in the region of $3,000 to deal with Sube’s cheaping out by using sealer, compounded with the design of their engine.
The 1.5l engine in the VW Jetta and Taos, starting in 2022 blows it’s head gasket in 10-15,000 miles. One year ago, VW issued a TSB and redesigned the gasket. My question: is the new gasket design really fixing the problem, or only delaying failure until the lease is up?
Steve
3 Likes
I’m shocked to read this since I have a 2017 Subaru Impreza. I bought it because they are supposed to be reliable for hundreds of thousands of miles.
How can a customer learn about design problems before buying a car? I did quite a bit of research and never heard this before.
Wendy
My dad bought his first Subaru in the early 1980s, it was a “GL” model if I recall, a plain old generic 4-door sedan in white. He liked it, it gave him no problems like most of his previous cars did. And since then, he has never bought a car other than Subaru. Now has a Subaru Forester.
Problem is, many problems don’t show up until the cars are several years old. the Impreza started using the FB series engine in 2012.
This video gives some information on the engine, and a few tips on how to maximize the life of the sealer. The FB series relevant information starts around the 2:30 mark.
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My aunt has an 87 Sube Leone. The thing barely made it to 100,000, with the right side head leaking oil. The car was also leaking coolant.
She bought a 98 Civic. Over ten years and 78,000 miles, the Civic required a new exhaust pipe and an O2 sensor.
Then she wanted another Sube. I said I didn’t think she got very good service from her other Sube, but she persisted. She bought a 2009 Forester, with the normally aspirated 2.5. Her health failed only a couple years later, so she sold the car. I looked in Consumer Reports a few years later, and there was a big, black, dot, for Forester engine reliability. Seems the normally aspirated 2.5 EJ series became notorious for blown head gaskets.
Meanwhile, the 98 Civic she sold when she got the Forester finally expired in 2016, with over 230,000 miles on it. Knowing Civics, it was probably felled by a neglected timing belt. My 98 Civic is still going in Ohio, 26 years old now, but only 180,000 miles on it.
Steve
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In 1987, people still marveled when a car reached 100k miles, it was a great achievement. Nowadays, 100k is when you’ve finally broken it in, and it still has many miles of life in it. It’s a whole different mentality. When you hit 60k or so, people would be asking you, “so what are planning on replacing it with?” Of course, we drove less back then than we do today.
This is interesting and likely correct. Brings me back a ways, but in the 80s, a good friend of mine had a “Honda family”, everyone in his family owned Hondas. And after my Mustang was stolen, I bought a used Civic hatch to replace it (I bought the Mustang for $12.6k and 4 years and 2 months later it was stolen, and the insurance company gave me $3600 for it, and then another $600 when I gave them the receipt for the new tires I put on it a few weeks earlier). Anyway, mechanics were charging a lot to replace Honda timing belts (like $700-900!) at the time, so we decided to start doing it ourselves. We did it in my driveway because I had a compressor (still have it in my garage right now). But my impact wrench didn’t have enough torque to loosen the crankshaft pulley bolt. So on weekends that we did timing belts (we did all sorts of other car stuff as well, including lots of bondo and mesh because the winter road salt ate metal for dinner) we would borrow the “big azz” impact wrench (1200 ft-lbs of torque!!) from a mechanic friend. Over the 80s, and into the early 90s, we changed at least 10 timing belts in all the Hondas (some Accords, some Civics) saving probably $8000 of work in total. The part was only $60-100, but the labor was $600-800 (and they usually marked up the part as well). We even had a trick to avoid having to find TDC after replacement, we would wedge a screwdriver into the gears the belt rode on to keep it in place while doing the work, that way, when we replaced everything, the timing position was exactly where it was before we started, saved a heck of a lot of time for us driveway mechanics.
Here is a followup video the guy did about the oil leaks, as some people apparently started bouncing off the walls.
Here is a piece by the same guy discussing the validity of Sube USA’s claim the automatic transmission fluid never needs to be changed.
VW is also making some very questionable maintenance recommendations these days. My 10 year old VW’s schedule calls for oil changes at a 10,000 mile interval (I have it changed at 5,000) and transmission fluid, both for the conventional automatic and the DSG, at 40,000. The schedule for a new VW Jetta calls for an oil change interval of 20,000 miles, and transmission fluid at 80,000.
I suspect that maintenance schedule is written by VW’s marketing department, not engineering. I have offered before, how I found, working at RS, that USians are cheap plicks that don’t want to spend money on anything. If you look at VW advertising now, they make a big deal about how little maintenance their cars require. VW must be confident that the first owners will trade the car in, before the profound lack of maintenance, causes things to go wrong in very expensive ways.
Steve
2 Likes
I’ve owned Nissans for the last 30 years. My current vehicle is a 2005 Nissan Altima that I’ve owned for nearly 20 years. The only thing I done to it with 96,000 miles on the odometer is, oil changes, bought my third set of tires last year, and I replaced the brake pads at about 85,000 miles. That’s it.
Whenever I start shopping for a new car, I ask myself, "What are the chances that the new vehicle will be as reliable as what I’m driving? And the desire for a new car quickly fades.
While NIssan had quality and reliability equal to Toyota and Honda 20 or 30 years ago, that’s generally not true today.
intercst
I am highly impressed. I always impress myself when I can open the hood and add window washer solution.
On the other hand, if anyone needs help with wooden gear pendulum clock maintenance, please give me a call. I’m pretty good at changing light bulbs, too.
Sigh.
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New cars drop in value once you drive them off the lot. If one has the do-re-mi to absorb that, then the above would also favor buying a new car every three years.
DB2
If you are in the business of moving cars out the door, which customer do you want? The guy who only buys a car once per decade, or someone who leases a new sled every three years? You want that fast turnover, lease customer. All you have to do to keep him coming back every three years, is make the car hold together for the duration of the lease. You don’t care about the owner experience the guy who only buys once per decade has, because you don’t value his business.
Years ago, auto stylist Brooks Stevens was speaking to a group. Stevens did a lot of work for Studebaker. He was asked why Studebakers rusted out so fast. Stevens replied that Studebaker knew how to make the cars more rust resistant. But, Studebaker had decided the customers they valued bought a new car every three years, so as long as the car didn’t rust out in that short period, the customer would be satisfied and buy another.
Steve
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Yeah, and where is Studebaker now?
The opposite take on your 3-year theory is that cars built in the last 10 or 20 years or so last much longer than they did back in the 60s and 70s. That is just a fact, on average. And the stats on the average age of cars on the road has been generally going up and up the last couple of decades.
Mike
2 Likes
Here’s an example of short term thinking, on the part of the automaker. This video happens to be about a Peugeot, but Ford is using the same “technology” in some of it’s engines.
The “technology” is a “wet” timing belt, a rubber camshaft drive belt that runs in the engine oil. Why? A belt is cheap, and quiet, and cheap, and light, and cheap, vs using a roller chain.
The downside is even the synthetic rubbers the belts are made of deteriorate, so the belt needs to be replaced, which is expensive. Even better, the “wet” belts have an added feature: particles of rubber and fiber fall off of the belt as it runs, and the debris falls into the oil pan. The debris is then sucked into the oil pickup in the pan, and collects in the screen in the oil pickup. Eventually, enough debris is stuck in the screen that the engine is starved of oil, which gets very, very, expensive. But, the lease customer has left the car behind before all this happens, so it’s all good, from the profit-maximizing management’s perspective.
The part where the debris in the oil pickup is shown starts around the 4:30 mark.
Teardown and analysis of a Ford engine out of an Ecosport CUV. The guy starts digging rubber debris out of the oil pickup at the 21:30 mark. An extra feature, Ford didn’t even key the timing sprocket to the crankshaft. cheap…cheap…cheap. But, by the time all the cheapness manifests in a sad engine, the typical lease customer would have already walked away from the car.
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If the cars are designed to last for a three-year lease period then they also work for a three-year ownership period.
DB2
Yes, three years either way. The owner/lessee is back for another car, before the old one starts to fail in expensive ways.
I used to have a Ford SUV. It had a V6 engine, with the water pump mounted between the cylinder banks, driven by the timing chain. A lessee/three year owner would never have to deal with a water pump replacement, but a 10 year owner may discover that getting at that pump requires disassembly of about half the engine, a couple thousand in labor. That is if he figures out the pump is leaking. Because the pump is inside the timing chain cover, it doesn’t leak a puddle on the garage floor. It leaks coolant into the oil instead. Coolant does not lubricate worth a hoot, so an undiscovered leaking water pump could end up with a virtually destroyed engine. I moved on from that Ford, before the pump failed. My neighbor had a Taurus sedan, with the same engine. He discovered the pump was leaking, around 120,000 miles, and had it replaced. The engine apparently did not exhibit any ill effects, but he got rid of that car not long after anyway.
Like the Ford and Peugeot engines with “wet” timing belts, you do not want a Ford with this V6, if you are a long term, or subsequent, owner. Lease it for three years, then run away.
This video shows where the water pump is, and shows how that failed pump destroyed the engine.
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Back in the 60s and 70s, people drove less than they do today. Annual mileage was between 9000 and 10,000 a year. Today, we’re more like 13,000, and even hit 14,000 in the year or two before covid.
So do cars last the same number of years and just travel more miles in that time?
—Peter
Cars were designed to be more serviceable in the 60s.
A water pump, for instance, was bolted on the front of the engine, driven by a V belt. Easy to see when it is leaking, and easy to replace, unlike the pump in the Ford V6 in the video above.
Valve timing was by gear or chain, either of which should last the life of the engine, not a rubber belt, running in oil, and dropping debris into the oil, as in the Ford and Peugeot engines in the videos above.
Oil pans were metal, sealed with a gasket. Now oil pans are sealed with sealer. Some manufacturers have gone to a plastic oil pan. If the plastic pan needs to come off, for any reason, peeling it off of the sealer irreparably bends the pan, so you need to pay for a new oil pan.
VW Jettas have a belly pan that needs to be removed to get at the oil filter and drain plug. That belly pan is held in place by 13 screws and bolts. Guess who pays for the labor to unscrew all those bolts, and remove the pan, then put everything back, after the oil has been changed?
Now that I have freaked Wendy out about Sube oil leakage, the things I like about Sube’s current engine design: the belly pan has a hole in it, for access to the oil drain plug, without removing the pan. The oil filter is on top of the engine, easily accessible without removing anything. The water pump is external to the engine, so leaking is easily seen, and access for replacement is easy.
Steve
I don’t think so. You can do the math
1970: 5.6 yrs
2000: 9 yrs
2023: 13.6 yrs (new record)
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/line3.htm
Mike
This theory doesn’t pass the economics test. Leases are based on interest cost of the total sales price of the car minus the residual value. This is why when the market is honest (Not often these days) you can lease a better car at a lower monthly cost than a lessor car.
The cheapness of the automobile must lower the initial purchase price more than the cheapness lowers the residual value.
The other problem with sales to only leases is the problem of customer selection. When all off your customers are enumerate you end up with the vast majority of your customers being broke.
Two of the biggest, if not THE two biggest problems that Nissan and Ram/Jeep sales people have is low credit scores and being upside down in the trade.
Toyota dealers face this problem less. Often their problem is crafty old people with cash willing to buy a Honda or Lexus and who have shopped ten dealers online. But they don’t face the problem of credit scores and down payments. (As much)
Cheers
Qazulight
1 Like