Are all manufactures terrible now?

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by levi
You must remain profitable or you will cease to exist. Government regs such as safety standards, emissions, fuel economy; computer, electrical complexity; applying new technologies, designs to meet/stay ahead of competition work against that.

^^^^^^^ This 100%.

Compared to decades ago, cars nowadays are extremely complex pieces of machinery due to customer demand, creature comforts, and govt regulations. The more parts and complexity, the higher the chances of something going wrong.

People will always complain about something. If you get rid of all the big issues, people will start complaining about the small issues, just because they have nothing else to complain about. Human nature.

 

[Fawteen]

Originally Posted by PWMDMD
Honestly, reading as much as I do it hard to not come to the conclusion that all car manufactures suck now.


Let me guess-you've read all this on the Internet, especially on a handful of discussion forums, right?

The real world is a lot different if you don't live it through a computer/smart phone screen. The majority of people who own vehicles don't have problems and don't spend their time crowing about their satisfaction. The small, vocal percentage of people that do spend all their time living through their screens tend to be prone to exaggeration. There's also a segment of that group that despises any change, and spends a lot of their time looking backwards.

Even this forum is loaded with a tremendous amount of bovine feces. There is some good information, but there is also a lot of exaggeration and just plain old bad information, and you have to wade through all of it to get to the truth. For instance, your assertion that "all car manufactures suck now" is a perfect example of that bovine feces.

 

[RooflessVW]

Cars are better now than they have ever been. If anything, it is more difficult to get a true dud.

I'll take lazy shift programming over the issues of the past any day.

 

[ARCOgraphite]

If a true dud is bad or failing engine and transmissions

There be PLENTY out there. Including your VAG turbo fly apart timing systems of late.

I've owned over 70 cars over 50 years.

Most were not too good at best.

One handful were "keepers" Statistically valid sample size.

Many 60's Cars were nicer to drive - even if less capable overall.

 

[atikovi]

Cars started getting better (or at least easier to drive) when fuel injection began replacing carburetors in the 80s. Anyone who has had to do a tap dance on the accelerator of a carbureted engine to keep it running when cold or at a stop light knows what I'm talking about.

 

[Andrew1972]

I guess you are bent out of shape because Toyota has transmission complaints NOT failures?

I think I might have the same transmission in my 2018 VW Tiguan(Aisin 8 speed) and not a single complaint over two years.

I would not put it out a broad stroke based on one car maker. They all compromise to deliver a profitable best product since car makers have started.

 

[billt460]

Originally Posted by honeeagle
Originally Posted by atikovi
Remembering that most people in the old days didn't expect cars from the 60's and even 70's to make it to 100,000 miles, and that now, most 10 and even 20 year old cars can make it to 200,000 miles without major issues, would tell you if they suck.

This ^^^^
how old are you? not being disrespectful but your post revels a lack of perspective .
Cars used to be crap and I remember before we had japanese imports all we got were european.The import wave made the domestics sit up and pay attention, took awhile but they are all the same now (statisicly) you have to drill down into the .000% to find a 'stinker'.
The anomaly will be breathlessly reported endlessly and repeated endlessly on the internet.
I remember the days before the web when magazines were the only way and they were only available 12 times a ..............year.
think about it

This X 100 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I remember new cars from the 60's and 70's when they were, "hand built from the ground up by union employees"..... They were pure crap... From the ground up. They rattled, squeaked, pulled left or right. They started hard, flooded when hot, quit when cold. Automatic chokes stuck. Fast idle cams stuck. Plugs fouled out in 10,000 miles.... If you were lucky. Something always managed to short out in the electrical system that no one could find.

Brakes squealed and grabbed. Paint was garbage. It chipped, peeled, flaked, was "orange peeled" in many areas, or else bubbled off from rust underneath in 3 years. Chrome pitted. Windows leaked. Then, on top of that, they drank fuel and provided anemic horsepower. The steel in them rusted as if it came from the mill pre packed in salt.

They handled like a covered wagon being pulled by drunken mules through a flooded wash. And they were seemingly on auto pilot back and forth to the dealer. Who couldn't diagnose, let alone fix the problem if their life depended on it. New car purchasing used to be a lesson in futility.

Today new cars are 1,000 times better. In spite of being 1,000 times more complex. Robotic assembly and welding assures quality, over some union paid hack who had as much pride in his work as a $20 New Orleans hooker. Modern computers assure proper fuel mixtures that allow 100,000 mile spark plug intervals, and easy starts regardless of temperature or humidity.

They pollute less in a years driving than 60's cars did on a single tankful. Produce more horsepower, run smoother, and get 3 times better mileage doing it. Engines and transmissions today can easily last well beyond 200,000 miles. Back in the 70's, if you made it 75,000 miles without having to pull the heads for a, "valve job", you bragged about it at the bar.

There are some things about "the good old days" that really were good. However the cars in the showrooms back then sure weren't one of them.

 

[fdcg27]

Quality is cost control.
If one out of twenty cars has to be towed in for dealer service department warranty work to replace failed components, costs increase dramatically and will be well in excess of any savings on supplier parts.
I think I'd phase your thread title as the reverse of what you've written.
I think all manufacturers are pretty good these days.
I also think that we nit-pick more than was once the case simply because we've become so accustomed to new vehicles being very good out of the box and running for their first 100K with no more than brakes, tires and maybe a battery.
I know that there are some exceptions to this, but this has become the expected norm, or it has been at least my personal experience over the past thirty years.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

I started working in a "service station" at the age of 15 in the mid-seventies. Most of the younger generations don't even know what a service station is. Even in that era there were great cars, good cars and bad cars.

The guy that I worked for was one of a few shops in my city that would work on British Leyland cars of the era.....Triumphs, MGs, Jaguars, Rovers. Most all of the BL cars had issues.....mainly electrical as I recall....you know positive ground Lucas electrics....."prince of darkness". He would also fix an occasional FIAT... and they were referred to as "Fix It Again Tony". If you saw a Datsun that was hit by hail, you wouldn't even think of trying to straighten it. My point is that in every era there have been good and bad designs and mfgrs.

What I think has really changed, is that cars today are designed to be assembled, and not taken apart again. The day of going to a junkyard or auto dis-mantler to get a part you need are waning quickly. Labor used to cheap and parts were expensive, today's economy has reversed those costs.

As I recall most cars in the junkyard didn't even have 100k on the odometer.....heck the odometers then didn't even have 6th digit to clock a 100k.....now every car made has that capability. Oil changes were done every 3-4k miles, and tune ups every 10k. Our shop even had a spark plug cleaner, and some customers would opt for having plugs cleaned vs replaced. Cars needed valve jobs around 70-80k as I recall, and if you had a Pontiac V8 in that era....it might need a timing chain since it had nylon over-molds on the gears. Last but not least, you were doing great if you got 25k on set of bias-ply tires.

Oh, how times have changed. My closing thought here is that "the good old days" of automotive design, assembly, and maintenance are more a matter of personal perspective in my humble opinion.

 

[SeaJay]

Originally Posted by Pike51

If you take good care of a vehicle, perform the required maintenance, keep it clean and lubricated, you generally will be able to drive it for a long long time.


For sure, improves the odds, but no guarantee on the somewhat rare catastrophic failure of engine or tranny.

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted by SeaJay
Originally Posted by Pike51

If you take good care of a vehicle, perform the required maintenance, keep it clean and lubricated, you generally will be able to drive it for a long long time.


For sure, improves the odds, but no guarantee on the somewhat rare catastrophic failure of engine or tranny.


Flloored how well regular oil change and occasional air filters only maintenance vehicles get to 150k//8 yrs in family experience.

 

[PWMDMD]

Originally Posted by Fawteen
Originally Posted by PWMDMD
Honestly, reading as much as I do it hard to not come to the conclusion that all car manufactures suck now.


Let me guess-you've read all this on the Internet, especially on a handful of discussion forums, right?

The real world is a lot different if you don't live it through a computer/smart phone screen. The majority of people who own vehicles don't have problems and don't spend their time crowing about their satisfaction. The small, vocal percentage of people that do spend all their time living through their screens tend to be prone to exaggeration. There's also a segment of that group that despises any change, and spends a lot of their time looking backwards.

Even this forum is loaded with a tremendous amount of bovine feces. There is some good information, but there is also a lot of exaggeration and just plain old bad information, and you have to wade through all of it to get to the truth. For instance, your assertion that "all car manufactures suck now" is a perfect example of that bovine feces.


Well it's partly based on my own experience as well. I've owned 10 new cars in the past 12 years from many manufactures and only had a single problem (2010 Acura TL) until my current vehicles (2018 Honda Pilot has needed multiple trips to dealer for failed components) and my 2019 Lexus RX 350 needed an ECU reflash to fix some issues. Up until these cars other than a weld around the moonroof of the TL my cars all just worked flawlessly - most driven to +60k miles.

Edit: Sorry, also fuel pump failed on a 2014 Mazda3 with about 1500 miles on it.

 

[PWMDMD]

Good discussion everyone. I'll recalibrate my expectations and give my Pilot a break.

 

[tiger862]

I test drove an 80 Toyota pickup truck new off the lot that overheated so I turned around. I raised hood and radiator was missing. They were glad it wasn't an auto and offered me truck with condition of putting a radiator in it but I passed as I knew it overheated.

 

[KrisZ]

The sky is not falling.

 

[BISCUT]

Just me as a consumer and my take. I think manufacturers are truly better than ever at MOST but not ALL things in the modern era contrasted with a decade ago. Government regulation should push innovation and it does but some of the results are ridiculous. I loved Ford and GM partnering for the 10 speed transmission but where they fail is bringing that 10 speed to market before they worked out a lot of the programming bugs.

My dream car right now is a new BMW X5 (hey, I have 3 kids to cart around). I have no faith in the longevity of that car past 100k. [censored], don't even think I could get to 100k without multiple dealer visits for warranty work. That's the track record. Why?? Ultra tech is finicky I get that. What I fear the most from all manufacturers is that they are heavily reliant on CAD to determine the life cycle of various parts with some legitimate results. Any manufacturer with that tech is NOT going to build a car designed for 250k miles over 15 years. It goes against their future sales expectations for a car to last like that. Manufacturers want your new car in the secondary market as soon as possible.

 

[Rand]

Short answer, NO. internet echo chamber.

 

[PimTac]

Originally Posted by tiger862
I test drove an 80 Toyota pickup truck new off the lot that overheated so I turned around. I raised hood and radiator was missing. They were glad it wasn't an auto and offered me truck with condition of putting a radiator in it but I passed as I knew it overheated.




Now it's getting deep in here.

 

[eljefino]

My wife transitioned from an 05 prius to a brand new 2019. The basic form factor is remarkably similar, and Toyota went ahead and added a fancier rear suspension. They kept the OTD price remarkably similar over 14 years, too.

But they cheapened other bits of this car. Rear seats have obvious, visible snaps to get at the carseat LATCH hookups. Underbody plastic feels thin and brittle. So's the cowl plastic. Next new prius you see, feel the plastic by the windshield wipers. Not much to it.

Bears the obvious marks of bean counters. I can only hope (as would anyone) that the back-and-forth between them, the marketers, and the engineers ended in a decent product.

 

[atikovi]

Lets not forget that there is a steady flow of progress in every field. People in the 50s and 60s probably thought their cars were better built and longer lasting than those made 30 year prior as well. Lemme find this 1929 Chevy owners manual I have somewhere. If I remember correctly in the maintenance section, it says something like, Perform a complete lubrication of the chassis and replace the motor oil every 1,000 miles. Clean and re-gap spark plugs every 3,000 miles and replace every 6,000 miles. Grind valves every 12,000 miles.