Buying a new vehicle and researching issues

[Lamb]

Build a bigger garage?

We have a garage with 3 doors and space for the lawn tractor which is almost equal to being a 4 car garage. It's the garage doors that become the problem because they are so narrow. I'd love to rip out 2 of the single ones and put a double door like at our old house but my husband said no. The full size pick ups would fit then I think. I didn't measure length yet.

 

[Lamb]

YES, there I am searching LOL

 

[psalms 91]

Oh! Oh! A fixer upper

 

[Josiah]

Nearly all makes are considerably more reliable and durable than they were a few decades ago, and generally require less maintainance and repairs.

And ANY vehicle can have troubles, even big ones, no matter how "good" the make may generally be. It's all statistics, and we all know such is no predictor in a given, singular case.

BUT.... there are those who carefully study these things (Consumer Reports begin just one). And some of these receive NO money from car companies (or any other business) and profit in no way from car sales... in other words, are likely honest and forthright. They will tell you the solid stats for any given make/model - often even broken down by engine. And the range CAN be rather dramatic! There are vehicles for sale that are several times more unreliable than others. IMO, it's good to research this before making such a big purchase. It won't insure anything but it can supply helpful, objective information, IMO.


My quarter cent.


- Josiah

 

[NewCreation435]

Before you purchase a new vehicle how much research do you do besides choosing the paint color and options? The last vehicle we bought we saw that there were some known issues but recalls had taken care of it...so we thought. I can't go into more detail at the moment on this current vehicle but now we're searching for our next one.

We settled on a Toyota Tacoma, or so we thought. We're finding out now that it has a squeaky leaf spring that Toyota knows is a known issue but has no sure fix for it! And that issue has been going on for YEARS! I don't want a squeaky truck.

Do you search out issues for your vehicles or just trust that manufacturers know what they're doing?

My daughter recently took her Nissan Ultima in and found out there was four recall notices on it for stuff to get fixed. They fixed them all for free.

 

[tango]

My car is a Toyota RAV4. I bought it because I needed a car big enough to haul a fair amount of stuff but didn't want the kind of car that would only give 12mpg given that a lot of the time I don't haul anything to speak of.

Having looked at cars the size of the RAV the general consensus of the reviews was that the RAV4 and Honda CRV had the largest load space but the Mazda CX-5 was the most engaging drive. I needed the extra 10 cubic feet more than I needed whatever people meant by "a more engaging drive" so that left the RAV and the CRV. I went to the Honda dealer to look at the CRV and left utterly unimpressed. Not so much with the car but by the salesman and the dealership in general - I decided I didn't want to deal with them and didn't want to have to deal with them on an ongoing basis. That left the RAV. My wife already head a RAV and I know the local Toyota dealership looks after her, so I went to see them and ended up with a RAV.

The salesman at the Honda dealer beggared belief. He was very keen to show me how many different ways you could put your own picture on the screen display and used Hello Kitty as an example. He didn't seem interested that I didn't care about putting Hello Kitty on the screen (although he did take the time to explain I could use any picture I wanted) - despite the fact I told him I wanted useful information on a screen he went back to his pictures. Then when I asked him a couple of questions about the operation of the car he merely brushed off my concerns saying I didn't need to do that, and went back to Hello Kitty. What kind of salesman uses Hello Kitty to try and sell a car to a 40-something man looking at cars with his wife?

 

[Albion]

I do rely a lot on reviews, mostly the customer/owner reviews which come after the owner has driven the car for some time, unlike the expert reviews. The verdict of hundreds of such customers seems valuable. There are a number of online sources for finding these reviews. I think cars.com has one.

One thing I always try to keep in mind is that any individual vehicle can have some defect, even if the model is rated highly. So there is a certain "luck" factor involved, no matter how careful you try to be.

 

[tango]

I do rely a lot on reviews, mostly the customer/owner reviews which come after the owner has driven the car for some time, unlike the expert reviews. The verdict of hundreds of such customers seems valuable. There are a number of online sources for finding these reviews. I think cars.com has one.

One thing I always try to keep in mind is that any individual vehicle can have some defect, even if the model is rated highly. So there is a certain "luck" factor involved, no matter how careful you try to be.

If you've got a large body of reviews it probably is a good indication of how good the product is. It's also handy if the low reviews paint a common picture of faults, so you know that if you do get unlucky you've got an idea of what awaits you.

Sadly a lot of places that accept reviews do very little policing of the reviews. I know they don't do cars but Amazon is particularly bad, where people write 1-star reviews because something arrived having been broken in the mail, or a 5-star review that says something like "I bought this for my son and I'm sure he'll love it" it shifts the average without adding anything useful. If there aren't very many reviews to balance it out it's surprising what an effect it can have. I think the worst case I saw was a product on Amazon that had an average of 3 stars, which turned out to be one 5-star review saying all sorts of things about how good the product was and how well it did what it promised, and one 1-star review complaining that the person paid for two-day shipping and didn't get it for a week.

 

[Albion]

You're right, but you also are wise enough to study and assess the ratings.

If there are only six reviews, let's say, that's a problem. But if there are a hundred, I feel safer. However, we do have to pay attention to what each person cared about. If, for instance, one gave only three stars on a five star system, saying he didn't find the storage compartment large enough, I wouldn't care much since I don't plan on carrying a lot of gear and that's not exactly a defect. But if he said the acceleration was weak or the car wallowed on turns--and especially if others complained about the same thing--that would be a different matter.

 

[Josiah]

You're right, but you also are wise enough to study and assess the ratings.

If there are only six reviews, let's say, that's a problem. But if there are a hundred, I feel safer.

Just one reason why I like Consumer Reports..... they gather data from tens of thousands of car owners who submit rather extensive, detailed surveys.

And CR accepts no advertising.... and they accept no "donation" cars - they secretly BUY all the cars they extensively test every year, just like you and I would. They don't get "special" cars loaned by the car company, they don't "owe" advertisers or car companies anything.




- Josiah

 

[Lamb]

If you've got a large body of reviews it probably is a good indication of how good the product is. It's also handy if the low reviews paint a common picture of faults, so you know that if you do get unlucky you've got an idea of what awaits you.

Sadly a lot of places that accept reviews do very little policing of the reviews. I know they don't do cars but Amazon is particularly bad, where people write 1-star reviews because something arrived having been broken in the mail, or a 5-star review that says something like "I bought this for my son and I'm sure he'll love it" it shifts the average without adding anything useful. If there aren't very many reviews to balance it out it's surprising what an effect it can have. I think the worst case I saw was a product on Amazon that had an average of 3 stars, which turned out to be one 5-star review saying all sorts of things about how good the product was and how well it did what it promised, and one 1-star review complaining that the person paid for two-day shipping and didn't get it for a week.

Amazon has recently changed the way it accepts reviews. If you write anything about the company, shipping or packaging your review will get rejected. I've had it happen twice already because I wanted to add in my review how it arrived in a timely manner and packaged as described. Amazon wants buyers to know the distinction between seller reviews and product reviews...even though in my mind they CAN be one and the same.

 

[Albion]

I include CR in my study, but CR doesn't offer the comments of car owners. It merely gives the reader the CR researchers' basic judgments along with a logo indicating the overall findings--good, not so good, bad, etc. I take all of this into account, but it doesn't go into specifics very much. If I see a list of green (i.e. "A") ratings for the model and year I'm considering and hardly any other, lesser, rating, then of course I'm impressed. And as a quick reference, I like the side-by-side comparisons of each year for the same model. Often, that will suggest that the model is a proven winner--with the exception of the 2013 version (for example) that had problems with X, Y, or Z.

 

[Albion]

Amazon has recently changed the way it accepts reviews. If you write anything about the company, shipping or packaging your review will get rejected. I've had it happen twice already because I wanted to add in my review how it arrived in a timely manner and packaged as described. Amazon wants buyers to know the distinction between seller reviews and product reviews...even though in my mind they CAN be one and the same.

and Amazon has taken to eliminating even hundreds of reviews if they are critical of a book AND the reviewers are not proven purchasers of the book (from Amazon). The justification is that these people must have just been geared up to denounce whatever it is on the basis of some intellectual, cultural, or political bias. The resulting reviews are quite one-sided.

 

[Josiah]

I use Consumers Reports to narrow choices down.

Our recent purchase of a Honda Pilot reveals I don't ALWAYS go with their #1 choice (I did with my first purchase) CR clearly preferred the Toyota Highlander (and I am a Toyota fan). But we found the Pilot to simply drive better and my wife liked some of the unique conveniences. The test drive comparisons (we tested a Mazda too) lead us to the Honda - which was also highly rated by CR.

Price mattered, too (these are pretty expensive rides!). The Highlander was much more expansive but it had a rebate and a good discount - coming to about the same price as the Honda (and the Mazda) which had no rebate. They all ended up close enough in price that that wasn't a factor. My beloved liked the styling of the Honda best and found the seats "nicer".

CR let us know these 3 were all solid, reliable choices. We carefully test drove all 3, got to bottom line prices, and made our choice based largely on the test drive and some time just sitting in the car and checking things out. But yup, we didn't end up with the #1 choice of CR.

 

[tango]

You're right, but you also are wise enough to study and assess the ratings.

If there are only six reviews, let's say, that's a problem. But if there are a hundred, I feel safer. However, we do have to pay attention to what each person cared about. If, for instance, one gave only three stars on a five star system, saying he didn't find the storage compartment large enough, I wouldn't care much since I don't plan on carrying a lot of gear and that's not exactly a defect. But if he said the acceleration was weak or the car wallowed on turns--and especially if others complained about the same thing--that would be a different matter.

True. It's also important to consider the relative position in the market. I remember reading surveys that suggested people were happier with their Skoda than with their Mercedes. On the face of it, it seems absurd that a marque with the prestige of Mercedes scores lower in consumer satisfaction than a (as they were then) cheap-and-nasty car like Skoda. But if you're paying $8,000 for a brand new car your expectations are that much lower than if you dropped $200,000 for a top-end Merc.