Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
You're going to get a wide variety of opinions, IronMaiden. There is no "right" answer to your question.
Personally, I would tend to not write off entire brands. People who hold strong opinions about car brands tend to have very old, very exaggerated opinions about them. E.g. one of my uncles would never, ever entertain the thought of buying a Hyundai or Kia. In his mind they're all cheap crap and they never got appreciably better than the Pony 35 years ago. He's a loyal VW buyer. He casually dismisses the issues he's had with his VWs over the last 40 years as just unfortunate luck, even though some of them have required thousands and thousands of dollars worth of warranty work that I would consider indicative of being "crap". Meanwhile, anecdotally I don't know anyone with a Kia or Hyundai product that has had any significant issues with them whatsoever.
Figure out what kind of car you want, test drive the ones that interest you, and buy the one you like most. Most brands make products I would never consider, even if I like the brand overall.
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Pretty much this. You can find as many detractors for a brand as you will boosters, and Consumer Reports doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
Since moving to Calgary, I have a history of owning vehicles from brands that have generally been regarded as 'less' reliable or at least more fussy to own, and they've completely defied expectations by being really reliable and not all that fussy. I mean, perhaps
some fuss as vehicles have become more and more advanced over the years (TPMS sensors are always annoying), but nothing that has ever left me stranded at the side of the road. That's one Jeep JK Sahara, three Germans (BMW E39 M5, E90 335i, Merc E550c V8TT), and three Brits (2x AMV8, RRS S/C). For any vehicle I've purchased since my Jeep, I have always prioritized figuring out what I
wanted to drive first, and then finding the best possible example for my budget.
Before coming to Calgary, I had GMs (Camaro, Buick Regal) and those both had catastrophic engine failures that left me stranded at the side of the road. The Regal had its crappy 2.8L V6 boat-motor rebuilt
twice, and the Camaro had its engine rebuilt after the bottom end went kaboom on the highway.
TL,DR: Figure out what you want to drive, find the best example for your budget, and buy it. Drive what you like, fix it when it breaks. If you think the maintenance of the vehicle is too rich for your blood, go back to step 1 and re-evaluate what you want to drive.