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Comment by Giorgi | Hacker News Reader

German built cars are notorious for shitty quality, I own one. They suck.

You're getting downvoted but German vehicles are pretty consistently rated as unreliable by major publications and research groups.

(Don't get me wrong, the BMW M line is pretty sweet)

Anecdote 1: I know someone who returned a Mercedes E-Klasse at the end of the lease because the electronics kept failing and a replacement sensor was 3000 a pop out of warranty.

Anecdote 2: I drove a friend's brand new Tesla and one of the rear doors totally didn't line up with the car's body.

So I'd say, German cars are a myth but Tesla's quality control sucks as well.

Ancedote: I've usually seen foggy lights (front or rear) with the Teslas.

From what I've heard it's improved. They're neat cars, just sucks having quality issues with any high end product.

They’re reliable until they hit their warranty and then everything breaks.

My wife’s BMW 335 started having massive problems right about the time the warranty expired.

Meanwhile I drove my Honda to 175,000 miles with never a single problem except the A/C broke once. I only replaced it with a new Honda because in wanted the new model year features.

Another anecdote is that two friends of mine routinely buy 10 y/o old VWs and drive them until they die at 20 years or older. One put 400,000km on his last VW Bora Diesel that in his words could've run another 400,000km if the interior weren't worn down so much. No rust anywhere except the exhaust he said which surprised me as well.

(High) performance cars break faster because they are pushing the limits of what's possible and have way more components.

Good way to avoid the cars that died or got rust issues the first 10 years.

This is survivorship bias. At 10 years old your friends are picking among the best serviced and cared for examples.

Consumer Reports and JD Power both have annual reliability /quality rankings. There is fair criticism of the two orgs and their methodology, but it seems to be the only industry wide data readily available.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/11/14/consume...

https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/06/25/study-tesla-likely-u...

since when ? I believe they used to be above average but got lazy due to brand recognition and profit-based options strategies

I have found german cars to be quite reliable. my family has almost exclusively owned german cars as long as I've been alive (bmw, mercedes, vw). most of them were owned for 7-10 years and had no major mechanical issues. we take care of our cars a little better than the average person though, hand-washing them often, regularly cleaning out biological debris from inside the engine bay and door sills, etc. the only outlier was a 2001 3 series that started having a lot of issues late in its life. to be fair, it was twelve years old at that point. by far the worst vehicle was a mid '00s LR3. that thing had recurring electrical issues from day one, a leaky roof, and several body panels that simply fell off. we got rid of it after only four years IIRC and it looked like it had been through a war.

I'm not assuming anything about your personal level of care, but a lot of people aren't aware of all the little things you can do to keep a car running longer. I'm not surprised that they encounter reliability issues with these complex vehicles.

The question isn't whether you think they're fine if one takes care of them well, the question is their reliability as compared to other manufacturers, all other things (like personal level of care) held equal.

if you read further back up the thread, the original topic was quality. I would consider a vehicle that's pleasant to drive and capable of lasting a long time with a little extra care to be a high quality vehicle. our landrover, despite being pretty expensive new, was not a quality vehicle. it had numerous issues despite being well cared for.

in any case, I just thought it might be useful information to add to the thread. consumer reports does a pretty good job quantifying the reliability of a vehicle for a typical owner. it's a little harder to tease apart the difference between inherently unreliable vehicles and ones that just need a little extra attention.

If you get one before they added too much electronic bullshit they are great cars. The E30 series is a tank and can go probably a half million miles if you did routine maintenance.

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