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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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.

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.

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

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