you also have to ask "reliable compared to what?". my first car was a golf tdi. the only maintenance cost was the annual service. it never got close to 100k miles though because vw had to buy it back from me in the dieselgate settlement. statistically, I'm sure a toyota corolla is a much more reliable car, and I would have replaced it with one if that's all I cared about. but I've driven a few of those, and golfs are much more pleasant to spend time in, both behind the wheel and in the passenger seat.

there's an inherent tradeoff between performance, reliability, comfort, and price. once people find their preferred set of tradeoffs, they inevitably start making comments on the internet about how they don't understand why everyone doesn't buy their favorite brand.