I've heard this from mechanics already 15+ years ago. Mazda seem to still have this reputation.
I wish there were more repairability scores for cars.
In the abstract, if you have access you can look at the technicians manual, and see how many labor hours are allotted to various common repairs, you can even look at common problems and see what the common outcomes were to repair the vehicle.
Unfortunately, most people don't have access to this highly valuable resource.
Another source of good recommendations could be insurance companies. Cars with low reliability or very expensive fixes probably need more expensive insurance. But I don't know if this data is public or if you can tell apart the reliability from the repair cost.
I must say that I've been impressed with Dacia. Even the build quality is excellent - on par or beating VW. I've driven on Romanian roads so I can see why they would prioritize such high build quality.
> Romanian drivers do >90 kph on normal roads as well. Romania and Bulgaria have the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU.
Bless them, I would rather buy 10 shitboxes than one modern car (and that cost is about the same).
some are, sure - but most aren’t. Plenty of well maintained clean 2010 model cars on marketplace and Craigslist for well under 10k.
If you wear a seatbelt and eschew the most risky driving behaviors your chances of getting in a crash where the difference between 2005 and 2025 matters are very, very, very, small.
Plus they have tons more auxiliary safety features like lane departure warning, forward collision warning, blind spot detection, better visibility, etc. And they are roomier, have more power, get better gas mileage, and have backup cameras and Apple CarPlay!
None of these technologies prevent you from coming into a turn or stop or other situation too hot which is far and away the biggest problem in snow and is easily doable independent of vehicle equipment.
Drive a bit faster on gravel road and FAFO. Puddle on a highway - hope you can brake quick enough to trigger ABS and save your ass. Taking a bend with a bit more speed than you should and there's some dirt - RIP. There's some snow and you drive Smart - you'll be spinning even with the best of tires.
Sure it can be avoided. It saved my ass about 5 times. 4 of which I was simply going too fast, but once it wasn't my fault.
I'd suggest getting car with one and try to spin it out of control either on gravel or snow. Pretty sobering.
And it ought to surprise nobody that trophy wives in 4runners show up with their vehicle in a statistically different state of repair than single moms in Altimas.
The big failures that you really want to avoid almost never show up on safety inspection data because they typically render the car much less drivable so they either get fixed promptly or the car stops coming around for it's inspection.
If you have car brand A that has a reputation for having catastrophically expensive failures in major components, and car brand B which just keep chugging along for decades, you will probably see an elevated failure rate for brand B since it is still driving, while brand A will not be failing since it has already failed so badly it has been scrapped.