Do you know how easy these are to work on and how the parts availability is? They’re relatively easy to find as a legit import in the states, and if I wanted to cruise up to Canada to grab one there are a ton.
Hilarious. One of the first Google results is an Autotrader article titled, “Feel The Wind in Your Mullet.”
Not entirely sure. If I had to guess, it probably shares parts from the Mitsubishi Mighty Max (Dodge Ram 50), but I would need to dig up more info (I might get back to you on that).
Very good to know.
I know pickup trucks tend to depreciate slower than cars. Does the same things hold true with truck brands that does with car brands in terms as to which are more reliable than others or is it a whole different ball game? Any brands i should avoid other than obviously anything fiat chrysler?
You probably don’t want a Datsun.
As the OP didn’t mention price, and since no one else has mentioned it,
how about the bonkers
Bowler EXR or EXR-S
All right. Prepare for a bit of a rant. This concept that Fiat Chrysler vehicles are unreliable and fall apart is, honestly, absolute horse shit. It’s not based in fact.
If you go back to the '80s and '90s, vehicle dependability was based largely on two things. The first was sound engineering practice. A vehicle designed poorly is going to break. The second was manufacturing quality and tolerances. Better manufacturing practices lead to parts that last longer. These two go hand-in-hand at any company. A company that can manufacture precise parts really well has the freedom to design a more precise vehicle.
But guess what. It’s 2018 now. Every manufacturer of mass-market vehicles has engineering teams all over the world and high quality manufacturing processes all over the world that allow them to adjust for fluctuating supply chains, make up for quality concerns at one plant by ramping up at another, and produce a massive amount of vehicles with very tight tolerances. Instead of having to design a part, manufacture it, test it, re-design it, re-test it, etc., you just design it and simulate your design at the same time, saving time and money and leading to a more reliable vehicle.
Every single mass manufacturer in the year 2018 is making an entire fleet of cars more reliable than the average vehicle was in 2000 or 2005. The idea that a brand has always and will always make junk is absurd. Yes, certain models have bad years where issues crop up as a consequence of unforeseen engineering inadequacies, but these issues are nearly always resolved (see: recalls) That’s why you research an individual model before buying. A 2015 Chrysler 200? Stay the F away from that mess. But 2016, 2017, or 2014? Go hog wild. Buy one! They’re dirt cheap and don’t have the powertrain problems that 2015 had.
Brand reputation doesn’t make sense when thinking about this though. Shouldn’t Chrysler have a great reputation for 2016 and 2017? Honda, just a few years ago, produced some of the least reliable cars on earth for a couple years because instead of hiring a global CEO with an engineering background (as they always have) they hired some business guy who decided the way to power through the auto-sales slump was to build a half-dozen new factories around the globe and try to saturate the market with cars. As a consequence of rapidly ramping up manufacturing at multiple different locations, global QC plummeted and they spit out some real trash for a couple production cycles. But did the entire world decide Hondas were garbage? Nope. Nobody blinked or even talked about it. JD Power, our trusted overseers, didn’t mention it either. Honda is still one of the untarnished icons of great engineering and great automotive design and execution.
As for JD Power, their ratings are produced with a black-box formula that classifies things like bluetooth issues, poor voice recognition, and a non-configurable electronic instrument display as “reliability concerns”. Obviously, that’s ridiculous. Your car doesn’t have to strand you on the side of the road to get a low reliability score. All it has to do is inconvenience you in ways that are in no way related to your actual travel.
I think it’s time we cut Fiat-Chrysler a break and acknowledged that their cars are perfectly fine. Would I buy one new? No, they’re overpriced. But you can buy a used, 3-4 year old Fiat 500 Abarth (a fantastic car) for less than $10k because of the stigma about them, and that is absolutely absurd.
Anyway, in summary, 99.9% of mass produced vehicles manufacture in the past 10 years are going to have minimal reliability issues. Those that have issues can be sniffed out with the first result on a cursory Google search. I don’t think there are any brands that need to be avoided. My experience working in the industry has not indicated to me that there are any brands that need to be avoided. I think that brand stigma in the automotive industry is, at this point, basically a way for people to choose a team and trash somebody else. Play your cards right and you’ll get a modern, perfectly reliable car at a discount rate because people don’t care to do their own research.
Lol yeah Datsun had some problem back in the day. That being said though, if you’re comfortable doing your own mechanic work you can buy a decent Datsun and make it into a super reliable car with just a handful of simple mods when you do that first engine rebuild. I had a buddy in college who bought a 240z freshman year and did a rebuild in his living room during the first half of sophomore year. He drove that car from Philly to North Dakota 2 or 3 times a year after that with no problems.
Haha, less a buyers guide and more a way to inspire a good purchase! Man, if I crapped out $100 bills I’d have no choice but to try and chase one down. I love cars that are stupid but brilliant.
My inner car nut’s wet dream.
Source: I live in New Hampshire. Everyone has either a truck, a Honda/Toyota SUV or a Subie. Everyone loves the subies to death because of how well they do in snow. My ideal would be a white/silver '04/'05 Impreza with Forester struts, because I want an impreza… but I also want clearance.
Tesla Model 3
if we go that route i want a lancer evo 5
or a quattro tt from 2000
So, i would say the rumor is that basically they use the cheapest parts possible. So they take bids for a part, and they take the lowest bidder. And i’m sure all car companies are guilty of this to an extent, but Fiat has a reputation for this more so. Like, pickup trucks is probably a good example of companies doing the opposite and they kind of disprove your theory of sound engineering practice, manufacturing quality, and tolerances being the deciding factors, as pickup trucks aren’t superior in any of those ways, but they somehow last longer than most cars. Why do trucks depreciate so much slower than cars? Because companies tend to invest in more expensive, more durable parts for pickup trucks because they’re designed to take more abuse. A company’s direction can change, and there could be a period of time where they fuck up QC or the like, but i don’t think its random chance that some car brands have a reputation for lasting longer than others.
edit: it could also have a lot to do with just where to allocate resources. Like why gaming headphones usually are much worse then comparably priced audiophile headphones. More money was spent on marketing and styling then the parts with gaming headphones. Like I would say Toyota at least in the past had a reputation for poor styling, which people would say they allocated more money elsewhere. While, when Fiat re entered the US market, not only was there a lot of marketing, but the marketing focused on how good the styling was. So a lot of money was clearly invested in things outside of the parts.
Pickup trucks hold value because body-on-frame design is absurdly simple when compared to other passenger cars and it allows for a more robust design which has simplicity of repair built in as a design concept from the beginning. In other words, there’s nothing fundamentally different about a 2018 pickup when compared to a 2005 pickup, and that means that there’s tons of movement in the 2nd hand market because those vehicles are still worth owning. Newer pickups add creature comforts, but the Duramax you get in a 2018 Chevy/GMC is damn similar to the one from my 2005. I don’t think their investment in parts that are somehow different is the driving factor in resale. It’s that you can buy a truck from 1995 and have the same function as the one you’d buy in 2018, but without the bells and whistles.
Could you explain what you mean when you say that it is possible for reliability to be separate from design and manufacturing? Design and manufacturing is everything. What else is there? If they are using nicer parts, that’s either a result of design or manufacturing. The modern difference is that simulations allows engineers to come to conclusions regarding sound design much quicker and closes the potential for errors.
No, what separates trucks from passenger cars is that even prior to the capabilities of engineers to use simulations in design, those same truck parts and designs had been in use for like 20 years. Whereas every time prior to CAD simulation a chassis redesign for a manufacturer’s standard car lineup relied on physical tests for every component in use, thus leaving opportunity for holes in testing that could lead to usability and reliability issues down the road, truck chassis redesign was comparatively simple. The frames are simple tube structures and the suspension is generally leaf-spring rears and simple A-arm fronts. The engines and transmissions are based on principles used in commercial vehicles that have been unchanged for decades. This meant that mechanically they were sound, so the bulk of engineering focus between generations could go into comfort and convenience features. That’s why trucks are historically more reliable. Not a lot changes fundamentally from year to year so they can learn from the historical mistakes pretty easily.
What’s happening now is that the first generation Kia, Ford, Dodge, BMW, or, yes, Fiat passenger car you buy has the same fundamental reliability characteristics as any truck you could buy 20 years ago. This is because engineers can simulate tests on parts, and thus the entire playing field has been dramatically raised. The auto industry has only had access to CAD simulations for like 5-10 years. I work with guys in their early 30s who started their careers using light tables to trace and produce drawing for manufacture, and now less than a decade later those drafting stations are nowhere to be seen as everybody just has a laptop and a monitor instead.
I don’t think I’m buying this argument either, though I totally see what you’re trying to say. It’s just that the idea that marketing budgets take away from R&D budgets is simply not true. Even a massive marketing campaign like the one FCA ran in the US is a drop in the bucket on an auto company’s finance sheet when compared to all other costs. And Toyota had styling issues not because of a lack of financial dedication (everybody knows that styling is what sells cars), but because of some poor taste when it came to final styling decisions. I’ll leave it at that.
(I like this discussion though. This is good. It’s making me think hard about fundamental design philosophies, and I like that.)
Haha! Yeah they’re on my radar. I’d want to find a wagon if I took that route, but they are great vehicles.
Apparently the '05-ish Forester XT is 100% WRX underneath. Same engine as well. That would be a great buy.
I hadn’t noticed they’d announced the AWD Model 3 yet! That’s brilliant.
If only it was even possible to find a decent one in the states.
I was looking at TT S Quattro models in the 2000-08 range. That would be a slick car.
so, you think the new Ford Bronco will likely be very unreliable because its brand new? And how did like eastern pickup trucks catch up to the reliability of domestic ones that had much more time for reiteration?
Has nobody mentioned a MINI Countryman/Paceman yet?
What is the most fun, weird, interesting, cool, but still practically to own AWD, or 4WD vehicle?
Subaru legacy s402.
Do I win a prize? How many internet cookies does putin give me now?
I think you’ve misinterpreted my comment a bit. New vehicles (post 2010 or so, maybe earlier), are almost all extremely reliable mechanically when compared to anything produced before them. Modern Eastern cars/trucks are reliable for the same reason anything else is: the adoption of simulations and other tech. Older trucks were painfully simple right off the bat so early reliability wasn’t much of a concern, though there are examples of problems, and then the truck side of their development benefited in the same way it did in the states. Very little changed from year to year so it was easy for them to nail down reliability issues and fix them.
In addition, the rigor of sound engineering in the east is substantially more aggressive than it is at any of the American OEMs. Old Honda’s are reliable cars compared to their peers because they’re properly designed. Older American cars and trucks are sort of thrown together.
Because they’re horrid cars.
I’d rather drive a Nissan Juke. 
U wot m8
Than a (BMW) mini, yes.
I’d love to have a classic mini, but the new ones, I dislike strongly.
Also, the Juke is also terrible, just using it as a comparison. If I were to actually drive something, I’d want a 90’s Ranger for off road.
yeah, i miss small pickups… i used to think they were so cool when i was little.
