Also a Japanese car guy. Have owned Toyota and Mazda with zero complaints. Toyota felt more bulletproof, Mazda drives far better. Would take a lot to to swing me to buy American next time.
Also a Japanese car guy. Have owned Toyota and Mazda with zero complaints. Toyota felt more bulletproof, Mazda drives far better. Would take a lot to to swing me to buy American next time.
Well I did buy a 19 Stingray which so far is just fine. But a year ago we needed a medium SUV. We looked at Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot. Some test comparisons almost had us look at the Hyundai equivalent, but we bought a Pilot. 20+ years as a Lexus dealer tech convinced me that the Japanese have figured things out. Very early in my career at Lexus we had one of the first small sedans w/ a cracked head. Yep Toyota may have made a mistake there using iron block and Al head but the idiot who couldn't see the temp gauge and drove til he saw steam from under the hood really gets the blame. But what got me was I had to move all the valves, springs, cam, cam followers, etc from old heads to new heads. V-6 four valve engine so 24 valves. How many shims needed changing after moving everything to the new head? 2 shims of 24 needed to be changed to the next size which I think was a .002" difference. Machining all those parts so perfectly convinced me buy Japanese. One more story. somewhere around 2010 the big Lexus V8 sedan had a tech bulleting describing a fix for a low grade rumble noise at idle w/ AC on, radio off, so it could be heard. The fix was replace the front most crankshaft bearing shell. No big deal right? Until we found out that there are 5 grades of a 'standard' size bearing and they are color coded. Toyota makes the bearings and then measures them and categorizes them into one of those 5 sizes. The bearings are measured to the 1/10,000 inch. We would pull the existing bearing shell, look at the color and replace it w/ one that was 2 grades tighter. I assume others do this now also but it was a first for me and blew me away.
After having two Toyotas with stellar reliability, I bought a 3rd, a 2003 Camry. That one was shit. Lots of problems that you'd expect to see on a mid-80s American car. They all started after we owned it for a couple years, so I don't think it was mistreatment in the hands of the previous owner (also mostly stuff that you can't "abuse" intentionally). I traded it in on a Honda Odyssey minivan with high expectations. After 12 years, we still have it, but I'm glad I bought the extended warranty because I put that to use multiple times.Originally Posted by Nephrology
I bought a 2013 Ford Focus, my first new car, as my daily driver back when I had a commute (40 miles a day in an old SUV wasn't going to work long term). It has been relatively reliable, but did suffer a minor cooling system leak at 50k miles that wasn't covered under the drivetrain warranty (apparently the radiator isn't part of the engine), that set me back $800. Additional issues I have experienced that I wouldn't expect on a car with fewer than 100k miles include a failed rear wheel bearing, a rusted out muffler, and a flakey infotainment system. The latter doesn't affect drivability, but is annoying because I'm left with nothing but AM/FM radio until it magically sorts itself out (takes a few days and no human intervention helps).
The latest is a fully loaded 2022 Hyundai Santa Fe Limited. We needed to replace the minivan and ended up with the Hyundai based on our research and test drives. We also know a few people with Santa Fes and they all love them. Because we intend to keep it for at least 10 years, I splurged on the extended warranty and negotiated them down on the cost of that by a few hundred. That plus the Hyundai warranties should keep it going for 100k/10yr (whichever comes first natch). Three years of free maintenance, roadside assistance, etc makes this a worry-free vehicle until well after it is paid off. If it works out, we may very well go from "Japanese car people" to "Korean car people". Three months and nearly 5k miles in, we still love it.
That said, I still have the '97 4Runner I bought in 2002. It's not a DD anymore, but does get driven regularly (mostly out camping/overlanding, but also "just because"). I wouldn't hesitate to drive it on a long road trip. It just keeps going and going...
Chris
yep the Koreans are also on my short list, particularly given the Toyota Tax. The Telluride looks like a pretty nice midsize SUV. Current car is paid off and hasn't even cracked 50k miles yet though, so not replacing (voluntarily) it any time soon
We started our Korean car journey looking at the Telluride and Palisade (Hyundai's version) after ruling out the Explorer (felt cheap and uncomfortable). The Palisade felt slightly more refined, so we went that route. Unfortunately, you could not find one on the lot and the only ones coming in were either base models or fully loaded Limited or Calligraphy versions. We managed to get a couple test drives in by finding used ones or nabbing a test drive of one that had just arrived and reserved. We were looking for the mid-tier model with a few options, which was going to run us $43k before TT&T. Then, the 2023 got announced and you couldn't order or reserve a 2022. Even better, prior to July or August (this was May) there was no mention of new pricing, what options were available, etc. It was literally a new-car-buying version of "fuck around and find out". The final straw was finding out the color we wanted was going to be an additional upcharge (the similar color option for 2022 wasn't an upcharge).
Fook that. We decided we didn't really need the 3rd row (main reason for looking at that size) and took another look at the Santa Fe, which was plentiful on the lots. Our Palisade-level money would buy the fully loaded Limited trim Santa Fe, extended warranty, and leave us with a couple grand left over. Also, the Santa Fe was roomier due to not having the third row (especially noticeable in the back seat). The Santa Fe with turbo 4cyl is actually faster 0-60 than the Palisade and gets better gas mileage. It's simply a fun SUV to drive, though the Palisade (and presumably Telluride) was no slouch either and drove like a smaller vehicle in our test drives.
Sounds like you're a ways off from buying, but if you do buy a Telluride, I think you'll like it. But, if you don't need the space, check out the next size down as a sportier and less expensive option.
Chris
We're buy'em and die'em car people, so we have our vehicles for a long time. We owned GM vehicles for years with few problems. The one issue was, when they reached the end of their life everything seemed to go in a cascading effect. Now, we own Toyota and Honda. We won't go back.
We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.......
I was thinking I've never owned a GM product, but forgot about the Pontiac Grand Am my wife owned when we got married. When we bought the 4Runner, that became her DD and I ended up with the Pontiac. What a POS. Ran rough. The last straw was when it decided to turn on cruise control while I was in stop and go traffic on I66. It tried to accelerate to whatever was stored in its brain. I had to stand on the brake and wrestle it over to the side of the road twice. It never did it again, but I didn't hold onto it long after that. I put it up for sale within a couple weeks.
Chris
That summing up matches my memories. The gbody (awful cars that I learned to drive in) turbo regal, the monaro/pontiac GTO (the 4 door, not the yacht-like 2 door that preceded it), the Syclone / Typhoon, and nothing else that I can remember (was there a GM version of the Suzuki Swift GTi?) are the only cars I recall having anything attention-worthy since I've been driving. The monza was fun, but impossible to work on. I've autocrossed friends' Z28's but they were all running in a class that allowed a lot of modifications to overcome fbody shortcomings; made them fun but still very poorly put together.
That and my preference for cars that don't die young (Tacoma just passed 270,000 miles) and there is nothing there for me. IMO in that timeframe their highlight has been the lt and ls motors which came in cars of little interest to me and/or them.
ETA: The original Caddy CTS-V blew my mind in that something that good came with "Cadillac," on the side.
I don't get the guys complaint about front wheel drive crossovers. Sure they aren't the car for him, but that's a huge amount of auto sales at the moment, and he does know the imports are building the same, right?
GM went to shit because of bean counters, as he said. Look at the Corvette. For decades it was a great car held back by a shit interior and, often, poor marketing. If you read about the development of different generations it was a constant battle to have Corvette specific parts, and you ended up with cheap ass switch gear in a relatively expensive vehicle. Also true on luxury cars. GM wanted the same buttons in a $15k car and a $50k car because it would save a nickel. The Corvette sold despite GM, not because of it.
Power initial quality, which is a different metric than reliability and is more about how much customers like their new car in the first 90 days, GM is doing real well comparatively:
The Silverado I drove yesterday, a 2022 ZR2, had an interior so nice I have to question who GM farmed out to design it and how they allowed themselves to build it. It's like they finally realized a few bucks in the part of the vehicle the owner sees and interacts with the most may up perceived value...
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
This is the same as my system.
2004 Honda Accord EX, 2004 to December 2015. I don't drive too much so it was only at 90K or so. Killed it in a no-fault snowstorm accident, would have gone another 100 easy if I hadn't. Loved that car. No electronics but the radio, got 7 years out of the first battery. 7. Years.
2016 Subaru Outback Limited, December 2015 to current. Only about 60K but absolutely no issues to speak of. It does eat a battery about every 2 years but I'm told that's normal with modern cars due to the electronics and it does have a ton more electronics, including the twin forward collision avoidance / semi-autopilot cameras, which have spoiled me incredibly, I go to Denver pretty frequently and I don't think I could handle heavy Denver traffic without them now.
They must be decently easy to work on too, I've yet to meet the shop that had any heartburn with my Outback.
Because I'm a buy 'em and die 'em, I will report for the knowledge and benefit of P-F when it dies and how. My goal is to get at minimum the 11 years I got with the Accord, and we're nearly to 7!
State Government Attorney | Beretta, Glock, CZ & S&W Fan
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