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Ain't that the truth Carbuff! Well said.
Carbuff/frostyross, we all know you are the same person. Now you're crazy enough to be talking to yourself. Responding to your own posts is sad indeed. Wow, get some professional help, you need it.
By the way, how much is Toyota paying you? I can't believe anyone would shill as much as you do for free.
And try being truthful, you said:
"I have NEVER met a Toyota owner that didn't like their car and you'd be hard pressed to find one that will tell you it's been unreliable."
Yet, you know me and I've told you multiple times what a piece of junk my Lexus was. 35 days in the service bay in the first year alone. I also told you my in-laws have had problems with their Camry XLE and will never buy another. That goes for my sister and her husband too. Two Toyotas was enough headache for them. Never again. So stop telling people you've never heard anyone having problems with a Toyota product....because you have. You just don't want to admit it.
And, seriously, of course there are some Toyota's on this list. When you pay for all of the customer's routine maintenance, how can you NOT have the lowest maintenance cost? It's too bad Toyota has had to keep piling on the incentives like this to sweeten their deal because their sales plunged 33% last month. They're desperate and getting more desperate as the year goes on. They had to do SOMETHING to try to get the customers back they've been losing to Ford, GM, Chrysler and Kia-Hyundai.
Forget about where cars are made. Let consumers dictate the winners. Competition is good. Inferior makers will step up their quality control. Protectionism and "Buy American", resulted poor quality over the years. Now all 3 domestic makers are waking up and started producing some of nice looking quality cars. That is a good trend. In 10 years, we can truly be driving domestic cars because of their quality and class leading styles. In 80's we were driving Olds and Buicks because they were better cars than foreign cars. We need to go back to those glory days by making better products than competition.
I do have a problem with the fact that ANY volvo would be listed on this list. Has anyone ever even owned a Volvo...S70 ring a bell. The 2.4 non-turbo engines are tanks, but everything else. Let's see what the most common problems are:
1) Pre-mature worn ball joints, bad tie rods, clogged flame traps. And when the flame trap clogs guess what???? Rear main seal leaks oil, cam seal blown. Only way to service the flame trap assembly is to remove the heads to get to it. Bad door switches, electrical glitches, bad coolant sensor, pre-mature MAF sensor failure, pre-mature fuel pump failure. Heater cores known to go before 100k. IT GETS WORSE!!! Anyone who's owned these cars knows about the infamous tension pulley snapping before you get to your timing belt interval. Since they went to an electronic throttle body those are even MORE problematic. This is common knowledge on ANY volvo forum...check mathewsvolvo.com and READ READ READ. Volvo hasn't fixed any of these engineering problems in over a decade. That S40 is essentially the same car they where selling as the s70 in the 90's. POS...stay away!!!!! I didn't even mention the peeling interior trim, plastic door lock assemblies that break so you can't open the door and poor placement of the O2 sensors that cause pre-mature failure. How about those garbage wheel lugs that snap everytime you go to get a new set of tires. JUNK!!!
You want to talk about safety. Hows about those bad tie rods and control arms that plague every model in the line up. How safe do you feel when every time you go to the garage your mechanic is telling you he doesn't think it's a good idea to drive the car safely. XC90's are notorious for this and the newer smaller s40 still has these same issues noted on truedelta's website. Even worse is the poor placement and build of the 2.4liters motor mounts. They usually need replacing every 10k.
Over the years I've owned Japanese, American and European cars. European cars have been the most expensive to maintain, but they are also the best driving cars. American cars have gotten better, and their scheduled maintenance is less frequent and costs less than either European or Japanese cars, but they seem to have more problems after the warranty expires. Japanese cars have been the most trouble-free after the warranty expired, but they also have the most frequent scheduled maintenance. I suspect there is a correlation between frequency of maintenance and longevity.
In terms of TCO and reliability, my best cars have been a Subaru Forester XT, Ford SHO, and Chevy Silverado. My worst cars have been an Olds Aurora and Saab 900.
have a 1999 Mercury grand marque that has over 245,000 miles. other than the standards , oil changes, brakes, tires the only other thang i have had to fix is the intake manifold cracked at about 190,000 miles cost approx $350 to replace.
figure its good for at least another 100,000 miles. AMERICAN MADE
