Reliability of German marques

[Concept24]

I suppose you're a big fan of Scotty Kilmer, too. German brands will ruin your life! Hide your kids so the car doesn't eat them!

And if I had $15k or $20k invested in an Audi that was in perfect cosmetic and mechanical condition other than an engine failure, you bet your ass I'd repair the car for $5k. I certainly wouldn't convert my $15k asset into a $500 junkyard donation just because I was too impatient and pigheaded to repair the car. That's literally vaporizing ten thousand dollars of value for no reason. I mean what intelligent person would do that, unless $10k literally meant nothing to them? It's not even reasonable.

I would have the vehicle repaired and then get rid of it, never to buy another one like it again. I did junk a car once, but it was 25 years old and not worth getting fixed.

And no, I'm not a big fan of Scotty. I did like watching Rainman's? Garage, though. I believe he started his own business, last year.

 

[Porter]

get rid of it, never to buy another one like it again

My core objection is to the emotional decision-making inherent in this. It's not rational or dispassionate, and therefore is not grounded in anything resembling objective reality. Cars don't "betray" anyone by a failure occurring. Usually it's something that someone did TO the car. And in the case of the David Long video (I just can't keep calling him Wizard, it's stupid), the customer's Audi was likely the victim of very poor or nonexistent maintenance. That's not a brand failure.

 

[Cachaco131]

Consumer Reports has always ranked many BMW models with high numbers for road tests. This year, they rated highly, overall. However, BMW's reliability rankings have historically been below average or average at best. Here is a reliability ranking list from December of 2021. Note where BMW and the other German manufacturers placeView attachment 23864.

I won't change your mind. Maybe we can agree that of the top 12 reliable brands, most are outright boring (Mini excluded). So better unreliable than boring!

 

[Concept24]

My core objection is to the emotional decision-making inherent in this. It's not rational or dispassionate, and therefore is not grounded in anything resembling objective reality. Cars don't "betray" anyone by a failure occurring. Usually it's something that someone did TO the car. And in the case of the David Long video (I just can't keep calling him Wizard, it's stupid), the customer's Audi was likely the victim of very poor or nonexistent maintenance. That's not a brand failure.

I believe he had been doing the maintenance, so if that's the case, you're assuming he did an inadequate job. I don't feel the same. And no, I will not maintain brand loyalty if a vehicle that is only 11 years old needs an engine. I guess I am too used to much better brands when it comes to low cost of ownership.

 

[Concept24]

I won't change your mind. Maybe we can agree that of the top 12 reliable brands, most are outright boring (Mini excluded). So better unreliable than boring!

I would not say that Mazda is boring. My MX5 is anything but boring. For that matter, the Toyota GR Yaris, Corolla, and 86 cars are not boring, either. Also, my LC500 rental was fun. See, not all Japanese cars are boring.

 

[Cachaco131]

I would not say that Mazda is boring. My MX5 is anything but boring. For that matter, the Toyota GR Yaris, Corolla, and 86 cars are not boring, either. Also, my LC500 rental was fun. See, not all Japanese cars are boring.

Ok, then we have a different definition of fun! All German cars suck, are completely unreliable after warranty expires and one should run away. BMW will soon follow the footsteps of SVB and FRB. Sell sell sell.

 

[Porter]

I believe he had been doing the maintenance, so if that's the case, you're assuming he did an inadequate job. I don't feel the same. And no, I will not maintain brand loyalty if a vehicle that is only 11 years old needs an engine. I guess I am too used to much better brands when it comes to low cost of ownership.

I guess my perspective is warped by seeing the outcomes of literally thousands of customer cars in wildly varying degrees of maintenance compliance over a period of years, as the service director of a dealership.

I've seen 2-3 year old cars that were fit for a junk heap with only 40k or 50k miles on them. I've also seen 15+ year old cars that you could eat off of, with 200k+ miles on them and running like they were brand new.

It's absolutely down to the quality of maintenance, the fundamental understanding of the owner regarding what the car needs to remain reliable, and the way that the owner treats the vehicle when operating it. I don't mean avoiding fast or spirited driving... I mean avoiding mechanical abuse. Some people simply treat their cars like dogshit, and every mechanical failure they experience is self-inflicted.

 

[Concept24]

Ok, then we have a different definition of fun! All German cars suck, are completely unreliable after warranty expires and one should run away. BMW will soon follow the footsteps of SVB and FRB. Sell sell sell.

I think we CAN agree that the Lotus Emira will be a fun car to drive.

 

[Concept24]

I guess my perspective is warped by seeing the outcomes of literally thousands of customer cars in wildly varying degrees of maintenance compliance over a period of years, as the service director of a dealership.

I've seen 2-3 year old cars that were fit for a junk heap with only 40k or 50k miles on them. I've also seen 15+ year old cars that you could eat off of, with 200k+ miles on them and running like they were brand new.

It's absolutely down to the quality of maintenance, the fundamental understanding of the owner regarding what the car needs to remain reliable, and the way that the owner treats the vehicle when operating it. I don't mean avoiding fast or spirited driving... I mean avoiding mechanical abuse. Some people simply treat their cars like dogshit, and every mechanical failure they experience is self-inflicted.

So other than a material defect or timing belt failure with an interference engine, you have seen a piece of a valve break off due to lack of oil changes?
I've seen diff gasket leaks after 20,000 miles, EBCM boxes fail after 30,000 miles, door lock modules and smog pump check valves fail after 6000 miles. I've seen a HUD display fade to near-invisibility after 50,000 miles. Yet, I've never see any of those things happen on my Mazda or Lexus vehicles after far more miles and years of my own maintenance. The non-variable among all this is myself. If I follow the maintenance schedule and things fail, it's not because I neglected anything. It's because the car itself is not reliable, plain and simple.

 

[Porter]

So other than a material defect or timing belt failure with an interference engine, you have seen a piece of a valve break off due to lack of oil changes?
I've seen diff gasket leaks after 20,000 miles, EBCM boxes fail after 30,000 miles, door lock modules and smog pump check valves fail after 6000 miles. I've seen a HUD display fade to near-invisibility after 50,000 miles. Yet, I've never see any of those things happen on my Mazda or Lexus vehicles after far more miles and years of my own maintenance. The non-variable among all this is myself. If I follow the maintenance schedule and things fail, it's not because I neglected anything. It's because the car itself is not reliable, plain and simple.

Yes. To be specific, I saw a customer buy a new turbocharged manual transmission car (a 2003 WRX), immediately fail to do a single oil change in 35k miles, and filled the car habitually with 87 octane rather than 93 because they were convinced that "the car would just figure it out" despite their pattern of driving the absolute shit out of the car everywhere they went. They then went out one morning and fired it up (no warm up, just started the engine and go) and went to back down their steep driveway in Neutral. They tried to step on the brake pedal but missed, instead jamming the accelerator to the floor while in neutral, and then utterly panicked and held the accelerator and clutch pedals as hard to the floor as humanly possible while their car rolled down their driveway with no brake application whatsoever, careened all the way across a residential street at significant speed, and smashed into the concrete curb on the other side.

They folded the exhaust under the car, destroyed both rear wheels on their neighbor's curb, bent both rear trailing links, and did such damage from the filthy oil-starved rev limiter hold with low octane fuel on a cold engine that it hit fuel det and blew two exhaust valves apart. Apparently even after the impact they kept sitting there with the accelerator just absolutely mashed to the floor as the exhaust valves ate the inside of their engine, and chunks of both valves ended up sectioned small enough that they flew out of the valve port, through the exhaust manifold into the up-pipe and embedded themselves in the pre-cat matrix, destroying it. The cat was the only thing that protected the turbo from taking a direct hit, but the customer didn't get lucky there either, because the sludged oil cooked the bearing in that too.

So yeah, I 100% believe that some really incredibly dumb thing done by the owner referenced in your video, caused that Audi to break that valve. It certainly isn't a standard occurrence on any properly maintained and operated vehicle from any modern manufacturer, and I'll stand firmly on that.


[edit] FYI this customer was absolutely irate that Subaru refused warranty repair and replacement of their engine, despite the original factory oil filter (at that time, unique in appearance to factory production batch) still being installed on the car at 35k miles, meaning an oil change had never been performed. Once challenged on that part, they admitted they had never done maintenance, but they also 100% felt it was the manufacturer's responsibility to pay for their car to "just work" despite their own total lack of responsible ownership behavior.

 

[MickOpalak]

I agree that if you are the type of person who buys a new vehicle every 5 years or so, the vehicle reliability is not a big concern, but I really don't trust BMWs for long-term ownership.

My 2008 M3 is now 15 years old and has 101k miles on the odometer. Still my daily driver and very reliable.

 

[LotusFan]

Regarding German cars, I tend to shy away. I have a friend who bought a new $100k Mercedes hardtop convertible, gorgeous. Every time I'd visit, the Mercedes would always be down and out of service, because the hard top mechanism broke again, and dealer wanted $10k to repair again, or some other mechanical issues. I also have a friend who had two BMW i8's that both experienced catastrophic failures on the road in the first year. The second BMW i8 was the straw that broke the camel's back, for the i8 model. BMW actually ended sales of the i8 right after his second failure. BMW bought back the car from him, sent engineers to study the engine failures, and ended sales after that. My friend said he single handedly killed the BMW i8 lol.

 

[Porter]

Does anyone here here have an example of spectacular BMW unreliability that involves a normal model? Like a regular 2 or 3 series?

 

[Carbuilder]

Regarding German cars, I tend to shy away. I also have a friend who had two BMW i8's that both experienced catastrophic failures on the road in the first year. The second BMW i8 was the straw that broke the camel's back, for the i8 model. BMW actually ended sales of the i8 right after his second failure. BMW bought back the car from him, sent engineers to study the engine failures, and ended sales after that. My friend said he single handedly killed the BMW i8 lol.

There are of course bad examples with every car. I've had 2 911's, a Boxster, and an i8 Roadster. All were flawless, no issues ever. I would certainly trust the reliably of any of them over a Lotus.

 

[LotusFan]

There are of course bad examples with every car. I've had 2 911's, a Boxster, and an i8 Roadster. All were flawless, no issues ever. I would certainly trust the reliably of any of them over a Lotus.

Very true. We may have bad luck.

My family and friends have had pretty bad experiences with BMWs unfortunately. My in-laws had a 90's BMW 3 series that developed some significant electrical issues. We had a BMW X5 in the 2010's that developed issues around 50k miles mark. We drove the X5 to the airport on a vacation, parked in at the airport. When we landed and on the way out of the airport parking, I had to roll down the window to pay for parking, and it was raining to boot. The window would not roll back up, so we had to drive home with the window down, with rain coming into the car. Fun times.

The X5 had several other issues that started to develop during this time. When I took it to a place called All German Auto, that worked exclusively on German cars, they looked into the issues, and advised us it was better to sell the car than pay them to fix the issues, lol.

We traded the X5 for a Lexus SUV and haven't had a single issue with the Japanese cars ever since.

 

[Magma]

There are of course bad examples with every car. I've had 2 911's, a Boxster, and an i8 Roadster. All were flawless, no issues ever. I would certainly trust the reliably of any of them over a Lotus.

I know many people who swear the only way to buy a Merc or Bimmer is to buy new so you're 100% covered should any problems arise. I feel the newer Porsche's are more reliable (depending on models). A lot of the 911's (probably late 997.2's and 991+) are considered bullet proof by long time Pcar owners. Obviously, things can and will go wrong will any car, but I don't lose sleep at night over my Pcar. Got an extended warranty should I ever have anything catastrophic happen. We diy the othet stuff.
In reality, most newer cars are fairly reliable. They aren't stranding people on the highway.

 

[lion shf]

@Concept24

I just watched the Car Wizard video that you mentioned. Wow, a lot to unpack there. First, I need to disclose that I've seen a lot of this guy's videos. I take real issue with the guy on some key things in a lot of his videos. He seems to be an almost entirely self-taught mechanic with no significant structured training background for the work that he's doing, either in a manufacturer training program or in any general purpose academic automotive or engineering discipline. I get that he's ex-military and was trained to work on tanks in the military. That's not in ANY way related to the knowledge or context that you need in order to hold yourself out as a "master mechanic" (or even to work competently) on commercially sold automobiles. There's a reason why heavy diesel mechanics focus on that and don't try to fix Subaru Outbacks. There's a reason why Honda mechanics don't just assume that they know everything they need to know to fix a piece of heavy diesel equipment like a Cat D9 bulldozer, even if they can look at the problem and understand what's broken.

Look, I'm not saying he's wrong to be working in the trade, far from it... but he's very obviously leaning on his innate intelligence and ability to make inferences about what "seems right" contextually, rather than operating on any directly acquired knowledge from primary sources. And that's fine when you're just trying to get things done for a few customers and not broadcasting to the world. But this guy is running a YouTube channel and holding himself out as a serious expert (literally the "Car Wizard") and he's just not that.

In the case of the specific video that you mention... this guy's customer is junking a nice Audi luxury crossover in very good condition because it has an engine problem. Literally sending the whole car to the junkyard. I just spent 5 minutes on Car-Part and have a list of sub-40k mile used 2.0T engines out of Q5s for between $3500 and $4500 that can be sourced regionally or delivered nationwide on an LTL pallet for a couple hundred bucks in freight. The amount of time a competent mechanic would take to swap an Audi engine (whole engine) is literally like 4 or 5 hours of labor at most. The whole thing yanks out pretty quickly if you aren't screwing around taking half of it apart for no reason, like he's describing in the "work needed" part of his spiel to the customer. I mean jesus, he literally walked the audience through how he could give her $2500 for the car, fix the whole thing back to running order, then have his buddy sell the car post-repair and have a profit to make everyone whole with... I mean why wouldn't that be the customer's best option under her own ownership, if she didn't want the car? Restore the asset to saleable condition and sell it if she doesn't want it, don't gift it to a junkyard/recycler for $500. That's absurd, the yard is going to make somewhere around $10k in profit over time on the stripped parts.

This stuff just breaks my head. It's certainly not an example of Audis being terrible, it's an example of bad mechanic advice and bad math, used together to construct an absurd scenario for the benefit of YouTube comment section angst. It's just slow-roll clickbait. Stop encouraging this guy.

This is so true. What’s also true for about 8k I could turn my TT into a 9 second car. The car is compromised, like all price point cars, but very few price point cars are this versatile.

 

[Concept24]

Very true. We may have bad luck.

My family and friends have had pretty bad experiences with BMWs unfortunately. My in-laws had a 90's BMW 3 series that developed some significant electrical issues. We had a BMW X5 in the 2010's that developed issues around 50k miles mark. We drove the X5 to the airport on a vacation, parked in at the airport. When we landed and on the way out of the airport parking, I had to roll down the window to pay for parking, and it was raining to boot. The window would not roll back up, so we had to drive home with the window down, with rain coming into the car. Fun times.

The X5 had several other issues that started to develop during this time. When I took it to a place called All German Auto, that worked exclusively on German cars, they looked into the issues, and advised us it was better to sell the car than pay them to fix the issues, lol.

We traded the X5 for a Lexus SUV and haven't had a single issue with the Japanese cars ever since.

And this is what the Car Wizard told the woman who owned the Audi Q5 SUV. I've known quite a few people (BMW owners) over the years who had to spend $6000 on failed transmissions, not too long after they exceeded 100,000 miles. Others were spending big bucks, just after the warranty expired. They do tend to perform well when they are running.

 

[Green]

I have owned German cars pretty much since I could drive. I have never had any issues. Funny my perception has always been German engineering hard to beat and British cars were Junk. Funny part is I’m now buying a Emira and selling my German car. I Guess we will see which perception was correct.

 

[Concept24]

I have owned German cars pretty much since I could drive. I have never had any issues. Funny my perception has always been German engineering hard to beat and British cars were Junk. Funny part is I’m now buying a Emira and selling my German car. I Guess we will see which perception was correct.

Many owners sell their German vehicles within a few years after the warranty expires. I'd be surprised if your German cars are kept for 10-20 years without any issues. In fact, I'd contact the Guiness book of world records to see if anyone else was so lucky!