Take your pick: 2014 Mirage or 2005 Phaeton

Non-repair car talk
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kevm14
Posts: 15365
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Take your pick: 2014 Mirage or 2005 Phaeton

Post by kevm14 »

kevm14
Posts: 15365
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Take your pick: 2014 Mirage or 2005 Phaeton

Post by kevm14 »

So the Phaeton seems like a good candidate to discuss one of my pet peeves: the association of material quality or "perceived design quality" to actual quality/reliability. The two concepts have nothing to do with each other. Here's a car with wonderful materials, and with no detail too small to receive scrutiny at its operation/design/appearance. The tendency is to translate that into a sentiment that this car will last a long time. But this is a terrible car to buy used despite the rock bottom prices, because it's not considered reliable nor is it affordable to repair or even really maintain (side note: look up what German car people consider "maintenance" and be horrified).

Perhaps my conclusion is, people want the vehicle to feel fancy and also WANT that to translate into something of material value (i.e. reliability/durability or otherwise longevity) but it just doesn't. And so I will continue to be annoyed by this false association. The biggest culprit is European cars, of course, most of them turning into big piles of shit after 100k. Yet the irony is, American vehicles seem to have this reputation instead (perhaps mainly by Europeans).
Adam
Posts: 2258
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Take your pick: 2014 Mirage or 2005 Phaeton

Post by Adam »

My Fleetwood recently passed 190k. Still drives like a Cadillac (good or bad depending on who you ask).
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