German car reliability

[kevm14]

Measured by the Audi Allroad Scale Of Unreliability

http://dougdemuro.kinja.com/german-reli ... 1572026115

[kevm14]

Lots of good tales in here.

I guess there are different aspects to this. First of all, I suspect German/European models to be of higher build quality and standards, but also consumer behavior should be different. First of all, Germany has quite strict maintenance rules and TÜV certification, which basically forces you to always repair everything if it starts to get bad, otherwise you aren't allowed to drive your vehicle. There also is a smaller share of self-maintenance and repairs (also due to this, Germans often have no time or skills to do that or simply are afraid to do something wrong, also repairing cars yourself has a somewhat bad and "cheap" reputation.

Also, travel distances are much smaller. Germany is a lot denser populated and most Germans have a reasonably large town within 20 miles, and there should be a huge city within 60 miles maximum. 120k miles is A LOT for a German used car, 180.000 gets rare. Many old cars got scrapped or are exported to Eastern Europe or Africa, so Germans rather have to deal with lower mileage cars. Also, I can imagine that the quality of the infrastructure and where/how the cars are driven, most cars probably never get off the tarmac.

The theory is, generally, in Europe, German cars are driven with lower average mileage (before exportation, which is not typically what happens to North American cars), and are also maintained more meticulously. Plus, the comment about the car getting fixed prior to the inspection (as well as the inspection results themselves serving to provide statistics on general reliability) all adds up to some European brands mysteriously being "more reliable" than they are when we drive them.

[Bob]

This is a point I have been arguing on the internet almost as long as their have been places to argue it. I think it dates back to my Honda days when the big competition in the affordable hot hatch segment was VW. Hondas of the 90s were 10000x more reliable than VWs from that era, yet the VW owners failed to admit it. They would quickly dismiss any failure as an anomaly and move on. Two of the guys I know who owned Corrados back in the day still own the cars. Last time I checked, neither car was running.

The stories in the comments section are great and confirm what I have always believed.

[kevm14]

Still, that guy who bought the non-running 2000 S500 for $3000 really had my interest.