Dissing car brands is console wars for boomers
Things like "Fiat stands for "Fix It Again Tony"" etc.
1989 Dodge Caravan came in stick with a turbo. Thing was awesome, soccer mom's tossing kids out doing 0-60 in 8 seconds.
Buick has always been pretty good. The LaSabre drives like a sofa on wheels and the 3800 is a decent enough motor.
I'd also say that Panther body Fords punch way over their weight class.
The push rod engines GM made like the 3400 and 3800 are pretty good. The aluminum used for the heads in the early 2000s was way too soft causing rocker arms to pop off. The 4T65E transmission often paired with it was a piece of junk. Also anything with Dexcool is just no.
I wouldn't touch a Ford after the early 2000s with someone else's the foot pole. The Panther was fine but it hasn't been made since 2012. The best was probably the Crown Vic of you wanted a giant car, but I don't consider the ones after the early 2000s all that good.
I've said it before but the ultimate end goal of Ford engineering is to design the Möbius part: A regular maintenance component of a vehicle that is so difficult to access that not only do you have to remove everything else to get it out, it is also in the way of itself so it cannot be removed without first removing itself. But you can't do that without removing itself first, which you also can't do because you have to remove itself...
The only path forward will be to throw the entire car away, walk to your Neighborhood Ford Dealership, and buy another one.
Yeah I know quite a few old buicks from the early 2000s that lasted into the 300k mile ball park.
Lamborghini stands for Looks Alright Mostly But Overall Really Grandiose (and) Hardly Inconspicuous Now Innit
Why do Skodas have a heated rear windscreeen? To keep your hands warm while you push it.
(I've owned a few Skodas, they've all been good cars)
Lol that was lada where I'm from
What do you call a lada with two exhaust pipes? A wheelbarrow
What do you call a lada with a sunroof? A rubbish bin / trash can
What's the difference between a lada
There's a raffle at the bar. First prize, a lada. Second prize, two ladas.
How do you double the value of a lada? Fill it up.
You forgot one:
Guy goes to his Lada dealer and says “I want a gas cap for my Lada”. Dealer replies “…that seems like a fair trade.”
A man takes his Lada back to the dealership and says, "This car is useless! It'll only get to 80 up that hill."
"Well that's not bad," says the salesman.
"But," replies the man, "I live at number 93!"
Ya know why Ford started using aluminum istead of steel? So you could push it home when it breaks down
Can confirm: $1000USD is an ISO standard boat unit. "How much will that cost?" "Only about 20 boat units."
Source: own and live on a sailboat.
Forming an uneducated opinion on something based on an anecdotal experience, and then refusing to back down from it no matter how much time has passed or new informationtion is provided, is a boomer way of life.
You can tell a fundamentalist mindset when they start with the conclusions and the backwards logic doesn’t make sense
The idea that the argument "it's adam and eve, not adam and steve" is as logically valid as "he who smelt it, dealt it" really fucked with boomer's minds. It makes me wonder how serious they were about the smelt it/dealt it rule.
either lemmy users are overwhelmingly born in the 50s or this thread proves that it's more than a boomer thing
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I recently saw a thread about a cybertruck getting stuck in the snow. Having lived in places that snow a fair bit, it's completely reasonable that the truck was having issues. By the comments you would think it was only a light dusting.
Well.
I own a 1999 Silverado. It has a manual transfer case, no traction control, no stability control, no terrain modes, and no trick electronic differentials. Its ECU probably has less computing power than your wristwatch. I have never gotten it stuck in the snow, not once in over two decades, even when the stuff was deep enough to be up to the axles.
I'm also certain the factory tires on a Cybertruck are not up to spec for mud and snow. They're probably low rolling resistance jobbies in an attempt to make the range less abysmal. That does not equate to soft surface traction.
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For sure, there's different kinds of capabilities. I'm not actually sure what the claimed abilities for the truck are, only that the amount of snow this person was trying to drive through was not unreasonable to have problems with, even in a high clearance truck.
I'm pretty sure you're right about the tires, which is probably the limiting factor for the truck. It's obviously not a serious truck, which is fine as long as you know what you're getting. I'd love to see a head to head comparison with the rivian truck.
Edit: I mean I could have looked first I suppose :P
Edit2: god trying to sort through these results is like picking through sensationalist trash
I won't diss other car brands, but Toyota is the the only brand I'll spend money on...after a bajillion years of them being at the top of the dependability list, why would you choose anything else?
Hard to go wrong with Toyota but let's not pretend they didn't have to face one of the most expensive (per vehicle) recall ever on multiple models with the full frame replacement on their trucks...
Honda is another brand that's extremely reliable in general.
If you're not in the States, Hyundai and Kia are in the top 5 for reliability, and are much more affordable than Toyota and Honda
Best avoided if you live in that one country who's manufacturing laws are designed to benefit shareholders rather than consumers though lol
The wave of cars being stolen in the US via the use of USB cords has soured me on those brands permanently.
The fact that the vulnerability was fixed via a software patch did not do wonders for my opinion either.
Location is irrelevant … That was choice by Hyundai/Kia, to cheap out and remove the immobilizers.
Which they only did in the States. Nowhere else. Because they could. Because they have to be competitive with US manufacturers, who are all pulling the same shit
There's a good reason US-made cars don't sell well outside the US
Nope - US manufacturers are NOT pulling the same shit. Kia/Hyundai are the only brand in the US without immobilizers because they thought they could skimp there instead of a posher interior or more electro-gadgets. Only in the US because the law at that time didn’t require it, but other brands who also sell worldwide (where it is absolutely required) didn’t consider this an option. Kia/Hyundai clearly did. It was a stupid, stupid call and it should impact their reputation. If they skimp on something as elemental as security, where else have they skimped..?
As an American, no one I talk to in person believes me when I say that Kia and Hyundei are well regarded, if not very economic, automakers in the rest of the world.
The only "real" Kia/Hyundei the US ever got was the KIA Borrego, which I've seen in person handle light trails as well as a 4Runner or Pathfinder
I have about eleven cars registered in my name right now. Have probably owned about thirty. My Corolla doesn't even rank in my top ten favorite I've ever owned but God damn I'd never recommend anything but a Toyota to anyone. I think everyone who says Toyota is overrated either A) have never serviced a car in the first place or B) have never serviced a Toyota.
Whilst they have been fantastic in years past, I'm worried about their future. Short version is, they use a lot of plastic now. source, I've been a mechanic for 19 years and currently work at a Toyota specialty shop. But still they're probably going to be better than most others. Honda was good too though. I'm not sure about now, but my daily is a 97 accord with 265k miles. Amazing car.
Funny thing is that once I've told someone Lexus is basically a Toyota with sound dampening and a body kit and they were kind of less interested, seeing it as a cheaper car. The way I see it is, it's like literally the best thing that could happen to any car; being made by Toyota
have never serviced a Toyota.
I've only bought Toyota for 15 some years now but they have service issues too. Like changing spark plugs on their minivan was impossible. 3 of the cylinders were not accessible. Their automatic sliding door components were also cheap and everyone who owned one had it break after 10 years. Fortunately YouTube has experts that showed unofficial tricks to repair it without disassembling the entire sliding door.
Do you mean the Toyota with the airbag issues in the 90s, or their EV last year where the wheels would FALL OFF while driving? Toyota is a shell of what made it great, and the whole greenwashing of their hybrids (eg, their self-charging EVs bullshit) should make you think of other choices.
greenwashing of their hybrids
Fuck's sake. Flashback! People argued with me so hard about the Prius when it first came out, because I (correctly, thank you) pointed out that no matter how "hybrid" you make a car you can't escape the laws of thermodynamics to ever make it go farther than what can be achieved by the energy contained the gasoline in its gas tank. Period. Obviously the OG Prius was not a plug in hybrid, so there was ultimately no way of adding motive power to it other than burning fuel. Do I need to call in Scotty on this one? Ye cannae defy the laws o' physics, captain.
But regenerative braking! But synergy drive! But it can drive 12 miles on the electric motor alone! But! But! But!
You can cheat the stats a bit with the specific use case of stop and go city driving and achieve better short-term mileage than an ICE vehicle only because an ICE engine achieves a glorious 0% fuel efficiency at idle. But on average, over distance with sustained driving, it is literally impossible for an OG Prius to achieve better economy than an equivalent traditional compact car that doesn't have to lug around a fuck-off heavy NiMH battery bank. There is no free lunch. Even if you capture kinetic energy with the regenerative brakes, that energy was initially created by... burning fuel... and the regen process is less than 50% efficient anyway. Energy reused this way will be still eaten by the bearings, road friction, air resistance, and all the rest of it just the same as propulsion gained by burning fuel. And then what? You need to create energy to fill the battery which is done by... burning fuel again. All you're doing with a hybrid like that is shifting your energy losses into the future to have to pay back later. (Obviously the newer plug-in models aim to rectify this.)
So the 2nd gen Prius (the first version sold in the US) got a combined 46 MPG. Whoopty-do. So could my combustion-only Saturn SL1, which also weighed the thick end of 800 pounds less and didn't have a battery pack to wear out, and cost half as much. If it were shaped like a Prius (which was quite a bit more aerodynamic than most contemporary cars, and was the actual key to the Prius' MPG figures) you wouldn't have even had to drive it very carefully to do so.
I think things may have moved on with the tech, my Yaris Hybrid would average 3.8 l/100km with is 74 MPG (UK).
My mom shared with me “GMC: Grande, malo, y caro”
“Big, bad (read: poorly made), and expensive.”
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Or: Found On Roadside Dead
In my boomer dad's case, it's been sitting dead on the property forrrrrr a few decades?
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Me and a friend used to make up insulting rhymes about car brands we saw from the school yard.
I only remember one, this was a long time ago...
This was in Swedish, so I will do my best to translate, but don't expect miracles:
Renault är en bil för två - en sitter i, en skjuter på. | Renault is a car for two - one sits inside, the other pushes.
As for my car preferences, so far I have only had one, I got my license late 2022 at 35, and bought my 2021 Seat Leon PHEV used last summer.
I really like it, sure it isn't the world most luxurious car, and the touch UI is annoying as hell, but it is comfortable, quick enough and as long as you use the PHEV mode it doesn't need a lot of fuel.
I almost got a Mazda 3, but if I remember correctly, there wasn't any within my budget.
Renault had an old tagline - "nothing stops a Renault". A common joke was to add "not even its brakes".
Renault is "the car with vulva" in Czech.
I read that most people around the world won't understand that because the lozenge/diamond shape as a symbol for that is somewhat unique to central Europe.
Was a diesel mechanic for a summer, the power stroke is a good motor and I like the f series more than other pickups but they came in the most often for maintenance, take that how you will. Cummins didn't break much so it was rare to see them but it was damn near a pleasure to work on them, the old diesel rams give you so much room to work with and don't put stupid shit in the way. If every single GM executive goes to hell exclusively for the Duramax I wouldn't consider that unjust.
I need to get off this thread because I'm getting angry lol. FORD DIESELS ARE GARBAGE! Scratch that, Fords are garbage. Cummins are pretty good. Duramax, garbage.
Depends on the Ford. imo Ford Australia's final two Falcon models were unkillable, and contained an engine everyone's now wanting to get their hands on due to its bulletproof construction and potential for huge, cheap power.
Source; I've owned an FG Falcon from new which now has over 450,000km on it and never once had any issues (also thousands of taxi drivers over 15 years can't be wrong.)
A straight engine does make a difference in the amount of space that's available on either sides compared to a V but the front end won't be as easy to work on not that there's a ton of stuff there except the big accessories...
I don't know man, I had a 2010 Punto Evo that just refused to die.
Sure, I had to replace the clutch at 120,000km as the previous owner probably drove in a lot of stop and go traffic. But other than that it was my own stupidity or regular wear and tear that made it go to the mechanic for some work.
It even started overheating because of a coolant leak one time. I just drove it gently to the shop and got it fixed. No tow truck necessary, as the 77hp 1.4 liter engine barely generated any heat to begin with.
I sold it at 230,000km a few months ago.
Reliability is all about odds. Being generally unreliable doesn't mean every car will have an issue. Fiat's issue is usually the quality of their subsidiaries though. I think their own brand isn't as bad
Burned clutch at 120k is totally fine imo. I almost consider those to be maintenance.
To be fair, that line came to be from 70’s Fiats. When the brand came back to many countries in the 2000’s, things had improved quite a bit.
The Tesla hate is justified though, the cars are so cheaply made and rushed that earlier versions of the model 3 had the bumpers fall off when it rained because it accumulated water... lol
How is this different than when boomers ripped on Fiats in the 70’s? The cars were also poorly manufactured, and in the case of this example, were also known for shitting the bed when the weather got bad.
I didn't say it was different or better, Fiat's are still pretty terrible in reliability rankings as well
Just saying that it’s the same thing. Different generation, but still people ripping on cars have justified reliability problems. Younger generations do the same thing that the boomers did.