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Most people need a recommendation for something more current, from people who work on these modern cars daily. The reputation of 25+ year old models can be misl
by close04 11mo ago
Most people need a recommendation for something more current, from people who work on these modern cars daily. The reputation of 25+ year old models can be misleading.
Another source of good recommendations could be insurance companies. Cars with low reliability or very expensive fixes probably need more expensive insurance. But I don't know if this data is public or if you can tell apart the reliability from the repair cost.
- semi-extrinsic 11mo agoIf you're in Europe, you can consider Dacia. A lot of their stuff is old Renault parts that they've bought a license to use/manufacture. Get a pre-2023 model with the 1.6 non-turbo non-hybrid petrol engine - it's actually a Nissan HR16DE, which has been in use since 2004. Very reliable and low complexity.
- kristjank 11mo agoAnd parts are ridiculously cheap and widely junkyard-available.
- dotancohen 11mo agoIs it using that Nissan/Renault CVT? That transmission is notorious junk. I must say that I've been impressed with Dacia. Even the build quality is excellent - on par or beating VW. I've driven on Romanian roads so I can see why they would prioritize such high build quality.
- semi-extrinsic 11mo agoYou can get them with a manual transmission, or a dual-clutch automatic, or CVT. AFAIK, the manuals are all decent, although the 6 speed manual on the 4WD models has quite low ratios (no transfer case) so it doesn't have great fuel economy at highway speeds.
- dotancohen 11mo agoMakes sense. In their home market, Romania, highway speed hardly ever exceeds 90 kph.
- petre 11mo agoNot true unless you equate a normal road (one or two lanes per direction, rarely separated from the other direction) with a highway, which is something else (comtrolled access, separated lanes, safety lane). Top highway speed is 130 kph, express road speed is 110 kph and normal roads it's 90 kph.
- dotancohen 11mo agoAt least the last time I was there, 2010, all the intercity highways look like they hadn't been maintained since Ceausescu fell. No matter what the legal limit was, there were very few places where one could drive 90 kph safely. Maybe this has changed - I certainly hope so
- petre 11mo agoWell, it's quite different now after being in the EU for nearly two decades. What you recall is regular roads, that cannot be called highways, but those got fixed as well. The highway infra is still not countinous, but it exists. And Romanian drivers do >90 kph on normal roads as well. Romania and Bulgaria have the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU.
- dotancohen 11mo ago> Romanian drivers do >90 kph on normal roads as well. Romania and Bulgaria have the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU. It sounds like you are confirming my memories of the country. I did mention that exceeding 90 could not be done safely.
- 11mo ago
- lionkor 11mo ago> Most people need a recommendation for something more current Bless them, I would rather buy 10 shitboxes than one modern car (and that cost is about the same).
- TylerE 11mo agoI’d rather not die in a very survivable crash.
- kristjank 11mo agoCrash safety has become grossly exagerrated because the standards have been sharply rising last few years. Most 15yo cars will keep you safe just fine in a median crash.
- TylerE 11mo agoA 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures - not a shitbox. Not unless it’s a shelll of rust held together by bondo. Then your crash standards or whatever year are meaningless as the chassis may have 25% or less of its design strength.
- kristjank 11mo agoSorry for asking, are you in the USA? That might explain the 5 figures thing.
- happyopossum 11mo ago> A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures some are, sure - but most aren’t. Plenty of well maintained clean 2010 model cars on marketplace and Craigslist for well under 10k.
- potato3732842 11mo agoPretty much every major safety feature is an order of magnitude less meaningful than the last. If you wear a seatbelt and eschew the most risky driving behaviors your chances of getting in a crash where the difference between 2005 and 2025 matters are very, very, very, small.
- jabl 11mo agoAt least over here where we have mandatory inspections you can find statistics on percentage of cars which fail the inspections, broken down by brand and model. Toyota seems to consistently place in the top.
- potato3732842 11mo agoThose sorts of comparisons are highly misleading because the overwhelming majority of failures for any inspection program are simple stuff that doesn't affect the operation of the vehicle in the base case. Light out, bald tires, brakes below replacement threshold, windshield crack, minor exhaust leak, etc. So what you wind up measuring by proxy is the owner behavior, since that's the dominant factor in how proactively those sorts of things get addressed. And it ought to surprise nobody that trophy wives in 4runners show up with their vehicle in a statistically different state of repair than single moms in Altimas. The big failures that you really want to avoid almost never show up on safety inspection data because they typically render the car much less drivable so they either get fixed promptly or the car stops coming around for it's inspection.
- dghlsakjg 11mo agoThat's very interesting. I could argue that you are reading the signal wrong here. You want to go for the car that has the most failures in some cases, since it has survived long enough to fail in minor ways that leave it still able to drive. If you have car brand A that has a reputation for having catastrophically expensive failures in major components, and car brand B which just keep chugging along for decades, you will probably see an elevated failure rate for brand B since it is still driving, while brand A will not be failing since it has already failed so badly it has been scrapped.