I’ve been considering a new vehicle off and on for a few years now, and its getting closer and closer to me pulling the trigger. One car that I’m particularly interested in is the Volkswagen GTI, and there is a new one coming out in the next few months. Looking for more general advice, but also interested in this car specifically, and wondering if buying a new version of a car in its first model year is a bad idea. Are there typically bugs to work out and that kind of thing? Would I be better waiting for it to be in production for a year or two? How different are model years typically within car generations?
I have heard it, but I think better advice is don’t buy a car with a newly designed engine, or some other major brand new technology.
Safer to wait for some consumer review to see if the stuff works.
Received wisdom I’d always heard was that the first year car is the least reliable, because the bugs haven’t all been caught in testing, but is also the best looking, because the body shape is truest to the professional design team’s concept. Last years of a run have more sound reliability, but the tweaks given to styling each year (just to show an “updated” look) are done not so much by professional designers, but by anonymous guys in suits.
Now, you are free to take all this with a grain of salt. I know it was true in the 80s, but modern cars are generally much more reliable, and what with CAD and everything (as well as fewer wild new designs and with a smaller number of much broader component platforms), I’d say it is probably a lot less true these days than it was back then, but still may be something to consider.
More recently, I’d previously purchased a new car in its first model year, 2006. Overall it was fine, but it did have it’s share of warranty/service bulletin issues related to it being a first year model. As usual, the make had refined and improved and you saw less and less problems with each consecutive year.
Same was true of my current 2010 vehicle, which entered production in 2008. Not only did they address early model year issues, they also made mechanical additions and various improvements, which are only good things.
Given my experience, I’d hold off on first year models (especially turbo ones). Part of buying new is not having to deal with issues, and makes usually have a better grasp of these, given time. Even if work is covered by warranty/service bulletin, free of charge with a tank of gas, most times it’s still not fun taking trips to the dealer. There is also the fact that if you don’t like later changes to a given model (sometimes they do less favorable things), there is a possibility of still buying an earlier version of the vehicle.
My husband worked for a subcontractor that manufactured the plastic interior panels and trim. He said based on that, he’d never buy any vehicle in its first year. The auto company was constantly coming back with little fixes, and sometimes the fixes were: “Cram this in there so it doesn’t rattle.” So not safety issues, but things that showed up once the vehicles were on the road and began to be shaken out, so to speak. I’ve heard tales of more critical problems with new vehicles, too.
As an engineer myself, I know that even the best design will reveal flaws once it’s in use, so I wouldn’t buy a car till those flaws had been found and fixed. So far, so good for me.
I’ve bought two first-year cars and regretted buying both. One was a 1979 Mustang with the kewllll TRX suspension and a five-speed… which hardly mattered, as it was also the 88-horsepower four. It would wheeze out trying to get up the hills to Tahoe. Nice enough car overall for what it was, but forgetting to put an engine in it was a serious mistake on Ford’s part.
Then there was Mrs. B’s 2003 E500… lovely redesign, spectacularly comfortable and fun sport sedan, one of the nicest cars I’ve ever been privileged to drive for an extended time… well, excepting the bi-weekly dropoffs at the dealer to try and get the undercooked, badly programmed and just plain broken controllers fixed. Whether it was the sound system failing, the doors refusing to lock, going into limp-home mode or having some other fancy Choiman feature stop working, it was the fault of three complex controllers recently ported down (and corner-cut) from the S class. I never did figure out how to say “Lucas, prince of darkness” in German…
The VW GTI MKVII, is new to North America but has been available in Europe since Novermber of 2012. As such, it’s not a new model. I’d feel quite comfortable in buying it when it’s available. In fact, I’m seriously considering the R model.
I tend to agree with avoiding new car models, but only if it really is new.
Most ‘new’ things in cars are just an adaptation of existing, proven technology or a substantial improvement of existing things.
FWIW; both of my motorcycles are first year models; 06 Ninja 650 and 09 VStar 950. I haven’t had any problems with either.
I’m currently leery of CVT transmissions because I don’t buy new cars and the longevity of CVTs (and the cost to repair them) is unproven yet.
I was looking hard at the 2012 Wranglers - they finally put a decent engine in there, the 3.6 Pentastar - but I didn’t want a first-year engine, so I dragged my feet on it. Turned out to be a good move, and there’s a serious cylinder head problem plaguing those first-year engines. I ordered a 2013, and the redesigned cylinder heads came onto the assembly line less than a week before mine was built. (I was tracking the progress and sweating bullets - I tried to time it so mine got built right after the plant’s spring shutdown/update period, which worked out perfectly.)
So yeah, I’d avoid a first year model if at all possible.
That’s ok, my mother had the 6-cylinder 1979 Mustang and it roared when you punched the gas but it had little power. The handling was awful too.
Don’t do it. First year models have lots of kinks that need to be worked out. My first year model car had a lot of issues. Most of them the dealer seemed to know about when I brought them in, but they didn’t have recalls for them.
Buy it next year when they’ve been on the road for a while.
I have a first year model. I will never do it again. In 2 years, I’ve had to have loose wiring repaired a number of times, and some spendy things replaced such as the AC compressor. I’ve owned a lot of vehicles… 9 cars in the last 20 years, with another 4 counting my husbands trucks, and I’ve never experienced the issues that my current rig has had.
Wear and tear is completely understandable. Random wacky things are not.
I think it really depends on the brand. There’s definitely some I trust to get a new model launch right and some I don’t. It also just depends on if the car is meant to be a great leap forward in technology or just basically a restyle.
On the other hand, though, it can also be worth trying to avoid the last model year or two in a generation. It can really affect the resale value (especially with private-party sales) if you’re trying to sell a car that looks exactly the same as one five years older than it. Conversely, despite the potential foibles, the first year of a generation will hold its value a little better than a car in the middle or near the end of it.