To continue with the watch analogy - Buying an inexpensive car today is like buying a Swatch.
The Swatch was designed to be stamped out by the (seemingly) trillions and be a basic watch that kept good time.
Today’s “entry-level” cars are built largely by robots that never get tired and forget a weld or two, so each one is practically identical to the next and built as well as the next. Are they built exceedingly well? Probably not, but they’re certainly built well enough that the manufacturer is comfortable in standing behind them for 7 years/70,000 miles or some similarly lengthy time.
I’ve got a '77 300D. Its seats are vinyl over horsehair padding. All the padding has long since disintegrated and fallen out. For a car that cost about $20k in '77, you’d think they could have used a good grade of foam rubber, such as was used in my '73 Vega wagon.
There’s a real problem comparing quality among different products such as cars. This problem is that no one agrees on a definition of quality. Quality, like professionalism, is one of those terms that means only what the user of that term thinks it means.
Well… yeah, except with cars there are a few different objective measurements you can all lump under the banner of ‘quality’ and nobody calls you an idiot for doing so. For example, high-quality cars get good gas mileage and have low emissions. They have a long mean time between failures, and the average failure is not expensive. They have modern safety features. They have no chronic problems, and no problems inherent to the design or production run. They have a long service life, measured from the moment they roll off the lot new to the point where it’s no longer economically viable to fix the latest problem. A car with all those features can reasonably be said to be high quality.
No, no classic car is high quality. We’ve learned about car design and manufacture since then.
There are already a lot of interesting posts in this thread. Maybe this will help focus the discussion a bit further.
Body engineer here. Actually the use of conventional presses is still by far the most dominant method of stamping sheet metal parts for the auto industry, especially surface parts. Hydroforming is finding most of its use in large structural members (the stuff you don’t see).
My dad’s friend had a business that specialized in switching Jaguars from their 12 cylinder engine to an 8 cylinder engine because the 12 cylinder engines had many problems (according to what I was told).
I bought a 1999 BMW 528i and it’s by far the finest automobile I’ve ever owned. The handling and braking, is precise and it takes curves like it’s on railroad tracks. The interior leather seats still look brand new and they’re fabulously comfortable. And you don’t get in the car you merge with it.
So far I’ve had one repair that cost me around $900 and that’s it.
Many times I’ve thought of buying a new one, but nowadays they just don’t look as nice, the reliability is not as good, and you just get in it like any other large luxury car.
It was worth every penny I paid for it but they just don’t make them like they used to, and I no longer think they’re worth the price.
One thing that may make an expensive car worth more is the customer’s experience. Many dealers of expensive cars will bend over backwards to kiss your ass. They may send someone to get your car and return it when you need some work done and maybe they’ll take care of small repairs knowing that you’ll keep coming back. If you have a wreck, they’ll often tow it free of charge even if they aren’t repairing it (some manufacturers do this for certain models that require specialized training to repair).
I know a guy that owns a group of expensive car dealerships and the customers act like they’re part of a family. They are greeted by name and after their business is done, they’ll often sit around talking to the sales or service person about their family or business or or cars or whatever is on their mind. You don’t see that as much if you drive an $8000 Kia.
This is absolutely true, although I’d obviously class it under ‘miss it if it goes’ rather than ‘worth the price difference’. We’ve had 3 Jaguars now (one new, one used, one on a personal lease), and the purchase experience of each one has been a fabulous experience - the dealers have been great, they’ve gone out of the way to help us model the options and so on. Even picking up each of the cars from the dealer has been an experience - they have the car in the forecourt detailed and ready, covered in some mammoth dust sheet, there’s always been a huge bunch of flowers in the boot, they go through all the car options with us - it’s a whole big thing. Quite different from the Ford Focus I bought at the same time as the second Jaguar (albeit from a different dealer).
The after-sales service has been a different class too - they know us by name, they keep in touch before and after service intervals and on and on. We also have an inclusive recovery and concierge service. (Yes, yes, I know the jokes - we’ll need it, it’s a Jaguar, it’ll break down ha ha ha).
I know absolutely nothing about cars other than the experience of driving and being a passenger, but I have to say that the current one, the XF, is by a very very long way the most spectacular car we’ve ever owned. I’m not sure I know enough to quantify how it’s so different, but the quality of the cabin, the way the engine responds, the balance of the instruments is wonderful. It’s a beautiful thing and absolutely worth the money we’ve paid for it. It would be a real surprise if we ever replaced the Jaguar with anything other than another Jaguar.
To give a vaguely GQ answer, I concur that it is a question of the quality of the parts used, and the general build quality, along with the superior service (all big assumptions and there must be huge numbers of exceptions) that make the difference.
Many high end cars have bad reliability. But I guess the owners don’t care since many buy a new one every 2-3 years. You could think a car costing $50k and up would have good reliability but that is not the case for many of them.
FWIW, when my ford ranger was in the shop and I was driving a geo metro, once I got back to the ranger it was like riding in a lexus by comparison. The seats were comfortable, the radio and air conditioner worked, I could get to interstate speeds w/o any problems, etc.
I haven’t used many high end cars (or any), but mechanically even the low end cars seem to be in good shape mechanically if you do regular maintenance. I would assume the big difference is driver comfort, power/handling and appearance for higher end cars.
I drive a very expensive modern car. It accelerates and decelerates faster than a regular car. The interior is full of leather. It’s very quiet inside the cabin. But for me that’s not the big difference.
The big difference is when I was parked outside Dickies Sporting Goods one Sunday a few months ago. When I had finished purchasing my sporting good, I wandered back to car, and there was a group of a dozen or so people standing round my vehicle pointing at it an whispering. It was a passing group on their way back from church, and they just had to stop and look at my shiny new car.
On another note, a top of the line Toyota Avalon or Honda Accord costs about what an entry level BMW 3-series or Benz C-classcosts (I know toyota & honda make lexus and acura respectively, so I’m picking benz and bmw for comparisons). They all run 30-35k or so.
Is one better than the other? I’d assume a high end toyota or honda would actually be better than the benz or bmw for features and comfort since you aren’t paying for the status and name (so you’d assume the cost was entirely due to features and build quality), and the mechanical quality would likely be better since Honda and Toyota market so many of their other cars to people looking for high mechanical quality.
Then again why do lexus and accord cost more than honda and toyota if there aren’t extra features.
What constitutes expensive is not clearly defined, which makes comparisons a little difficult. You can spend about twice the money between the base and top spec model on many cars. Yet they stay basically the same car in may ways. A VW Golf can be had in base form, GTI form, RS32 form, Audi A3 form and Audi TT form. This could get you close to a four to one ratio (of course from a base Golf to a TT most of the parts are no longer common, but the really expensive design engineering remains common.)
Reliability issues in expensive cars can partly come about simply because they have more stuff in them. Thus there is simply more to fail. A big part of upselling into luxury brackets has become less engineering quality, and more luxury add ons - most of which mean electronic toys - all of which can fail in annoying ways. Of course such options also push down into the cheaper models quite quickly, as most electronic toys do. Parking assist, rear facing cameras, once the realm of the high end cars are now common across most brands. But these options are also where the dealers make their money. Margins are much thicker here than the razor thin margins of the base car. So often you get no better engineering, just more stuff to break.
Something that the very high end manufactures have trouble with is making enough cars to get the bugs out. Or finding the design budget to sort the car. A car that sells a million copies will have a huge engineering effort spent on it, and will have cost many times the development costs of a very high end car. Guess which one will have niggling problems all its life? An Aston Martin is one of the most beautiful cars you will see on the road, it performs fantastically, has a superb interior, is crafted from aluminium with expensive hand finishing… and breaks. Stupid niggly failures. Would I own one? In a heartbeat.
But for many cars you you do also get what you pay for. My father has owned Range Rovers for decades. He loves to tell of a time he went on an off road course, and as part of the course they put the cars on a hoist and looked under them. One of the other drivers on the course took one look at the difference in engineering between the Range Rover and his Nissan, and simply went out, sold the Nissan, and bought a Land Rover.
Car manufactures have got very good at making cheap cars look a lot less cheap than they are. But you can find some distressingly low cost engineering under the skin. Margins are thin at the low end, and almost anything that can be done more cheaply will be.
However the field is levelling in many ways. Mandatory safety requirements have pushed the low end up constantly. In many markets it is becoming difficult through to impossible to sell any car without a level of safety equipment that was only the province of a high end Mercedes Benz two decades ago.
As FrancisVaughn mentions, higher-end cars often have extra gadgetry and more stuff in general that can fail. To add to that, a lot of mechanical issues with lower production/high-end cars can be traced to exotic engine/suspension/transmission tunings with some of the crazy powerful motors some of these cars have. Many cars like Ferraris for instance have a reputation for being high-strung cars that require a lot of maintenance to keep them operating optimally, despite the fact that the cars are made by hand.
Well don’t keep us in suspense…what kind of car is it?
Unlike most Jags of the last couple decades, the XF has won a lot of awards, and placed =2nd overall in the 2010 J D Power Survey. By all accounts, it’s a throughly modern design, which manages to retain traditional Jaguar styling, refinement and comfort. However, there are a couple question marks over it’s reliability, with owners reporting engine management lights and transmission problems.
At the other end of the scale, I’ve very pleased with the 3 year old mid-spec Kia Cee’d I’ve recentely purchased. It scored best in class and 4th overall in the same survey, with virtually the same score as the XF. It’s definitely not as good a car as the Jag, but does just as good a job of meeting its customer’s (lower) expectations. Having driven quite a few of the cars in the same class while shopping, I can tell you it’s not quite as good as several of the ones it beat comprehensively in the survey. However, it’s very competitive with them, while undercutting them on price, and is also backed by a 7 year warranty (mine has 4 years left to run). Build quality is good, with no squeaks or rattles. It has plenty of airbags, and a 5 star Euro NCAP crash rating. The interior is also decent, with plenty of soft-touch plastics, a leather steering wheel, supportive seats, tactile switchgear, and a high quality stereo. There are some cheap plastics in out of the way areas like the door pockets, but overall it’s a nice place to be.
It’s very difficult to compare the two, as the Jag is a luxury item while the Cee’d is more of a commodity. I don’t give a damn about some of the minor refinement issues in the Cee’d, such as the way the engine goes from very quiet to quite boomy at about 2,800 rpm, but something like that would be unforgiveable in a Jag.
Great discussion. Ultimately there is an emotional element which the manufacturers of expensive cars emphasise and enhance. If you the buyer feel good about the badge on the bonnet (hood) its because that car is a total experience. Not a mere vehicle.
Personally I lusted after owning a Jaguar until mechanics and even enthusiasts quietly told me of the ongoing repairs which come with the marque. This has markedly improved in recent years.
My wandering eye then fixed on the Range Rover but again, a friend owned one and despite its supremacy as a luxury 4wd, it proved to need continual maintenance. Which is why I’ve owned two Toyota Prados (similar to 4 Runner/Land Cruiser) and cannot fault these vehicles.
Which leads me to that ephemeral indefinable quality - passion. Motorcycles. Specifically a Ducati ST4. Any rational person will tell you that the Japanese make superb motorcycles in every style you could want. So why choose an expensive Italian machine with less reliability and more complexity?
Darned if I can tell you. All I do know is I loved that bike with a passion. Yes there was a sort of exclusivity, maybe one-upmanship, but the engineering was brilliant and the contours made a work of art. The total package was worth every penny. Riding the Ducati was the best vehicle experience I’ve ever known.
