Ford Focus equivalents

Once had a new private Ford Fiesta Ghia 1.1, one of the first, that's quite many years ago. Factory quality was appalling, e.g. there was grey putty smeared one of the side window seals to close a small gap. Performance was sluggish, even compared to another Ford Fiesta 1.1 which I hired. Why did I ever buy a new car?

When I took it to dealer service, the receptionist always assumed it was a company car: "What company does this car belong to?" Accordingly, I assumed that service would be superficial.

I can happily live with a larger car - especially as the ride in them is often good. Perhaps I should look again at their running costs because my annual mileage (3,000 to 4,000) is relatively low.

then the world is your oyster, a nice 8 year old LS430 will outlive you. allow yearly fuel cost of 500, maintenance of 500 - 1000 per year. Drive in ultimate comfort and very high safety.

I think I have to be careful in such a group as this about what I mean by reliability.

A very long time ago I used to have a "reliable" car but it was only reliable because as soon as a tiny problem reared its head it got investigated and fixed. That car got regular maintenance and even more frequent check-overs just to make sure all was well. Anything looking worn got vchanged well in advance of failure. The trouble was that this was a lot of work and, yes, it never broke down on the road but it did need a lot of parts replacing and things fixing.

On the other hand there's reliablity which doesn't need frequent checks or preventative repairs etc. A friend had an old Mazda from new and never had it serviced or ever did anything to it except oil and petrol and he says it ran without problems up to

120,000 miles. That's an extreme example of the other sort of reliability.

There's high-maintainance reliability and then there's low- maintainance reliability. Maybe you're talking of the first type and I'm thinking of the second type. I need to be careful about how much car-care anyone considers normal and make sure I see it the same way.

I service cars for a living. Japanese cars have the lowest annual bills, end of. Focuses are next. VW are middling. Vauxhall are next. Modern French cars and Land Rover are by far the worst.

It's a very posh car but it may be going too much the other way.

If anything major goes wrong then it will probably too expensive to fix and the car is finished.

In fact I couldn't find an 8 year old LS430 online for ?4,000 (I saw 12 years old for ?5,000). The running costs look steep too.

What about Korean makes like Kia and Hyundai?

[...]

That's not reliability, it's a form of Russian roulette which on that occasion the owner won.

You should also consider the safety implications of failing to follow regular servicing schedules.

Normal means following what millions of man-hours of manufacturers time has been spent on, determining what servicing should be done and when.

It doesn't mean that every 12 months or whatever you should go to a main dealer and blow a weeks wages. Many of the tasks on a vehicle's service schedule can be undertaken by the driver, leaving a local independent garage to do the dirty work.

You can also use common sense, and ask around, to adapt what is needed to how you use a vehicle. For example, the service interval for my car is

12,000 miles, or every 12 months. That's because drivers who do a low annual mileage may do lots of short trips, and may not ever check things like tyres and lights. I only do perhaps 5,000 miles a year, but rarely drive less than 7 or 8 miles on any individual one. Therefore I quite happily do oil and filter changes every other year. If I was unable to DIY it, some tyre and battery places will do an oil and filter change as a means of trying to get extra work for less than I pay for the parts.

I'm 'old school' (or perhaps just 'old'!) so every two or three weeks I check fluid levels, tyre pressures and condition, and legally required lights. Whilst under the bonnet I keep an eye open for any fluid leaks or other problems about to happen that can easily be spotted. It takes only 15 minutes, and actually covers more than 50% of what an annual service is. I also investigate any unusual noises, smells, vibrations ect so I can fix a minor fault before it turns into a major one.

By being sensible it's possible to run a car safely and reliably without spending a fortune.

Chris

Don't necessary believe any of the published fuel/mile costs. I commute

30 miles a day to work and depending on traffic conditions can get between 300 and 350 miles per tank of petrol. On a long run of hundreds of miles at motorway speeds I can get 420 miles per tank. I don't run the tank down after the empty light comes on.

Petrol consumption depends on your driving style and the type of journey. Also a larger engined car may be more efficient than the same car with a smaller engine especially if the latter is underpowered and you have to be more aggressive with the throttle pedal in order to get satisfactory everyday performance.

pamela wrote: [snip]

For your budget there's no such thing as low-maintainance reliability.

There are apocryphal stories that before the first world war Rolls-Royce would repair cusomers' cars free of charge then deny that any failure had occurred. See:

Almost any car treated to your high-maintainance regime will give good reliability - especially if the driver is sympathetic and knowledgeable so can recognise when a problem is developing. An advantage would be to have the same person carry out all necessary work - so you would have to either do everything yourself or build up a relationship with a trustworthy independent garage that is ideally walking distance away.

Given that you've managed without a car for some considerable time, can you not continue to do so ...?

I turn away stuff like that, along with Daewoo, Chrysler etc. etc.. Subaru are very good, IIRC they come top of the JDpower reliability index, up there with Honda and toyota

Bear in mind that car was 70,ooo when new. Actual running costs are low due to their reliability, mid 20s for fuel is good for the level of everything that you get. They are built for 300,000 mile life.

It all depends how minor the problem. If you have to pay someone to change a light bulb rather than having a set of screw/torx drivers and DIY then it could get expensive. If you cannot change wiper blades yourself then it could get expensive. etc.

If you use national tyre fitting outlets, or similar, who offer to do free "25 point safety checks" then you are likely to have 25 minor things that _MUST_ to be put right before then go wrong, at a cost of hundreds. The only reason that they offer the free checks is to create more paying work for them.

Perhaps you need to use a different garage or different MOT station?

Modern cars shouldn't need a _lot_ of replacement parts on a regular basis. Once a car gets to a certain age or mileage some of the parts that may cost hundreds to replace do need replacing such as timing belts/clutches etc.

Untrue but sometimes its better to adopt the philosophy of "if it isn't broke - don't fix it". Just because a part is old it doesn't meant that it is going to fail. Unnecessary preventative maintenance can actually make something less reliable.

A friend had an old Mazda

While your friend may not have put the car into a garage to have a service I'll bet he was knowledgeable enough to do his own minor repairs/servicing on the fly which he may have been forgotten about.

If the car was mainly used for longer journeys then the use of things such as brakes/clutch may have been a lot less than a car used for stop/start town driving.

If true it's the the same odds as winning anything substantial on the premium bonds.

I'm in the low maintenance class of person. Check myself what needs to be done with regards safety but replace only when necessary. I check what would be regarded as consumables on a nice sunny day or a month before an MOT. I regularly check my brake lights etc. in shop windows when parking or checking the reflection in my rear view mirror from neighbours windows when pulling in/out of my front garden driveway.

It's a very different matter running a well maintained older car you've had for ages and is worth very little, from expecting to being able to go out and buy a decent one the same for that price.

The vast majority of bangers are sold because they are simply getting too old and costly to keep running. And usually because very expensive repairs are imminent.

Yup. Many people think small car equals small costs overall. If everything was equal, it might. Obviously things like tyres on a large car cost more. But on a RWD might well last a lot longer than on a FWD with the smallest possible tyres. And so on. And in general a larger more expensive car tends to be better made than a cheap small one. And at the same age can often be cheaper used.

Quite. It can be interesting to work out the true MPG of any car in, say, short journeys in a city. As many will be used - to do the shopping. Can be one half or worse of the open road MPG.

The story was about cars failing to proceed. Ie a total breakdown.

Plenty modern cars will still limp home - but you'd not want to drive them like that.

I should get a year or two more out of my 2004 Astra. These days I wouldn't normally get anything quite that old, I would leave them for my kids! But agreed, that is fantastic value.

unless it was a Lexus, that is. Thinking about one of them for my next "main" car, but that's still a few years off.