Follow up...Oil changes, Toyotas, and GM problems

Fully agree. I maintain my cars very well and seldom have I had a problem. (Exception, a Ford 428 Cobra that broke a piston at 17,000 miles)

Chrysler engines have traditionally been very strong, as you say. Their Mitsubishi engine choices may not be so great.

Toyota appears to have had some some sort of problem with these engines, but hesitates to admit it if it is so. The service manager at this dealership states that he believes that the problem has been solved (aha...maybe there was a problem), but still recommends conscientious management.

Some of the web accounts I have read indicate that many owners were less than diligent about keeping their documentation about oil changes, and Toyota was probably looking to avoid paying whenever they could. It was relationswise a bad move.

I live about 60 miles from the dealership. I do not intend to drive there every time I need an oil change to get their blessing. If that is the name of the game, I'll do something else.

I find situations like this very unsatisfying. The truth is there somewhere, but it seems hard to get to the very bottom of this story.

Appreciate your comments.

The Lucerne uses the iron-horse series-III 3800 and the Northstar V8 - both have been proven as good engines, although I wouldnt personally buy any car in it's first model year.

To defend Toyota for a minute... I think that's a symptom of society. A corporation simply can't honestly admit a mistake these days without opening itself to a FLOOD of damage claims, and I'm not just saying people asking for a replacement engine (which they deserve), I'm talking about people asking for a brand new car because "it shouldn't have broken! I don't want a lemon!" Buyers seem so out of touch with reality that they no longer understand the fact that manufacturing isn't perfect, and "sometimes you get a bad one." And that replacing the defective part is fair, but providing a brand new car isn't.

Oh, I don't know. One of the best cars I ever bought was a first-year Chrysler LH series (93 Eagle Vision TSi) built about 5 months into the production run. Still have it with 241,000 miles on the clock.

In the case of the Lucerne, if its using a Northstar and a Gen-III

I feel that my story, although slightly off-topic, might shed some light. I bought a 1995 Toyota T100 pickup in December of 2000. 3.4 liter V6, automatic, 2WD long bed. At the time I bought it, it was showing 219,000 miles on the clock. In June of 2002, at 242,000 miles, it blew a head gasket. I knew that Toyota had experienced head gasket issues with this engine and that there was a recall on them. Per the dealership's service managaer's advice, I drove it to the local Toyota dealership - probably 8-10 miles. I made sure the coolant was full and drove gingerly. So, two days after taking the truck there, the service manager calls and says it was indeed a blown head gasket, the repair would be covered under the recall, and that I had pitting in several cylinder bores due to coolant leaking into the cylinders. The solution was new short block. Here's the kicker - Toyota covered the short block too under the head gasket warranty. I didn't have to scream, threaten, or anything. They admitted the problem was theirs and took responsibility for it. The repair was wrapped up in about 5 days and I now have 316,000 miles on the truck. Am I a fan of Toyota? Because of this experience, absolutely. Would I be a fan of GM or Ford or Chrysler if I'd been treated the same way? Absolutely. Experience, though has shown me that domestic car companies/dealerships have a "blame the owner first" policy. Just my $.02.

Your story echos the common reaction to the V6 recall on Toyota trucks / 4Runners by their owners. I had a hard time believing the vehicles that we would provide warranty coverage for, though. In some cases, the truck was a totally neglected shitbox, but it got repaired just the same. I much prefered doing recalls on the well maintained trucks and the ones that weren't jury-rigged by incompetent butchers. Something about performing "free" work for someone that doesn't IMO deserve it gets under my craw :)

Toyota MDT in MO

We all have stories. I'll keep mine short: Chevy Camaro Z28, engine seazed at 42k miles - no Recall or Service Bulletin; Chevy put a new LONG BLOCK in, no qualms, no charge.

Why would you be surprised? Toyota wasn't doing this for the owners benefit! Do you know how many millions of bucks national television advertising time costs? Toyota probably just redirected their advertising and marketing budget into paying for the recall and got even better mileage out of it and saved money to boot. It's a fantastic advertising campaign. produce a product with a flaw, then when it blows up replace the product for free, and the customer is so grateful they don't even think to get mad that the product blew up on them in the first place, thus inconveniencing them.

The goal here should be to spend the effort on producing the vehicle that doesen't break down to begin with, not on spending effort on cleaning up after it. :-)

Ted

You've got something there.

Savvy marketing people speak of "The Rule of Thirty"

ie; The average person will tell 30 other people about their experience ( good or bad ) with a company.

Go the extra mile with one customer, get 30 new customers..... Not too shabby.

Of course, the converse is; Screw one customer, lose 30 potential customers.

You're right, of course, but there will always be issues, and how those issues are handled definitely reflects on the company, well or poorly. For example, VW has had a few minor supplier related problems in recent years, notably heater cores, ignition coils, and window regulators. None of these issues were really VW's "fault" as at least in two cases I know for a fact that the issue was caused by suppliers changing materials or design of their part which no longer conformed to VW's spec, which resulted in widespread early failures. Now VW eventually did recall the coil packs and window regulators, but there are still vehicles with known bad heater cores that have never been recalled, and VW seems to put off recalling until there is great outcry from the VW customer community. Also when the coil pack recall was done, they had serious supply pipeline issues which meant that people were trying to schedule warranty/recall work and they were told by their local dealer that parts were a month or more out.

Compare and contrast with Toyota's handling of this issue. They had a problem with the ENGINE and cheerfully replaced a whole crapload of them to keep their customers happy. Now in my mind, the VW car is a better product, but my opinion of Toyota's customer service is infinitely greater. I am willing to bet that more people who know the above facts will buy Toyotas than VWs even though the VW is a superior product, simply because they don't want to deal with those combusting anuses known as VWoA and VW's dealer network. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

nate

I have always felt that the real character of a company, or a person, shows up when there is a problem. The decent company/person will do everything in their power to solve the problem they created or contributed to. The average, indecent company/person will run and hide and do everything possible to avoid any responsibility.

GM, sadly, has shown a lot of the second kind of behavior with things like it's long standing intake manifold gasket failures.

John

Well, I do feel compelled to point out that VW sells cars based on "the VW mystique" that came out of the Flower children of the 60's. That's why they brought back the New Beetle.

The few unfortunate times I've ever been goat-roped into assisting a friend to fix their VW I have not found the vehicles "repairable with a simple set of tools and a few kitchen implements" as some have claimed, nor have I observed them to be espically well designed. And when my wife owned a VW rabbit before we got married I did plenty of work nursing that POS.

Interestingly, while I see a lot of older cars in the area here, I haven't seen a VW Rabbit on the road in years.

Ted

yeah, I guess I'm a member of a very small subset of people who likes VWs not because of nostalgia for the 60s (I was born in 1974) but for the cheap, economical, bulletproof cars that they built in the early watercooled era. Iconic status of the original GTI notwithstanding, they don't seem to have been all that successful in either selling cars or building a reputation back then, probably because of their execrable dealer network.

I really don't understand that comment... While certainly not as easy to work on as a 60's era American compact, I find that VW's are easily repairable with only a few special tools required, like a set of cheesehead bits, an extra long Allen wrench for the airflow meter adjustment, and a cutaway socket for the top strut nuts. My daily driver for years was an '84 Scirocco (basically a fancy Wabbit.) Now some jobs are definitely easier with a helper, I'll grant you that, like replacing CV joints (need helper to hold the wheel with the brakes so you can break loose the inner bolts... they don't just pop out of the transaxle like many other FWD cars.)

I've started to see them *again* now, just the other day I saw a guy in a white GTI tow-barring another GTI that was clearly a "barn car," apparently they're restorable now. Which means I guess that I shouldn't have sold mine as prices are going to start going back up again...

nate

I've owned a couple of Passats, and have had really good luck with them. Both were company cars, so I didn't really have to work on them. I have heard from other owners that some year models had electrical issues, but mine never did.

I have considered another Passat as a result of my Toyota research. They seem to be about as quiet and smooth as a Camry, but not as fuel miserly, if I can believe reports. Price about the same. I know nothing about the reliability of their auto trannies.

Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that the VW folks didn't figure out the automatic transmission until about 98 - the B5 platform for the Passat. Those seem to be fairly reliable, as do the A4 and onward Jetta/Beetle/Golf transmissions. However, they call the fluid 'lifetime' but it's really more like '100k' or maybe even '50k' and very, very expensive.

-Keith

Thanks, Keith... Their Value series seems to come with a turbocharged 4 cyl. Other than the requirement to use premium unleaded gasoline, does this engine have a disadvantage on reliability?

I have never owned a turbo application. Years ago, they were very expensive and unreliable. Have they been tamed?

The 1.8T is the best engine VW has made in recent memory IMHO.

That said, I'm surprised you had good luck with a Passat. Those don't seem to be as reliable as the Golf/Jetta series for some reason.

nate

You must not have owned a first generation Rabbit! What an unreliable piece of junk that was. My sister had one and her husband was an absolute maintenance fanatic. He fell for the Consumer Reports gushing review of the Rabbit when it came out and lived to regret it :(.

John

I've got a lot of friends that play with foreign cars like I play with domestics, and they will readily tell VW horror stories- overcomplicated nonsense like *pneumatic* door locks powered by a 12-v air compressor in the trunk, thermostat housings with half a dozen hoses that clamp on, etc. etc.

My personal experience with VW engineering is limited to the VW-built short block that my dad had in a '78 Plymouth Horizon. Second-worst car I've *ever* been associated with (worst was a '79 Mazda B2000), and a large part of it was the fault of the VW-Rabbit-derived short block that was built without the "need" for a harmonic balancer, and could have done serviceable duty as a hardware store paint shaker. Stupid thing literally vibrated parts off the car, cracked accessory mounting brackets, etc. I will say it never turned into an oil burner or outright failed, but even cockroaches are hard to kill.