Yaris, Scion xD, Honda Fit - no water temp gauge

Not counting the brief period of time that I actually owned a new car ('02 GTI) the last time I was in a car dealership was at Livonia VW in Michigan, when my old GTI stopped running a couple blocks away. It did not end well; read about it here:

So no, I don't patronize car dealerships that often.

nate

The 20-year-old Porsche in my driveway disagrees with you. It's eminently reliable and while the maintenance costs are high that's just the price of admission. Which is still, when you include purchase price into the equation, less than the cost of buying ANY new car save for maybe an el strippo Hyundai or Aveo. Most fun you can have on 4 wheels for under $4K.

Your characterization might be better applied to Italian or British cars, and no, I wouldn't kick a Fiat Spyder or Triumph TR-6 out of my driveway for leaking oil. Probably wouldn't want to rely on it to get me to work every day, though, at least not without a backup vehicle.

nate

not to a competent technician. if you know what you're doing, almost nothing should take you by surprise.

this has indeed been a very interesting thread. the desire seems to be, underlined repeatedly by people such as yourself, is that people /want/ gauges. hence they're fitted. but the engineering reality is, pressure, temp, etc. are better served by warning lights. and the "gauges" people are given are /far/ from what they believe them to be.

I guarantee that if you and I got together, we would never come to a common definition of the word "reliable".

I repeat: only if you understand the principles of operation of the machine--which does not reflect the car buying public at large.

If you don't know enough to (a) open the owner's manual, and (b) follow the VERY SIMPLE maintenance schedule--or, on a newer car, simply follow the lights on the dash that say "take the car in for service A"--then the gauges are a complete waste of money and dash real estate.

My advice to you would be to go and kick tires for a few hours at the local Ford dealership on a sales weekend, to see what (a) customers are like, and (b) the red meat eating sales staff is like.

Gauges are meaningless.

Perhaps not. I don't mind *maintenance* but I do mind replacing broken parts.

I especially loathe my company-provided Impala. It just sucks in too many unique and interesting ways to list here. (peeve no. 1 - would it be too much to ask for a functional parking brake?) That alone is enough to seriously turn me off GM, despite the fact that I still have a serious jones for my dad's (well, it was my grandpa's) '73 stepside. And his old '67 Cutlass, RIP. I've heard that we're getting Malibus next time around and that the new Vectra-based 'bus are actually acceptable. I sure hope so.

nate

Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you want me to do that? I already loathe most of the human race enough after simply commuting to work. I don't need to get any snarkier.

nate

The reason ford uses the binary status as a gauge is, as I heard it (and believe it because of my experience in product development), is that on earlier vehicles it was a real gauge but people didn't understand how oil pressure varies and were racking up warranty costs thinking there was a problem. It's a classic reaction of a US corporation to just dumb it down rather than to arrive at solution that would let the real gauge stay. I doubt there is any savings in the sender differences.

I'm sure you're right. I can at least confirm that the earlier trucks used a real gauge. Supposedly you can make the later dash gauges work by using a real gauge sender and bypassing a resistor on the back of the gauge panel, and I tried that, but I still didn't trust the gauge. the readings would vary for random reasons, and even worse, the readings would dip fairly reliably while accelerating, making me think that I had a bearing issue. A mechanical gauge confirmed that the whole dash gauge setup was just a flaky mess however.

nate

Exactly.

But Nate seems to think that the same dumbasses whom he ADMITS can't halfway maintain their cars, can suddenly see the gauges and know what to think about them.

No, I didn't say that. What I said was, that given a choice between only an idiot light and either a gauge or a gauge combined with an idiot light, the latter two are infinitely preferable. Even people utterly ignorant of the inner workings of a vehicle are able to tell when something doesn't act the way it used to, even if they don't completely understand what it means. Plus, for those of us who *do* know how to read them and can make some use of the info, equipping a car with only an idiot light is insulting.

nate

Does it have a door without any real check stops in the middle, a door that just swings either wide open or all the way shut--usually doing whatever it is you DON'T want it to do?

That seems to be a GM trademark.

I had the choice of an Impala. I also had the choice of a Malibu. But for my company car, I chose Prius. I'd never sat in any of them, but I had faith that Toyota knew how to build a car that would satisfy me blindly, and that GM couldn't satisfy me even if I owned and managed the engineering department.

Yes, usually when I'm carrying a cup of coffee and a roll of prints. There's now a permanent boot print in the map pocket where I automatically kick the door when I swing it open. It swings shut even

*when* all the way open in a stiff breeze or parked on a 0.01% upgrade (after it rocks back on the park pawl, that is.)

My employer is all-GM, and this was the first car I got from them so I didn't even get to pick the color, I took what was available :( Free car is still desirable, even though it sucks.

nate

Hell, I put a thousand hours on in less than a year.

--scott

Free?

IRS doesn't like free. Unless, of course, you use it for zero personal use. Otherwise, IRS wants that personal use accounted for and taxed as income.

They're pretty plain about the whole concept.

I pay a bit per month, flat. At the end of they year we figure out total yearly cost of the car and percentage of that which is personal use. That gives a personal use dollar figure. If that dollar figure is more than what I paid over the course of 12 months, the company doesn't ask me for more; it simply gives me that extra that I used, and reports it as taxable income.

Simple, straightforward--and no way around it without the IRS getting upset.

These are the same people who can't halfway decently maintain their cars?

Remember, to them the car goes downhill gradually--and many abnormal things don't become cause for concern, because they didn't come about abnormally and/or quickly.

So there's the normal aging of the car, then there's the "something broke all of a sudden" part of the car.

Funny, having read Nate's posts for years I would say you're dead wrong.

I would prefer gauges and lights. Better yet, I would like to be able to set when the light activated.