3 Cars That Won't Last 150,000 Miles

i'm going to dispel the myth of audi supremacy with this absolute pile of junk 2011 audi a4 2.0 four-cylinder turbo that a customer got suckered into buying the customer was owed money for work he did guy wouldn't pay him owed him thousands of dollars but then he says i got this audi here and it's worth fourteen thousand dollars if what i owe you when you give me six seven thousand dollars i'll give you the car so the guy does first big mistake right there now he didn't know me at the time so he took it to various other garages who screwed him over had him sit for months and it never ran right so he towed it over here gives me the key and when i try to start it when i put in the stupid keyless ignition nothing happens there's no lights so i'm gonna have to jump it and it's problem number two we gotta jumpstart the battery so we open the hood over we go we'll open the hood and guess what there's no battery under the hood to jump start it now the battery's in the trunk but there's no key and nothing to open the trunk with oh but look there's a button you push dope in the trunk but the battery's dead so the trunk won't open this is a true catch-22 you got to jumpstart the battery in the trunk but the battery's dead so you can't get into the trunk brilliant audi engineers they thought of everything to lock you out of your own car and i got a jump pack and there's a positive terminal under the hood i can hook it up to as you look there it is positive hook that up to the positive now we got power to the positive and we'll put the negative over here on this nice post that's what it's made for yeah and we'll turn it on we got 85 battery power left so let's go back and pray we push the button the trunk opens success aha now we can get to the battery up there's no battery oh there's not even a battery in the car no wonder it didn't start like i said this baby's bent to two or three different mechanics didn't know what they're doing screwing around so now we'll put a battery in and go from there well at least you can't blame audi on this one they do put batteries in when they make them this is negative ground because it bolts to the frame and the other side says positive so that means this one's the negative we'll hook it up so put the negative on and tighten it up 10 millimeter that's tight then we'll do the other side let's pray i can start it up and pull it in the driveway and figure out what's going on with this clunker well here goes nothing well unfortunately that's what we got nothing the engine won't even crank it just clicks well let's check the battery now the customer supplied the battery so let's see if that's a piece of crap too at least it opens the trunk it's got that much power so let's hook up the battery tester positive to positive negative to negative and we'll test it this particular one has 900 cold cranking amps so we'll set this for 900 cold cranking amps so it's 900 and we'll test it and see what happens it's testing it says it doesn't have much it's not typical so we're going to try to jump start it's supposed to have 900 cold crankings it's less than 500 so we're going to jump start and see if that helps so get out the big guns as you can see here this baby can do 200 amp engine start which is what we're going to do click click so we'll just hook the cables up positive to positive negative but now plenty of power we'll let it go about five minutes with this then we'll go back inside see if the stupid thing will start cross our fingers this time nothing same clicking it just clicks but it doesn't start which i kind of thought anyways because even with 500 amps out of the 900 it should have cranked the engine the engine won't even crank this is one pile of junk now since all it does is click either the starter is not working or the engine's locked up so let's go under and check so what we're gonna do is get a long extension bar and sockets and see if we can turn the engine over by hand so we get the socket and we're sticking it on the front of the crank the cranks right here and we're going to try to turn it and what no the engine is locked up so there's no point in going any further i can't spin in the engine because the engine's locked up pile of junk man did he get ripped off now i do have to say i was wrong when i called this a rolling pile of junk because it doesn't roll anymore it's just a pile of junk so we'll close the trunk for one last time when you see a4 2.0 t that's two liter four-cylinder turbo engine don't walk away run away from one of those cars i have never seen a used one that didn't burn oil or have the engine lock up in this case the engine's completely locked up but when i checked the spark plugs they're coated with oil so it was burning oil before it blew up but now it's locked up entirely and basically this beautiful looking car i gotta say it's black and shiny nice interior but it's pretty much worth salvage value now they are marvels of modern engineering when they actually work and run and are zippy with their turbos but when the engine's locked up they are just a pile of junk so goodbye audi i feel sorry for the guy who got it somebody owed him thousands of dollars then he made my customer pay him thousands on top of that to take this car this is not worth maybe 500 now this is not unique for audis it's actually quite typical for one that's 10 years old and you might say scotty it's only got 87 000 miles on it well in this case that's all she wrote for this audi with a little bitty two-liter turbo that the engine said i think i can i think i can gee i guess i can't but at least now understand run away from these cars especially used do not take them as payment for a debt where you have to give people money too now he probably would have never gotten money out of the guy in the first place so if he would have gotten a car for what was owed at least it wasn't the insult that he gave him extra money for this rolling or should i say stationary piece of junk 1998 saturn now this one's still on the road but barely the transmission's starting to go out theoretically they were supposed to be revolutionary cars saturn touted they wanted to be your car company but really it was just a spin off of gm they had interesting new stuff such as plastic fenders plastic doors you can see the paint comes off the plastic pretty easily though as you can see here the paint on the plastic is crap but the roof is metal and the paint's still good on the roof now they were pretty much economy cars no arguing that they had a reasonable sized trunk now these were pretty inexpensive cars this one originally was about ten thousand six hundred dollars brand new but for about three grand more you got a four-door toyota corolla an infinitely better car than this thing that was one of the problems but the main problem is they were made by general motors but they made a special factor truth be told originally they were better made than gm they started to have a little bit better quality but over the years gm pulled a bunch of shenanigans i really feel they're kind of guilty about the saturns were better than their other gms so they started doing stuff like pulling people off the saturn assembly line and pulling people off the gm assembly line and making them work in a different factory and it led to quality control being garbage for these things in the latter years so if you have a 1991 not horrible quality but if you had a 2002 the last year that they made these things they were pretty junky this one's in between it's a 98 but it's closer to junk than it is to good i'll show you under the hood not too powerful engine it still does have metal at least it's not plastic they had ac compressors that broke all the time that's pretty typical and at least it still has a transmission dip stick so you can check the transmission but the engine only puts out about 120 horsepower so it's kind of a dog with an automatic transmission i've seen these with standards they were relatively decent cars to drive but with automatics they're pretty slow but the real problem with these cars and especially the transmission is it's one of these early electronically controlled transmissions they are absolute garbage as they age this particular one is starting to go out now being a mechanic i can't tell that just by driving a thing but i looked at the data for the transmission i found all kinds of problems with it as you can see by the orange data the torque converter system's slipping that's going out and you can see all this bad orange data for the gears the problem the gear system is having the clutch aren't feeling right basically the transmission on this baby is on its way out for a car like this it might be worth 500 bucks not something you want to get involved in to completely rebuild one of these electronic automatic transmissions anywhere from three to four thousand dollars and up friend who does automatic transmissions that's all he does he used to be president of the north american automatic transmission rebuilding association one time i sent him a customer then i asked him because the customer didn't want to spend it they just got rid of the car i asked him i said well how many of these have you ever actually fixed and he told me one was a guy's father's car his father was dead he was sentimental with a car so he spent it to fix it but he said everybody else said i'm not gonna put that money into that pile of junk so he only did one once and he said he didn't really actually make all that much money because the parts were expensive and it took a whole bunch of time because it was the first electronically full controlled transmission gm made and man did they screw up on it now on the other hand if you found one of these with a standard transmission i had a customer buy one of these things for 500 bucks drove it five years and they're still driving it around just make sure it's the four cylinder engine and here's why the v6 engines that they used were originally made by honda but they got in a shouting match that gm didn't want to have to buy the special honda coolant for the honda engines they said we have decks cool all the cars we make have deck schools so we're putting decks cool in those v6 engines we buy from you and honda said we won't sell any more v6 engines so what happened is this you buy a later saturn it's got a v6 engine net gm design what a pile of crap neighbor had one head gasket blue on it they were just terrible copies of the honda honda makes excellent engines and they just made a crappy copy of themselves gm stuck it in and they were horrendous i they blow head gaskets all the time they had a lot of power yes but lifespan very limited now when you look at this whole thing you can see typical the headlights are all faded away because they're plastic the bumpers faded away and like i said the paint on the plastic parts all faded but the metal part still looks good and when we look inside pretty much in a condo box car hand crank windows it has a radio this does have a tachometer you know and it's just in a counterbox car nothing to write home about but nowhere near as reliable as a toyota corolla yeah you would have paid 3 300 bucks more for the corolla would have been a much better move than buying this thing new stop being a counterbox car it's got relatively cramped back seat but it's big enough for the bear here and really style wasn't one of its points kind of a bland looking car and you can hear weird solenoids going on and off for the power door locks we'll see if it starts up starts up okay now i'll take it for a spin now when you put in reverse you can hear that clunk well guess what that's a transmission going out when you take off shifts like a joker you can hear that thing slamming in the second gear [Music] it's on its way out [Music] it goes again every time it shifts and it rides like crap the shocks are worn out they never rode that good anyways and not the greatest stopping distance either but let's face it they're clunking in gear this thing's on its last legs basically i wouldn't put a nickel in this car keep oil and water in it i'd drive it until it didn't drive anymore and then when it stopped moving i take the license plates off and abandon it it's a 2020 volkswagen jetta and as usual i'm going to give you the truth the good the bad and the ugly now if you follow me for any length of time you know i'm not a big fan of vw's high expensive bills a lot of plastic crap on them well here is the absolute truth about one of these new jets now i have to say i've been driving around it's a fun car to drive it handles well zippy enough this one's got an automatic transmission the steering is absolutely flawless it has the lightest steering i've ever seen it's electronic power steering and they hit the nail on the head the base model of this jetta nineteen thousand dollars or so it's about seven hundred dollars cheaper than a toyota corolla and this of course is the luxury edition so this particular one is 28 000 we're not giving these away this is a high-end one but as an advantage the low end and the high-end jetta they got the same engine and that is both the good and the bad point it's a little 1.4 liter engine with the turbocharger on it and gasoline direct injection it puts out 147 horsepower regardless of which version you buy it's the same engine now consider that this engine is a smaller displacement than the later model beetles you get the beetle edge you put out like 60 horsepower this puts out 147 horsepower so it puts out plenty enough horsepower for this thing to be zippy to drive around it and in this case it's hooked up to their eight speed transmission since it has eight speeds they're closer ratio so take it you're just cruising along like i was on a highway the other day and you want to pass a big semi when you floored it's not the usual races up like mad to passes it's got such close ratio gears that it wasn't bad and it took off quite quickly they're fun to drive but that same fun comes with a cost believe it or not this little 1.4 liter engine they went back to a timing belt not a timing chain if you know anything about late model volkswagen engines they had some problems with the timing chains braking so in this case this 1.4 liter turbo engine they went back to a timing belt now volkswagen claims it's a very fancy belt i see they cost about 183 dollars and they say that it's a lifetime belt that's good for the lifetime of the engine well whatever that means still it is a belt at some point in time if you keep them you can have to replace the belt or since this is an interference engine if you drove it a long way and the belt did break the pistons will hit the valves break them goodbye engine and you might think oh it's just a timing belt no big deal all right the way this thing is designed it's so complex mechanics charge well over a thousand dollars to change the timing belt on this thing it isn't just that the belt costs 183 bucks it's that it takes many hours to tear the engine apart to do it correctly so it's an expensive endeavor and although the volkswagen engineers say it's a lifetime belt well yeah the lifetime of the engine when it breaks goodbye engine check the warranty once the warranty's up it's on your dime not theirs so they can say whatever they want about lifetime as far as i'm concerned that's no different than them saying that oh the automatic transmission fluid is lifetime because when the warranty is gone hey if the transmission goes out because the fluid got too dirty and started to ruin things over 100 200 000 miles they're not going to give you another transmission free so you have to keep that in the back of your mind with one of these things i believe these engines have been out about four years i haven't seen any particular problems with them yet it is fun to drive i'm not arguing that but something to keep in the back of your mind if you're one of those people like keeping your cars forever me i'd rather have the corolla engine that's got a timing chain that might last three four hundred then a little 1.4 turbo with all that strain that's got a timing belt that they claim this lifetime but it's in an interference engine now if it would have been in a non-interference engine you wouldn't care because if it did break then you just have to take it apart and put another belt on but in this case it's an interference engine with a turbo so if you're spinning down a highway and that belt did break goodbye engine and in most cases by then goodbye car nobody's going to put that kind of money into one of these things it is modern technology a lot of companies are going to these smaller engines with turbochargers and it runs fine when it's running i would kind of guess from what i've seen of the ones that been out for four years if you're happy with 100 000 miles out of a car it's not going to break before then if you're going to keep a car forever kind of wonder about this design but on the plus side if you look in here this isn't one of these everything's cramped in there's the turbocharger it's right here you can bolt it on and off easily to work on this thing there is plenty of room because if you think about it you put a little engine in it this is gonna have a lot of room speaking of room let's check out the trunk nice steep trunk no arguing a lot of room in this car it's got a big trunk we'll check the back seat got some decent room in the back seat i fit in quite well a lot of room it's comfy you can squeeze the third passenger in and as you can hear it's pretty solid construction isn't flimsy just realize that yes this thing was made in mexico they're all trying to keep costs down let's face it labor's cheap in mexico they built a lot of cars in mexico now just realize that volkswagens have been making cars in mexico for more than 60 years they've been doing a long time down there they got a lot of practice you know but they've been doing it for over 60 years it's not like they're newcomers to the game there decent looking car let's check out the driver situation as you can see it's relatively sleek inside and modern we'll start it up starts right up it has all the fancy electronic stuff in it the cool clock with not just the fake analog clock but the date too and i really like their screen in the middle this volkswagen thing i like it because you get all the information right in front of you it's got a nice backup camera but what i really like is your map it's right in front so when you're driving down the road you don't have to look over to the side you can look straight in front of you glance down and get your map no longer getting lost by looking around it's right there and you can always tell the speed there's a speed over there we're starting to move look it went one mile an hour two not a bad setup really you want to play with the hb transmission you can put it to shift yourself then you can shift it up or down you can see there we go m1 m2 but it doesn't have paddle shifters this is more of an economy car there's no paddle shifters this is a luxury version so it's got a sunroof and now we'll back it up and take it for a ride i'm nuts about the steering this electric steering not only is it responsive but it requires almost no effort at all those of you with wimpy arms will love this car it's got that 1.4 cylinder engine little but it does have a turbo so what we're gonna do is floor it and see what it does you can hear those wheels spin it's geared so that it's got decent pickup and being a modern volkswagen it really does handle quite well i'll give it that the ride ah it's pretty much what you expect it's not the greatest ride the strange thing i found is that the front suspension isn't bad it dampens pretty good but the back suspension leaves quite a bit to be desired as i'm going to show you we're going to go over these speed bumps and we're only going like 15 miles an hour and you'll see the front isn't bad but the back really clunks we'll do it again the back is much weaker than the front the back suspension does not impress me the front is good but the back bit rough but for a little bitty 1.4 turbocharged engine as you can hear it's a pretty smooth quiet car so it does have zip it is a fun car to drive how long is the zip going to last that rubber based timing belt instead of a chain in an interference engine but if you've been wondering how volkswagen sells so many cars because they're somewhat lower priced if you get the low end one you don't have to buy this twenty eight thousand dollar one you can get a 18 000 one they are zippy they're fun to drive and this thing got phenomenal gas mileage now i don't know exactly how much but check this out here's the gas gauge and if you notice it's pretty much on full here i just drove it a little over the speed limit to the beach in galveston and back put on about 120 miles and it's still almost on f for full now of course certainly not a luxury ride inside my wife who likes complaining about cars that don't ride that well she didn't like it she felt a little uncomfortable going to the beach and it's only a 60 mile trip of course she's driving her old lexus that she likes but it's not the most comfortable car in the world there's no arguing that either so now you know the truth about this volkswagen jetta after all they went from the timing chain engines that had problems to a belt that's why they went to a belt it's a new fancy kind of belt design yes but they did have problems with the chains and the original ones that's why they've gone to belts in this particular design which is kind of a rarity most companies are going the opposite way and as the saying goes only time will tell we'll see what these things are like when they're 10 12 years old so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 374,959

Rating: 4.8373723 out of 5

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car advice, car that break, cars that won't last, least reliable cars, least reliable used cars, low mileage cars, reliable, reliable car, the worst cars to buy, truck, trucks, unreliable cars, unreliable trucks, worst car, worst cars, worst used cars that won't last, 150000 mile, 150000 miles cars, 3 cars that won't last 150000 miles, 3 cars you should not buy, 3 cars

Id: QjFSmK2q20M

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021