I Ranked All European Car Brands from Worst to Best

today by popular demand i'm going to talk about the best to worst european cars and since i'm here in texas in a good old us of a i'm talking about european cars they can buy in the united states and normal cars i'm not talking about exotic cars like ferraris and stuff cars that anybody can buy of course the porsches are a little bit at the high end but that's as far as i'm gonna go now when i was a young mechanic in the 60s europeans made some good cars mercedes are known for quality things are changing so i'm talking about right now 2020 the worst to the best of european cars now coming in at number seven which is the bottom of my list the worst european car you can buy it's no surprise fiat now i'm not talking about chrysler yet i'm talking about fiat decades ago fiat left the united states because of poor sales crampy cars nobody could get them fixed right but then when they bought chrysler and became fiat chrysler they actually started selling fiats again in the united states if you remember a few years back they had all those push of ads on the fiat 500s coming out of the ocean and landed in the united states and one year they sold 50 something 000 the fiat 500s but they even pulled them out of the american market now the fiat 500s because they only sold 1500 or something the last year they were selling second quarter of this year 2020 they only sold 1300 of every fiat brand sold in the united states so it wouldn't kind of surprise you that fiat's going to pull their stupid fiat brand out of the united states yes they were horrible cars back in the day when i was a young mechanic they came back with equally horrid cars not fit for the american market i mean there were a certain amount of people that thought all those fiat 500s they're cute little cars yada yada not so cute when you buy one for your daughter to go to college and like one of my customers did and on the 500 mile trip to school the engine blows up no quality and of course it didn't help that these italian cars not known for quality the 500s here in the united states they are all made in mexico place even known for lower quality two lows don't make a high in my business it's certainly not in the car business to give you an example the last quarter fiat sold 581 of those fiat in the entire united states yet another massive failure so really if you only listen to one thing i'm saying in this video that's don't buy a fiat in the united states now number six on my list is also an italian car what a surprise alfa romeo now they're also owned by fiat chrysler these days but they're selling them as their own brand in the united states alfa romeo alfa romeo pulled out of the united states in the 1990s because of poor sales just like fiat pulled out the united states alpha was selling less than 5 000 cars a year in the united states pulled the plug and said bye-bye america but then when fiat but chrysler they brought the alpha back to the united states now 2019 they sold like 23 000 in the united states was pretty much a record for alpha but of course now the sales are plummeting again just like the fiat 500 hey at one time they sold 50 something thousand in the united states then they sold less than 2 000 as people realized what piles of crap they were and nobody started buying them anymore fool me wants shame on you fool me twice shame on me they're gonna learn just like the fiat 500. i wouldn't be surprised at all if alpha pulls out of the united states they're always trying to push that oh the italian sports car image and all that yeah and they have a great image beautiful cars they go fast they're real fun to drive but unfortunately you can't drive them very long until something breaks on them now i do have to give the italian car makers high marks for consistency in the past they make crappy cars they continue to make crappy cars now some places they like them the fiat 500 with diesel engines and standard transmissions are popular in europe where gasoline costs a lot they like little cars that can park in rome and london tiny places that they fit in and they don't put that much mileage on their cars either and of course let's face it they're not giving alphas away one of their spiders sports cars starts at about 68 000 take a mazda miata they start at about 26 thousand dollars and the miata's gonna run forever hardly ever break down the japanese killed the italians in the united states when they started coming out with quality smaller cars yeah the americans say we were never any good at building small cars it's just the way it goes but the japanese they ate the italians up now number five on my list from best to worst is mini now you might think oh the cute english minis well realizes bmw owns it's a german company really and certainly they're better made than the italian cars but and this is a giant bullet they cut a lot of corners when they build these things i see them where they're five six years old the wiring harness and parts start to melt because they're using two cheap wires and of course being bmws one the people who work on them have to have high level computers i have them because i'm a pro and i get all that stuff free from companies now they want me to show their tools and i don't charge anything i just say send them to me and i'll try them out if they're any good i'll use in my videos so very expensive repairs and since bmw makes them not only is the labor and the computers that analyze them expensive endeavors the parts are outrageously expensive when i told the customer that well he'd worn the brakes out so bad in the back i got to replace the calipers and the rotors and he found out that hey it was going to be 700 something dollars in parts they got those same parts for a toyota at autozone with really nice remanufactured ones for probably 95 they're just super expensive and they don't hold up all that well they're building a little better than they used to but their engines were always blowing up they had catalytic converter problems where they'd break and they should have fixed them under warranty for some of my customers but of course being a bmw dealer that's working on them they aren't going to give anything away for free sometimes i had to personally call them up and say look you know the iron i'm scottie that's a big catalytic converter federal law you got to replace it because it's less than seven years old finally some of them did but when you got to argue with them over something that they should fix automatically that'll just tell you the game you're playing with with many they're are going to take you for a long ride they just see how much money can we get out of this guy's pocket that's just the name of the game with luxury cars and even though it's a mini and it has nothing to do with luxury cars you're going to be paying bmw prices for repairs but they're so cute well that's how they sell them women love them they're so cute they're kind of like those volkswagen new beetles especially the convertible tops they look like a baby buggy and women love them look what happened to the beatles they're gone now because they were made like crap realize the modern mini has basically nothing to do with the old mini that had those tiny little wheels simple standard transmission they didn't cost much the first minis revolutionized cars in england before that after world war ii a lot of people were driving motorcycles with side cars and when they came with a cheap little car that was dependable enough the english flocked to them and they sold millions of them but the modern mini kind of like the new beetle it was very little to do with the old beetle and the modern mini is an overweight heavy car they don't have that much acceleration basically they weigh too much and they're never going to be that fast cars and with all that weight even though they're small things wear out faster if you value your money my advice is stay away from minis they aren't all that expensive if you go for a bottom end one but they're not built all that well either and with bmw on them and the parts and labor being so expensive when they do break they cost a fortune to fix now number four on the list is volkswagen i should say volkswagen porsche audi volkswagen owns them all does everybody knows if they watch me i'm not a fan of volkswagen but i gotta say they are better made than the minis for sure volkswagen sells an awful lot of cars a few years back they sold more than toyota and they were number one now toyota's back but they make cars for what they feel a market wants they'll make faster ones for the american market they'll make slower ones with diesel engines and standard transmissions to get fantastic gas mods for the european market and yeah not the most trustworthy uh executives that got caught with that cheating scandal with the diesel emissions and then they pretended they fixed it and then a guy in california found out they didn't really fix it he showed him so they had to get him a second time and they're paying all kinds of fines and some of the guys in germany i guess are going to jail in germany but none of them are coming back to the united states for trial so they're not going to go to jail in the united states where they did most of their damage and the weird thing was this diesels ran great it's just that they tried to make them get even better gas mileage and have more horsepower by polluting more if they would have played by the rules it wouldn't have been anything wrong and anyways the united states diesels aren't that big of a deal but we go to the normal americans driving a gasoline automatic transmission yeah they're better than the minis but still volkswagen's had nothing but problems with those dual clutch transmissions that they put into volkswagens a lot of times it costs you five to seven grand to rebuild one of their horrible transmissions by the time it breaks generally the car isn't worth that anymore so it's not worth fixing but for when i see what volkswagen volkswagen porsche audi is they kind of went the wrong way with a lot of things they took a lot of the porsche audi technology and put it in the volkswagens so they took a simple car and made it complex so they're no longer cheap to fix and very dependable and then they took the cheaper volkswagen technology and put it into portion audi and they're not as well made as they used to be decades ago kind of a lose-lose situation there and if you look at their other subsidiaries porsche and audi i mean those things are just real endless money pits as they age even when i was a young mechanic i looked at it when i was working and i'd say why on earth would anybody have such a ridiculous design that you got to take the motor mount off and jack the engine up in here just to change the fan belt and that was when the cars were simpler now half the stuff you got to take apart on those audi dealers even say well we have all this undercarriage on the bottom of the front of the car for efficiency when you change the oil you don't take the drain plug that's too much work just stick a tube in a dipstick and suck it out and that's what they do with the dealers we all know some sludge is going to be stuck on the bottom that's why the drain plugs on the bottom so you can take it off and the crap comes out you suck it from the top some that's going to be left in it but i wonder they care they don't want the engines to last forever anyway some of them they don't have dipsticks for the engine oil anymore i mean the germans get carried away with themselves now number three on the list the worst the best is mercedes-benz quality's definitely still hired a volkswagen it used to be great cars but just like the rest of the germans they throw uber technology whenever they can some of these modern mercedes they'll have 80 something microprocessors on one car to work on them you need a mercedes star tester cost a fortune you're going to pay guys tons to work on the cars the parts especially the united states are outrageously high and the quality isn't there like it used to be to give you an example running down the street she bought a brand new s-class mercedes for 112 when it was 10 years old you know what she got for that car 3 800 bucks and it still ran i mean it had problems because it's a mercedes but that just shows you quality's not there anymore if you think you can buy a mercedes benz the united states and driving five hundred thousand miles like you used to in the 60s you're living in dreamland now they still make great engines i'll give them that the germans were always good at making engines especially mercedes but the overall car the problem is the price you pay for what you get you know you're much better off going buying a lexus it's gonna last three four five hundred thousand miles you're gonna have very little repairs where with the mercedes you're gonna be paying a fortune maintaining it now when it does break and they break quite a bit with all these computers plastic parts really high-tech stuff that when it does break costs a fortune and then the car has to be reprogrammed when you change the part because the germans are insidious for that and they just do crazy stuff like some of the mercedes they took the oil dipstick out so you can't shack the oil with a dipstick yeah they have some stupid computer sensor but those break too and then oh wow it didn't tell me i was out of oil so my engine blew up i see that so many times i guess mercedes feels that well you have your mercedes now it's burning oil i don't care if the engine blows up because that means it's time to buy another mercedes that one's worn out i mean they didn't used to be that way but they are today and as far as i'm concerned mercedes is living on its name and it's image selling cars and number two on my list is bmw now bmw ultimate driving machine they always make great engines there's no arguing that the transmissions are getting better and better because a lot of them they're getting from zf which is another german company that does make very good transmissions as an example the zf company sold over 3 million of their zf8 hp 8-speed high horsepower transmission to all kinds of manufacturers in the world so they've got some good stuff going for them but of course here in the united states they're a luxury car they always rip off their customers that's just how they go the cars are extremely expensive expensive to maintain uber expensive to repair guys ripping off their customers i remember a few years back i was working on a guys bmw he wanted me to change the transmission fluid well the only people that had this really bizarro fluid that worked was a bmw dealer so i went to them and i said i want to buy some fluid from you and i said well we're sorry we can't sell you uh quarts of fluid i said what do you mean he said well we buy them in the big 55 gallon drums or whatever the huge ones right and we charge our customers for the service we don't charge per quart because if we did we'd have to get a legal scale or volume to measure it so it's exact so we just charged that service fee of so much for the fluid which they just guess they said well if it was four quarts then we'd just see how much we're gonna charge a court and give them a flat fee but they couldn't charge them by the court because then they'd have to have all this legal measurement stuff that they didn't want to get involved in so they said to me we can't sell your quartz great so what can you sell me well i said actually we can't sell you anything but if you want to contact the manufacturer you can buy these 55 gallon drums right and they were like you know eight nine hundred dollars a drum or something so i just told the customer you want to change go to the dealer they're gonna rip you off but it's a rip-off company anyway and that's just the tip of the bucket when it comes to bmws you have tons of microprocessors and probably the worst use of plastic of any german manufacturer in the bmw's i've seen when they get to be seven eight nine years old all the plastic cracks all the stuff costs a fortune you gotta spend thousands of dollars and generally the customers just get rid of the car then now they are fun to drive especially their m series their racing series solid build as far as i'm concerned better built than a mercedes the m series if you've got the money and you don't care about money go ahead and buy bmw just realize that aside from the m series bmw resale value is absolute garbage because everybody knows it cost a fortune so you can get used once cheap don't get suckered into buying a used one that's got 140 000 miles because odds are it's on its last legs and you're gonna end up putting a ton of money into it i mean if you like it you want to buy one and the mechanic says it's okay now and you can get it for you know a couple grand or something go ahead and buy yourself a toy but don't expect to drive it every day put 15 000 miles a year or more on it because it'll fall apart in front of your eyes in the short run i do have to say customers of mine that bought european cars the bmw owners are pretty satisfied until they get old and start falling apart and a lot of those people are doctors lawyers doesn't mean that much to them they make so much money and if they get five six years out of the car and don't have any problems they're happy with the car so you got that kind of money you want a bmw go ahead you got money to burn anyway now the last car on my list of worst to best european cars is volvo now technically volvo isn't a european company more the chinese owner but they still build a lot of cars in europe now they do build a lot of cars in china now they're you know they're moving production and being a chinese company they're really into hybrid and electric cars they claim in the future that's all they're going to make are hybrid and electric cars that they're no longer making gasoline cars or diesel cars they're getting into a different mindset the volvos were fantastic cars when i was young mechanic in the 60s i had an aunt who had half a million miles on her p 1800 that was a great little sports car basic standard transmission dual stromberg carbs on it i mean it was a simple car that was built and could last a retired school teacher from long island went more than 3 million miles on ed volvo they were solid built cars back in the day they still make good cars nowhere near as solid as that because they started to mass produce some more later and then when they went to front-wheel drive they had a little problems with some of the front-wheel drive transmissions and stuff they've ironed a lot of that stuff up but even to this day i got customers with volvos and if they don't mind the high original price they're pretty well built cars like i say the chinese own them now they're going to hybrid and electric cars we'll see what the future brings with them but they still made pretty reliable solid cars and of course volvo was the first real company in the world to go nuts about safety so they put air bags and all kinds of stuff in and they gave the technology away worldwide so people would dial us in cars you know very nice of them and they were solid built cars now a lot of people didn't like because they looked boxy they're a lot more stylish than they used to be but the swedes always made solid reliable engines and once they figured out how to make front-wheel drive automatic transmissions those are good the old rear wheel drive ones hardly had any problems at all but no the modern ones they have better transmissions i mean i worked on one the other day it had an ace and it had a toyota automatic transmission in it so if you can't beat them join them in that case and unlike a lot of the other european cars i've had many customers buy used volvos and keep them for years unfortunately for volvo they're european car and they still have a bad image in the united states for money pits so i've had a lot of customers buy use volvos with maybe a hundred thousand miles and pay two three grand for them and drive them another hundred thousand miles and hardly spend any money out of my law you can take an advantage of that with a volvo if you want a european car of course you'd want a mechanic like me to check this thing out can't trust anybody with a used car but that's one of the few european cars and i tell people if the check's all good you might get a used one you could get a good deal and with the chinese taking over and talking about hybrid and electric cars who knows they might end up making great electric cars and great hybrid cars everybody knows a bunch of productions going to china anyways and then they're going to start selling them all over the world just like the japanese originally did they started for their small market and started to expand by building better products that cost less that people wanted to drive so now you know a little bit more about european cars so if you've got money burning holes in your pockets and you just have to have a european car at least now you can make a logical decision on it so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 1,506,419

Rating: 4.7955756 out of 5

Keywords: BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Volvo, auto, auto repair, best car brands, best car brands to buy, best cars, car, car advice, car brand, car brands, car brands tier list, car diy, car repair, car review, cars, diy, how to, i ranked all car brands from worst to best, least reliable cars, mechanic, most reliable cars, reliable cars, repair, scotty kilmer, top 10, worst car brands, worst cars, worst to best, european car brands, european cars, europe, european

Id: 7qbXSqCOQEM

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020