Rev up your engines,
today I'm going to answer joey b ball's question, why are luxury cars unreliable these days,
luxury cars are a status symbol, and as such what do they do with a status symbol, the
put every fancy thing they possibly can and often the newest technology, to give you one
of numerous examples, the 98-2000 cadillac seville they came with water cooled alternators,
think about it an alternator is charging your car with electricity yet it has the cooling
of the coolant system going inside to cool it down so it doesn't overheat, now when they
did that as a mechanic myself I thought, what a stupid idea, combine your charging system
with electricity with the coolant those things are going to leak and short out,
guess what happened, the all leaked and shorted out and they only used it from 98-2000 then
they gave up with that idea, but if you bought one of those cars tough luck on you,
and since they are luxury cars, hey their expected to ride like a dream, now they put
some insane technology into modern cars, you take some of these mercedes, the have shock
absorber air bag assemblies, one on each corner, two in the front and two in the back,
and they run off of all kinds of things, hydraulic pressure, electrical computer signals, and
they have a little air bag built into them that runs off of an air compressor, we're
talking about high tech, and guess what high tech stuff wears out,
yeah they ride like a dream there's no arguing that, but when they break down and break down
they do, they cost a fortune, not something a normal person is going to want to have,
and if your talking about a German luxury car like a mercedes, they have very tight
tolerances, I remember when I was a young mechanic my grandfather said to me, this is
stupid look at this German car, he said they have this thing machined so perfectly that
it fits right on without a gasket, but it costs a fortune to machine them,
and compare that to an American car that hey they would just put a gasket there, it would
be just made in a factory stamped out and then a gasket it put on it and it's bolted
on so it doesn't leak instead of making a really fine tolerance,
the closer and finer the tolerance the more maintenance you need, to give you an example
from the military world, in Vietnam the M16 was the average guys rifle, a highly designed
machine, had pretty tight tolerances, where the Vietnamese were using the AK47, which
not only was an old design it came from world war 2, but it had very wide tolerances, so
if you threw one in the mud or buried it in the ground and got it out later, the thing
would still fire perfectly fine, because it wasn't that high tech and the tolerances being
that wide and things being off a little here and there it still worked perfectly fine,
so if we go back to the car world and I see this all the time, let's say you got a few
years old luxury car, somebody buys it, luxury cars often have very low resale values, so
if somebody says, oh I'll get this used mercedes really cheap, now you might get it really
cheap but when people do that then often they don't spend the money to maintain the vehicle,
and if you don't maintain a luxury vehicle guess what, it will fall apart and people
will say, boy that' an unreliable car that thing was always breaking down,
now of course there are exceptions to the rule, this is a 17 year old lexus, I do nothing
practically except change the oil in the thing and it doesn't have those problems, but then
again that's toyota and that's a completely different ball game,
unless you go into the realm of a lexus hybrid luxury car, because as they age hybrid cars
can get very expensive to repair, batteries can cost thousands of dollars and the parts
on them cost a ton and being electric part of the time with over 200 volts, anybody that's
going to work on that is going to charge a lot of money because they need a lot of specialty
tools and a lot of knowledge because they know the average guy can't work on that kind
of voltage they could kill themselves, now recently there's even more reasons that
luxury cars can be unreliable, and that' because being a luxury car it's got the snob appeal,
and if your going to be a snob you can't be driving around in an old luxury car, so you
have to buy a new luxury car, and knowing that they can put a lot of planned obsolescence
into a luxury car they make sure things start to break when they get a few years old, you'll
go buy another one, your going to do it anyways if your trying to impress people by the newer
car your driving, but they kind of push you along with planned obsolescence,
now the average person with a luxury car does think that way, as an example I got a customer
on the opposite end of the spectrum, he bought a mercedes s600 and that thing was $120,000
when it was new, he got it when it was 7 years old for $10,000 dollars, and yeah the electronics
were breaking down, some of the windows don't roll up and down anymore, he doesn't care
because he's using it just to drive around in, but he's the rarity, most people don't
want to be driving a luxury car where half of the stuff on it doesn't work anymore,
and this might sound a little bit crazy but it's true for a lot of people, I remember
when I was a young mechanic, we had a customer and he'd buy a new cadillac every two years
and he did zero maintenance on the car, he didn't even change the oil in the thing, I'll
never forget talking to him one time, he said when my cigarette ashtray get filled up with
ashes, I'll just go buy another car, he was joking but to some extent was wasn't joking,
now it's not that they can't make reliable luxury cars like the lexus that my wife drives,
it's totally possible to do, but it's against a lot of their own business interests especially
in American cars to make a luxury car that lasts a long time and doesn't break down because
they want to keep selling you new ones every few years, and since most people with luxury
cars they want a fast car, it's a luxury car it's got to be fast, so modern cars their
throwing in GDI fuel injection, their throwing in sometimes dual two turbochargers on an
engine, yes they go fast but when you put all that added strain on the engine guess
what, it's going to wear out faster, and in the case of some luxury cars these
days, they tell you to use premium gas which costs a whole bunch more, I've seen a lot
of people with luxury cars, they'll just put regular gas and they'll say, oh look it runs
fine to me, now it does run fine to some extent, but you're always going to lose some power
that way and unless it's an ultra modern one with computer controls that can compensate
for the different octane of the gas, eventually the engine will carbon up from not running
perfectly and then it won't be as reliable, now it is kind of strange how times have changed
with luxury cars being unreliable because when I was a young mechanic in the 60's a
cadillac everybody was singing about great luxury cadillacs, well those things were actually
extremely reliable, but of course times have changed now cadillacs, hey they made the list
of the most unreliable cars this year, and if anybody ever owned a rolls royce from the
1980's, those things just fell apart as you were driving down the road, well now BMW owns
them and their v12 BMW engines their completely different than they used to be, but just because
your paying all this money doesn't mean your going to get a reliable vehicle these days,
and even something as simple as tires and wheels on a luxury car, some of the modern
ones they come with really fancy low profile tires, and expensive rims that if you hit
pot holes they'll bend and break, the car will get out of alignment, suspension parts
will break down, things that if they didn't have these crazy high tech designs wouldn't
be happening in the first place, I've even had personal customers who had those
low profile tire and rims taken off of their luxury car and put on normal tires and they
were happy with it, and the same goes true with people that have luxury cars with those
fancy suspension systems, hey if the struts cost $1,500 a piece now a days, you can get
a kit for maybe $800 that does all 4 and you can turn it back into a normal suspension
system instead of one that's run by computers, but really who wants to get involved in that
nonsense in the first place, my advice is don't buy one of those cars to begin with,
so now you know why luxury cars these days, hey they can become very unreliable over a
very short period of time, that's why I'm still driving my 94 Celica, and since this
is the Thursday segment where I answer a viewer's question, place your own question on the YouTube
comments below and I'll pick the best ones to make a single video to answer your question,
and where else can you find a guy with 50 years experience of fixing cars to answer
your own question with a video, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car
repair videos, remember to ring that bell!
You've already got youtube ads, can you fuck off already?
Good ol' Scotty. I swear when I use to watch him every video came down to "Your an idiot if you didn't buy a Toyota!"
He's not wrong, but he is hard to listen to
Lexus has some of the highest reliability scores in the industry.
Just want to point out that the AK-47 was never used in WWII, according to ye olde internet it was first picked up by the Soviets in 1949.
I work at an auto repair shop. Everything this guy said is right. The target market that buys luxury cars isn't in it for the long-haul, they aren't concerned about maintenance costs and long-term reliability. They're concerned about features and comfort. And the more features a vehicle has and the more sophisticated the suspension of a vehicle to maintain that level of comfort -- well, the more parts there are that can break down.