Mazdas too. I find Toyota's suspensions and driving dynamics terrible. Mazda represents a perfect combination of good Japanese reliability and good handling dynamics. I also like that they still offer a proper automatic transmission in their cars (as opposed to the CVT epidemic in other makes), as well as naturally aspirated engine options (whereas many other makes only offer turbos now).
The days of their collaboration with Ford are long gone, and with it their body durability problems. They still collaborate with Toyota though.
My 2014 Mazda 3 has fairly regular infotainment issues, audio playing on my phone but no audio from the speakers, resolved by rebooting it.
Also had an issue with the backup camera cutting out. Was caused by a loose connector. Dealership was unwilling to help for free so I just cleaned the contacts and reseated the connector myself. Months later I received a recall notice with no fix available, still more months later hey finally said there was a repair but I haven’t brought it in yet.
All that said I’m still happy with the car despite these imperfections and will keep driving it until the wheels fall off, and wouldn’t have any reservations about buying a new one.
I mean, the rear window was still transparent it’s not like a couldn’t see where I was going entirely. I did miss the much wider FOV of the camera when backing out of my garage though.
Maybe they are better now, but I had two Mazdas between about 2005 and 2015. They were fine for the most part, but their frames rusted out and had to be scrapped well before the rest of the car was worn out. They're not really suitable for long-term use in the midwestern/northeast US salt belt unless you're a high-roller who only leases cars.
Yes, but the Mazdas we had were worse than average. They were made of thinner gauge metal than I've seen on any other car (both frame and body panels) and I they didn't bother to add even a token amount of paint or other rust prevention.
Mazda is responsible for one of the biggest reliability cock-ups in modern automotive history. A lot of Americans are not aware of this because this generation of diesel motor didn't make it to the American market but for many years they sold cars with a diesel engine with multiple critical manufacturing and design issues that resulted in thousands and thousands of defective engines. In many markets this was never recalled and at least in some markets Mazda's response was to draw another line higher up on diesel dipsticks so the owner could monitor if their crankcase was filling up with diesel, which would eventually dilute the engine oil and destroy the turbo and other components.
In my country used car dealers will not touch Mazda diesels for trade-ins because they always come back to them with destroyed engines.
You've gotta be in Australia because I had a cx-5 2014 2.2 TD and it was a nightmare. I'll never buy a Mazda again. You know its bad when years after the warranty has expired Mazda are fixing head gaskets or outright replacing engines for free.
I had a sub 5sec 0-60 Miata set up for the track and I gotta tell you that I can whip our Prius much more than I thought was possible. Camry is a barge though.
My mother has had two of them and they are very fun to drive -- even completely stock. The first was a 91 (how I learned to drive a manual transmission) and the second/current is a 2005. The newer one is more powerful (not sure how many HP but it seems significant) but I still prefer the older one. The design was peak 80s Japanese functional minimalism and there was no magic behind any of its features.
However, as it applies to the parent comment, I can't actually say too much about reliability, as both of them were driven primarily on weekends and _maybe_ 2K miles per year.
I own a 2011 3 hatchback, bought new in 2010. Besides wear items, I think I’ve replaced one belt and one hose. It’s only on its third battery and 2nd/3rd lightbulbs all around. Absolutely the most reliable car I’ve ever owned, whether I measure by problems/mile, problems/year, or dollars/year.
I also have a Miata (ND - 4th gen) that gets driven less than 3K miles/year. No problems there other than Mazda’s buggy CarPlay (and insane choice to disable the touchscreen when in motion).
I believe there’s a way to enter dev mode on the infotainment and reenable the touch screen while in motion. Try looking on YouTube. I found the method for my 2014 but neglected to actually do it since I prefer the center console wheel anyway.
From what I know, Mazdas are the most European Japanese cars: more fun and less reliable. I was considering an MX-5 / Miata once, and... they rust quickly (maybe the current model doesn't).
The Mk1 Miata was prone to rust - I had one of those. But I think the more recent ones are better. It was a good car though - 15 years old when I bought it, 30 when sold and only needed to go to the garage about once a year.
What's your beef with CVT, especially with Toyota's planetary gear? The latter is probably the greatest development in transmission in the last 50+ years.
The Corolla I was driving recently can definitely not be recommended. It was a rental.
Was a Hybrid, though that shouldn't affect this. It wouldn't save most of the settings I changed. Apparently you can either save it "to the key" (I googled how to do it, didn't work) or to your "profile" with a mobile app. I would never want to have to use my mobile to save car settings, even if I owned it, let alone a rental.
It has a feature that scans road signs and displays them on the dash. Awesome feature, which I've had in other cars before. Just in case you missed one and usually more accurate than Google maps for dynamic situations like construction zones. Unfortunately it loudly beeps and blinks at you if you happen to go over the limit or god forbid set the cruise control above the limit. This can be disabled individually but is part of the settings that don't save across car shutdowns.
Why is that an issue? Because setting the cruise control to 50 when in a 50km/h zone will have you driving 45 in reality as evidenced by speed measuring displays I drove by. At 100km/h you'll probably be going 90. I learned the 6 key presses on the steering wheel to disable this after starting the car real fast. Unfortunately it disables the entire feature (else it'd be a lot more key presses and I ain't doing that). If this wasn't a rental but a purchase I'd be in this guys boat and trying to return the car.
This is just one example. The other more dire one is the cruise control. I've mentioned it elsewhere before and this Corolla isn't the only one, but the automatic breaking in these cars nowadays is dangerous. The amount of time I was sitting in the car with my foot right above the accelerator in case I need to power through an automatic breaking situation was unreal.
So glad to have been back home after vacation, driving my Subaru (with an adaptive cruise control that does not have this issue).
> setting the cruise control to 50 when in a 50km/h zone will have you driving 45 in reality as evidenced by speed measuring displays I drove by. At 100km/h you'll probably be going 90.
This is very common and it's probably a deliberate choice of the manufacturer.
I know that my old car in the 90s reported 10 km/h more than the real speed and most other cars did the same, especially at low speeds. My current car is not as bad but I have to set 52 to go 50, 72 to go 70.
Furthermore some speed displays are calibrated differently. Some of them report me at 50, 47, 53 at different towns on the same route. I know I'm OK at 52 because I never got a fine.
I'm more conservative on roads that I'm not familiar with (eg: on a vacation in another country.) The general rule has always been to go at the same speed of the other cars.
> or god forbid set the cruise control above the limit
The word limit is the key here.
> Because setting the cruise control to 50 when in a 50km/h zone will have you driving 45 in reality
Dear god! I hope you somehow made it through that insufferable experience. To think of the few seconds of your life you've irreplaceably lost! Sending a virtual hug!
My Kia Stinger is 6 years old, ~45K miles, including some modifications, 8 HPDE track days, etc. It's had a few quirks that I've had to learn (don't switch from default driving mode to sport while driving in reverse and then quickly shifting to drive mode - it confuses the sensors. A restart solves the issue 100%). Sound system "enhanced" mode sometimes stops playing all sound - eventually it comes back, and turning off the enhanced mode always restores sound - but it sounds SO much better. Phantom presses on the center screen if there's a large temperature differential (screen heated up by the sun, A/C on in the car, for example). None critical to the basics.
It's never been back to the dealer except for a free oil change at ~1K miles. Mainly because the reputation of Kia dealers is that it's hard to say whether you will be in worse shape if they deny or accept your warrantied repair. I mean, if the engine fails, sure, they can't make it any worse. But there are many stories of people getting a recall and the coolant system not properly bled, so the car overheats on the way home. Or a dealer refusing an obvious warranty repair for ridiculous reasons - only to try to sell you a non-warranty repair for the same problem, etc.
I am driving my car as if there is no warranty, at this point. It's been a GREAT car to drive in most ways, but I don't expect Kia to come through and fix any drivetrain issue in the next few years / 55K miles, if needed.
Not so sure about Subaru. I love my Outback but it is also the only car I've ever owned which left me stranded twice due to two separate firmware issues. Both issues were known and Subaru failed to communicate them to me.
I will probably go with Toyota for our next car despite loving the handling and comfort of our Subaru.
Yeah, we have an Outback as well (2017) and it, too, left us "stranded" (it was parked at home but failed when we really needed it) due to probably the same thing ? Ours drained the battery dead both times. We brought it in both times and had them look it over, both times they blamed us, saying we left a light on (we didn't). Then my wife remembered a recall notice concerning the electrical system, and suddenly they were able to fix the issue. Really put a dent in my trust with them.
Great car otherwise. Well, the CVT isn't the best for driving. But the AWD and agility and snow handling is fantastic.
Same year here. Actually the battery charging issue left us stranded a few times but only once in public. It was the faulty fuel gauge firmware that left us stranded on the side of the I-5 freeway in the middle of CA.
The CVT sort of sucks. Mostly ok but we have a long lag between reverse and drive which causes the car to jerk forward if you try to accelerate before the forward motion starts. The turning radius is amazing though.
My father in law is a Toyota mechanic and warned me to get rid of the car before 100k miles though as more recent subies are as reliable as they used to be.
Was loyal Honda owner since my 1st one in 00s, my current two will be the last I own. Purchased brand new, multiple issues with body/chassis & HVAC in Pilot, electrical systems/motors in Oddy. The dealership tried to fix things and did it unprofessionally.
From what I’ve read, and what I get in the comments here, these too are plagued by electronics and software issues. I’m not sure this category of issues, especially software ones, are correctly taken into account in reliability scores. Ironically my current car (from 2010) doesn’t score too high in reliability, but not having a screen makes that whole class of problems go away.
I hope my current car makes it so that I can entirely skip the current gen cars to hopefully the future one with these issues sorted out, including physical buttons.
Kia's are sadly not that good, we had a Ceed with very obvious rust problems that was widespread. Re-painting did not help, it was the steel treatment that somehow wrecked the paint from underneath.
Kias EVs are even more famour for troubles, just google for Kia ICCU. Even the XC90 competitor EV9 seems to have some trouble with this still.
It's weird that Toyota cars are taking top spots in car breakdown statistics the last couple years. Hyundai & Kia have their EVs breakdown left and right with their ICCU failures, and spare parts seem to be in rather short supply (and a replaced ICCU can fail again). And their battery warranty is only 5 years / 100 km.
The two main Achilles Heels of Hyundai/Kia are their ICE Engines and their EV ICCUs. Google reliability for both and proceed accordingly. They're good about replacing/fixing both issues when they come up, and normally have extended warranties, but they are critical components too and long lead times to fix.
Outside of those issues, which don't happen on all vehicles, I view the brand as pretty rock solid. I'm impressed by how quickly they iterate, their styling, and their NVH attributes. Their pricing has crept up a bit, but still not terrible.
If you have a problem they take 4 weeks to fix it all while you're paying $50+/day for a rental car that they will fight you tooth and nail on reimbursing.
One local dealer refused to honor under warranty the work another dealer did.
If you have any damage (even minor cosmetic) they will blame that on your issues regardless of relativity.
(I have a Hyundai that's had the ICCU replaced once, the ABS IEB twice, and the low-voltage battery 3 times, two of the 3 times on my dime. All on a less than 3-year-old car with less than 100k miles)
The company has been miserable to deal with compared to my past experiences with other brands.
Everything I've heard of their dealers & service departments are what keep me away from their EVs. On the one hand, performance/looks/fun factor to price, they are a pretty good value. On the other hand, if I were to spend $70k on an Ioniq 5N, I would have expectations of service which they are clearly not going to meet. So at that pricing level, its back to BMW EVs.
Very interesting. I had considered the Genesis sub-brand if only for the separate dealers, though there are much fewer of them.
On the plus side a lot of the Genesis vehicles seem like they slap every option the Germans make you pay $1000s each for into the base model, so decent value from that perspective.
I've sat in their EV hatch thing the GV60 in showroom and was impressed by the base features set. I also had a decent length uber ride sitting in the back of their ICE sedan, either the G80 or G90 and it was a nice executive sedan. My backseat reclined, it had motorized shades, the air vents in the back were actually powerful, etc.
Honorable mention - Hyundai Kona EV managed to build a reduction gear that blows around 100k km - just after warranty ends and they specifically recommend not changing the gear oil.
They managed to make an unreliable EV. Great kob, one of the few remaining gear in drivetrain and you managed to fuck that up. Maybe it's on purpose...
I recently got rid of a 2016 Kia Sonata with a severe (and getting worse) oil burning issue. It was well under 100k miles. We really liked the car otherwise overall. Great price, seemed to be made well, easy to work on. The extended warranty on these only applies if you actually blow up engine, which I wasn't willing to do deliberately because I have scruples.
(And according to forum threads, at the time this happened to this us, stealerships were putting people on a 1-2 year waitlist for remanufactured engines, or straight-up totalling their vehicles and giving them "market value" for the car, and these models had awful resale value exactly due to these problems.)
We had a 2015 Sorento with a similar issue. Kia said the oil burn rate was within specs and refused to act. It died at 105k, and they refused to do anything about it, even with documentation of the oil burn rate going back to 75k miles. We replaced the engine on our own dime, and it took me three weeks to find a single engine that was compatible.
That said, a few months ago my daughter was t-boned in it by a driving going 60+ MPH. The impact was directly on the driver’s door. She not only survived, but did so with only superficial facial cuts and some longer-term, back pain.
I can’t be too hard on a car that saved my daughter’s life.
Lol, I think I did the exact same thing with a Tucson. Similar mileage, too. Did you have the 2l or 2.4l engine? I had oil burning and reduced power. Dealer actually said they'd replace the engine... After it actually died. No shot I'm going to drive my car w/ my fam just waiting for it to die. I did absolutely love the vehicle otherwise, so that was a real bummer.
For a long time Consumer Reports has ranked cars as Japanese > American >> European, European cars have some luxury cachet but if you want a car that starts when you turn the key look elsewhere. American cars came a long way since the 1970s when they really were trash.
Consumer Reports currently has Audi and BMW ahead of any American manufacturer.
Brand average reliability is tricky though, on their 100-point scale, their top manufacturer (Subaru) has models that range from 38-98.
Looking at the model breakdown... I kinda suspect they don’t really have enough datapoints - VW’s reliability only includes 3 models (the Tiguan, ID.4 and TAOS) - Ford has a 25-point difference between the Escape and Maverick hybrids that share the same engine/powertrain (I can’t think of any reason why the Maverick would actually be notably more reliable than the Escape unless the PHEV escape is dragging down weighted reliability by that much over the mild hybrid), etc.
"European" cars are not really a category. French/Italian/Spanish cars are very different from German/Volvo, and even these groupings are a stretch. Then you have Dacia too, and I have no idea where to even put it. Plus you have some luxury British cars, which are again veery different.
In the USA (where Consumer Reports exists), we don’t have any French or Spanish brands. Italian brands are only exotics and couple near-luxury brands from Stellantis.
To a USAian, “European Brand” means something from Germany or Scandinavia. If you mean a Ferrari or Lamborghini, you say that name.
There's Fiat, an Italian brand that I think of as terribly downmarket. I think it's part of Stellantis and I think if you see Stellantis coming you're supposed to run, not walk away -- I guess Chrysler is still part of that, but Chrysler is also far worse than Ford and GM.
As for Ferrari and Lamborghini it doesn't matter what Consumer Reports thinks.
>"European" cars are not really a category. /Spanish cars are very different from German/Volvo
VWAG owns the largest Spanish car maker, Seat/Cupra. 100% of cars Seat/Cupra sells are VW derivatives. Whatever you imagine the difference between Spanish cars and German cars to be, it is not real.
>French/Italian
Renault is a very different company then Stellantis (Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot).
What you should compare is the parent company making these cars.
>Plus you have some luxury British cars, which are again veery different.
Lotus is a Geely brand, just like Volvo is a Geely brand, some of their cars are on the same platform. Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot are Stellantis brands.
The only spanish car maker is SEAT and it's part of VAG group. SEAT are more expensive than Skoda, but cheaper than Audi.
And using the country card with these automaker corporations is very tricky, because they have factories everywhere. You can buy an Audi made in Spain or a VW made in Slovakia.
The relative ranking may hold, but the problem nowadays is all cars are unreliable due to software. Sure a car letting you down because the engine is blown up is bad, but a car failing unpredictably in the middle of nowhere due to software issue a pretty serious issue to. I’m not sure Japanese are better on this.
> While driving on Highway 13 (Montreal), the vehicle abruptly lost all throttle response
This has happened twice with a Mk II Leaf for us. The second time the dealer charged me over $100 to say "Mēh! No idea what went wrong"
Perhaps BYD? They seem to be getting it together.
As an old and grey computer programmer I do not, absolutely do not want, a "software defined vehicle". My comrades and I are renowned for unreliable crappy consumer products, where car manufacturers in the ICE era developed remarkably reliable and performant vehicles.
I really think electric cars need to be done differently, where the drive train is not dependant on my friends who "move fast and break things". My friends like these should be nowhere near automobiles.
Believe it or not, both the software and hardware on Chinese-made Teslas is rock solid. (With the notable and massive exception of Autopilot/FSD, but this is an optional feature.) The Model 3 has been ranked the most reliable EV in Australia:
If you buy a Toyota ProAce van you get a Peugeot Expert aka Citroen Jumpy/Traveller aka the respective Fiat and Opel (and Vauxhall?) branded vehicles. It's a Volkswagen Transporter-sized van, not an Eurovan/minivan that still might be sold in EU only though.
idk but in addition to what was listed already stay away from: Land Rover, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Fiat
... all of them leave you stranded in the middle of the road
To those downvoting my perfectly succinct answer to the question, I urge you to drive one of the newer Mercedes EVs. After my Tesla nightmare I moved on to Mercedes and it was night and day.
The EVs (from any mainstream manufacturer that began with ICE products) are all fairly immature. My AMG E53 (cabriolet) is a hybrid, and I can tolerate that. It gives me an extra 100+HP when I punch it, but I wonder how long the battery is going to last. The electric power plant adds more than 500lbs to the car, but the car still performs very well. (The car is five years old now.) I like that I can drive over 400 miles on a tank of gas, and I like that I have no trouble finding a gas station, and that it takes only a few minutes to fill the tank.
I'm looking forward to the time when an EV can give me all of these things, and I'll eagerly purchase one when that happens.
I bought this car after owning a high-end BMW. I was looking for a car that performs well, but is very reliable.
It has been a great car, and it cost only 66% of the price that Vicken paid for his Volvo EX90.
I was a bit surprised to see the the "software" criteria in your reply, as I'd always thought of enshittification's inevitability as a capitalist phenomenon whereby a quality brand is wrung out for near term gains by management incentivized to get their cut before riding off into the sunset.
But after reading up a bit, I've found that software platform lock-in was important in enshittification's original formulation — it's not just that quality goes to crap, but that users have nowhere else to go.
Thank you for that second paragraph. Really hate people throwing that word around without understanding what it actually means. Was about to get inflamed.
Makes you wonder how open software car platform could look like and why nobody is making one.
Probably because if you and me would write one and install it on our cars it would void all certifications and make the car not legal to drive. That doesn't mean that manufacturers could not band together and make a common OS for cars, or a company in that market could not sell its software to everybody (like MS or Google) but I believe that manufactures don't want to completely commoditize cars and go the way of gas brands or smartphones. A car is 4 wheels, steering and brakes to me, so I don't care much about what I'm driving as long as it handles well and brakes strong, but that's not the case for most people so manufacturers want to add their own bells and whistles.
That's a phenomenon that can be blamed on low-IQ or disengaged owners.
Some companies have owners that are locked in, who know where the true value of their business lies (usually this involves a high quality product), and holds the management to account to keep the golden-egg-laying goose alive.
But other companies are owned by index funds, ETFs, and/or dumb people who don't know or care how things work. These have no defense against enshittifying.
I've bought some products that are of almost egregiously high quality, and nearly 100% of the time there's family ownership, or it's still run by the founders.
I remember, some years back, the warranty period was actually almost inversely correlated with reliability. It seemed like the companies that were making unreliable cars were just hoping to get people onboard with long warranties. There's a great story on Reddit from years ago about the lifetime Kia warranty, and a car that went through something like 7 engines in 10 years.
