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A newer Ford Fusion is a better choice for a college person because young people drive a lot of miles.
Small, economical, and good on gas.
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I couldn't afford one when I was in college. I had like $1,000 and maybe $400/month in take-home pay. But it was a great car when I finished school and started my professional career. Ran it for a few years until I took care of some financial priorities and then bought my F-150.
Oh we know what it would do, we have the TTV6 to show us.
We also have a 2.0t & 2.4t. And with diesels, a 4.5t (VD) and a 3.3t (F33A) (90deg. Hot V6). Funnily enough, no similar issues, way more widespread.
Re: your case of GS vs. whatever things - I've had mine for 108k mi (175k km-ish) and the "big ticket" item that I've done is a complete battery module swap (~$2k), the transmission input damper is probably next ($1k-ish? parts + time). Since we're talking VAG, pretty much everybody that I know with an A6 (and a couple of non-2.0/1.9tdi A4s) has had his fair share of fuel system (diesels) issues, belt or preventative chain replacements (a chain snapping on a Toyota/Lexus over here is, for all intents and purposes, practically unheard of), various oil and coolant leaks, the occasional "this interior electric thing doesn't work". Rest of ze germans tend to be similar (MB) or generally worse (BMW).
When I was in university in the UK, an old lady I was looking after sold me her late husband's car which was sitting in their garage for 5 years.
I offered her 800 US dollars for it and she accepted ( she felt sorry for me I guess, for walking a few miles every week to deliver her groceries )
Yes, that does look good.....especially since those 80s-vintage 4Runners, like the compact trucks they were based on, were notorious for rust. But the powertrains ran forever.
my first thought after seeing this was of a dachshund
honestly i dig it! everything's so homogenous and all cars basically blend together these days i appreciate a unique (albeit hideous) creation like this... although i still think mankind should be ashamed with itself for creating the dachshund lol
We're dealing with a lot of anecdotal experience here, I suspect the aggregate statistics wouldn't bear out the Germans being more reliable and cheaper to own(though BMW is certainly improving on this front since the B48/58 engines came out.
Additionally, very few people don't buy a used car and then replace every conceivable wear item to bring it back to factory new. Most people buy a used car, drive it for 5-6 years, have stuff fixed as it breaks, and then move on to the next used car.
I think where older Lexuses can become untenable is the fact that they're often bought by people with low budgets looking for a nice car for the money. Now you've got a car with 100k+ miles and 10-20 years on it and you're getting to take care of the big ticket repairs that the prior owners probably didn't. I was this buyer. I paid $3200 for my 92 LS400 when I was a broke college student. When the AC compressor died and then the timing belt skipped a tooth the next year, I was looking at having to spend $2-3k to keep a car worth $1500 at best on the road. I only had $1,000 to my name at the time. That put a bitter taste in my mouth for luxury car ownership for many years. It was pretty much my fault for buying a car that I could afford to buy but not to own. I dumped it as/is for $1k and borrowed another LS400 from my parents until I finished school and bought my Fusion.
This time around I bought a much newer luxury car and made sure I had enough money to essentially buy the car again if I had to.
Fair, I do indeed replace all wear items when I get a car to avoid unexpected issues. I was just stunned just how much that entailed on the Lexus cars
Audis aren’t more reliable than Lexuses. You do your own work and pay no labor and go in when you get a car and do a ton of preventive maintenance and preemptive replacements most people don’t do. It’s MUCH more expensive for a normal owner to keep an old Audi running.
Sure but I still keep track of parts costs and labor hours for the sake of my metrics, the Lexus cars took more from me. And yes, I'm strange in the sense that I do replace all the wear items but I don't want 1. Issues randomly happening and 2. I want the car to match its as new performance testing
10-06-24, 10:35 PM
