GF bought an 07 Santa Fe Limited - no problems yet (fingers crossed) @ 7 months and 10k miles...no complaints at all, it's actually a very nice ride. paid only 24.5 + tax

Hyundai is improving so quickly, I can see them = Toyota/Honda in 5 years in terms of quality & value, if not sooner

 

Yea the Genesis should be a interesting car..

 

I was asking my mechanic that has been in the same spot for the last 30 years what type of used car to recommend to a friend that is shopping in the $5-7K range.

when asked about recommending a hyundai to the guy because everything else i saw was close to $10 for a car with 100K Miles on it.

He said Korean cars are garbage even the new ones. Even some Toyota's are now garbage named the Camry as an example.

People with Hyundai's have more then the engine and tranny problems that is not covered under warranty, (suspension, electronics, build quality issues, Korean parts are very hard to get for some reason.

Nobody wants to work on Korean cars. etc. etc.

Don't know how much of this is BS but i think he is on the money with most of it. Having been an unfortunate Hyundai owner in the early 90s I can testify that the build quality of those cars was (fall apart at 60K miles)
After sinking more and more money into junk heap it hard for me to trust the reliability of a Hyundai.

Basically the only thing he could say is only models and parts that are still made in Japan are any good.

A lot of Toyotas and Hondas that are assembled here and in Mexico suck in the reliability category.!

 

I would love to see this car come out with a small (3.6L) high, quick revving V8. That would be simply awesome IMO. Though it still looks like crap, assuming it looks like that red thing... haha

 

I know people with recent Hyundais and Kias who love them and have no problems.

 

So what did he recommend?

Anecdotes on cars made 15 years ago don't mean much. My first car, a (then new) Honda Prelude, was AWFUL in Pennsylvania winters - it's carburetor (!) would basically freeze up and stick. But overall I still loved the car.

So he wrote off all cars and parts made everywhere other than Japan?

 

I personally know a service advisor at a Kia dealership who would greatly disagree

 

If there's a turbo V6 under the hood (like original article mentions) you can kiss the VQ-cars goodbye!

 

Rav4, was a thumbs up as I remember,
the new camry was a thumbs down.

I don't quite remember all the thumbs up cars but the Koreans definitely had a big thumbs down. regardless of their 100K mile warranties.

I know. What scared me was that both Toyota and Honda have had so much trouble w/ reliability of their new cars.

This guy has everything in his shop, 540, m3, m5, all the new S and E series and mostly cars in the upper $30K range and up. He also works on everything else you just don't see much junk in his shop for he truly is a good mechanic and charges as such.

I have personally been to his shop for decades and took most of my cars there for major service. I just did the 90k service w/ timing belt and all the jazz at his shop. When he tells me that people come to him trow him the keys to their hyundai's and say:


BMW and Mercedes definitely don't have his approval either.

Older generation Toyota's and Hondas where parts and designs were brought over from Japan got a thumbs up from him.

I was very frustrated that everything I wanted to recommend was cars a few years old with close to 90K on the speedometer were still in the 10K range.

I really wanted to believe that Hyundai was a good deal.
Then you know what they say there is a reason things cost what they do. If it looks to good to be true then it is.
Take a drive in a 10 Year old Honda vs a 10 year old Hyundai
can you tell the difference on how it was made. You bet.

 

Of course, because that 10 year old Hyundai was junk when it was NEW.

But things do change. Some friends have a 'loaded' recent Kia minivan and I was surprised how nice it is. They've had no problems with it. I know another person with a Sonata and they say it's been bulletproof.

 

I guess it doesn't matter that Toyota is only #1 in Auto sales.. THere #1 for a reason. I don't think i've ever heard anyone bad mouth Toyota and say that there unreliable.. Seems that MB and BMW have the most reliability issues than Toyota and Honda.

 

If Hyundai is serious about changing its image then I think they need to come out with a new higher end brand. It is engraved in my mind that Hyundai's are cheap poorly made knockoff cars. No matter how good of a car they come out with, I could never proudly say I'm driving a "Hyundai". This is much like how people felt about Toyota and look what happened when they launched Lexus.

 

I'm glad your dad got a good one. and I'm sure you are correct that every year the Koreans are getting better and unfortunately imo the Toyota's are getting a little worse.

However horrible he might be,
The reason I like him is because he is honest with me.
I don't buy cars from him. Just service them.

I'm just relaying my two cents as spoken from someone in the trenches everyday fixing cars and making a living from that. I see everything in his shop and SF is a very tough city on cars. A lot of up and down is rough on the Transmission.

Don't get upset that i'm telling you that not all the Korean cars are pure sunshine. Yours might be.

 

Alexulan, your mechanic has a lot of data running against him. In my experience, I've found advice from mechanics who have been working far too long in the field at the same job to offer quite bad advice. They develop their bias and then never let go.

Toyota had a few issues with the early new camrys, that doesnt make the whole line junk.

My sister never had trouble with her 2004 SanteFe either(put maybe 30k miles on it). The only reason she traded it in on a 06 Acura RSX Type-S was that she wanted a smaller/sportier car since she got married and her husband had a big truck.

Best thing to do with advice is just take it as that. We still have to make our own decisions; dont take someone's "fact" as the plain and simple truth, because we all are just human

 

too bad the next Z will be close to 350hp.. but either way its good to have more options