Hondas, Toyotas and the brainwashed

[clinebarger]

Originally Posted By: HangFire
Originally Posted By: clinebarger

The power is one of my biggest complaints, I can't compare it to another 4 cylinder as I haven't had one besides this one in ages. It doesn't maintain speed on long hills at all.....WOT at 6,500 RPM to stay with traffic. My truck could tow this car up a hill faster!!


Something's wrong with your Corolla, unless you have something older than a 10th Gen. The only time I use WOT is to merge. I live in hill country. I have no problem climbing hills and keeping up with traffic. Local Interstate has 70MPH speed limit, has hills and everybody is going 80 and I am just over 3K RPM. There's something wrong if you're flogging 6.5KRPM just to keep up, unless your highways run at over 100MPH or something.


2010 Corolla LE with a 1.8L 2ZR-FE, Bought new...Has about 96,000 miles on it, No codes/Fuel Trims are good....Checked with a GM Tech 2, I Change the air filter regularly & keep up on maintenance.

The issue is on the toll way headed south with the A/C on, Cruise set at 85mph. Coming a mile long grade & it will downshift about 1/8 the way up & hang at 6500 unless I disengage the cruise & slow down to around 65. It's my wife's ride so I don't drive it everyday, But when I do....I hate it!

I'm a mechanic by trade....And I don't feel that something is wrong, No misfires & revs cleanly to redline.
I'm most likely asking to much of the vehicle, I'm 6'5" 240#'s, Wife is 120#'s, Kids X3 weigh 100#'s a piece.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: wheelman1991
That list is bogus. It shows that the Mercury Mystique is better than the Ford contour.......... They are the exact same car (save for a different emblem.


...and when was the last year when you could buy one of those?

 

[FutureDoc]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
But don't you also have to account for the readership of CR? It's not exactly a completely random sample. They may care more about a particular product and take better care of it. Maybe the ones who flog the car don't show up in the numbers. Sorta like how predictions through a telephone survey can be way off because owners of telephones act a certain way. It's selection bias and non-response bias.


And that is both a strength and a limitation.

The good thing is that it is NOT a random sample. They are surveying the POPULATION -not a sample- of their readers. It is closer to a census of their readers than a survey of a general population. Thus, they are not actually developing generalizations about their population. It is about their vehicles and that is a key difference. You can then account for differences in N as long as the responses reach a certain threshold to account for statistical error.

They do not hide that the reliability is what their members report, and that is actually a strength. The readers might actually be "educated" about key topics and in-tune with a given issue. It is actually helping to filter out the "garbage" so to speak. If you were doing an airline survey, you do not set up in a park downtown for "randomness", you can cluster your survey at an "airport". Then you filter out those that are at the airport to work, kids, those that are just dropping off, and then you continue to filter based on the information you are after.

Randomness works best when you are dealing about making a generalization about a population from a sample. Even then, you do not always want true randomness (which in of itself is not always possible).

With any survey data, it is not about who has the perfect data, but rather which dataset is the more informative. I have had access to OEM data and CR's data is much more robust. With OEM, we were dealing with Ns of 1000-4000 across a single brand, which is darn good, but CR is well beyond that. Don't get me wrong, I think that if we could track every 10th vehicle produced for each manufacturer and have it publicly available) it would be awesome. However, CR's datasets are, likely, the best in the land especially for those available to the consumer.

 

[FutureDoc]

Originally Posted By: wheelman1991
That list is bogus. It shows that the Mercury Mystique is better than the Ford contour.......... They are the exact same car (save for a different emblem.


Actually, there were slight differences between the models. They also had a different option/trim configurations. Then you could also have dealerships ordering different specs. ie Ford dealers would chase the lowercost option, Lincoln/Mercury would chase a light pricepoint option list.

 

[pandus13]

'95 or '97? (oh, .... the memories of learning to check for oil, changing the first brake pads and rotors, changing the oil filter in a tight spot)
In Europe was called Ford Mondeo....

 

[oilpsi2high]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
Originally Posted By: oilpsi2high
That's because the BMW is 10 times more complicated than a mid-90s Accord, late-90's Toyota minivan and a 2000 Toyota Echo combined.
You're talking about kschachn's 1994 530i?
I wouldn't imagine that car to be particularly complicated.

My 1987 BMW 325i convertible is equally or less complicated than the 1986.5 Toyota Supra I had.


It is.

 

[L_Sludger]

I regretted that post.. I was quite wrong, BMW went down the rabbit hole of complexity after the E30, in a big way

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

I still have a 98 328i. It's getting old so some of the BMW design annoyances have showed their head. There are so many little things that go wrong that other cars work just fine or don't use it gets annoying. BMW's are so complex now they are basically scrap after the warranty is up.

 

[HondaRULZ]

Honda, Toyotas and the rest are brainwashed.

 

[kschachn]

Originally Posted By: HondaRULZ
Honda, Toyotas and the rest are brainwashed.

So you're new here or do we know you from a previous screen name?

 

[Silverado12]

^^^probably LOL

 

[fdcg27]

I have a '95 BMW 318i.
It's a little more complicated than typical Japanese or American cars of its era, but it's as reliable as a hammer.
It is in no way a burden to own and drive and it is entertaining to drive.
Newer BMW's do appear to be more troublesome than the typical daily driver sedan, but those who actually buy them new and take care of them report no unusual problems relative to more pedestrian makes.

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
I have a '95 BMW 318i.
It's a little more complicated than typical Japanese or American cars of its era, but it's as reliable as a hammer.
It is in no way a burden to own and drive and it is entertaining to drive.
Newer BMW's do appear to be more troublesome than the typical daily driver sedan, but those who actually buy them new and take care of them report no unusual problems relative to more pedestrian makes.


To be honest, the same can be said for Toyotas.

I suspect our new 2017 Rav4 will be more fragile than my '94 Geo Prizm (Corolla with a GM badge) or the 2002 Camry and 2003 Corolla.

The infotainment seems to lock up from time to time.

I don't have that problem in my 2003 Mazda. But then I don't have a double-DIN plus sized unit with screen trying to control 1/2 of the car...

 

[Blinker]

I don't know what brand is the worst amongst auto manufacturers anymore. I was raised and grown up to believe that Chevy was the best there is. I have been a Chevy and GM die-hard for ever but every new product someone in my family buys we notice the quality gets worse and worse. The quality dropped considerably after about the 1994-1995 year models.

I can no longer justify a GM car.

 

[gman2304]

Originally Posted By: stower17
I don't know what brand is the worst amongst auto manufacturers anymore. I was raised and grown up to believe that Chevy was the best there is. I have been a Chevy and GM die-hard for ever but every new product someone in my family buys we notice the quality gets worse and worse. The quality dropped considerably after about the 1994-1995 year models.

I can no longer justify a GM car.


^ Yet your 08 Pontiac has 177,000miles

 

[MCompact]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
I have a '95 BMW 318i.
It's a little more complicated than typical Japanese or American cars of its era, but it's as reliable as a hammer.
It is in no way a burden to own and drive and it is entertaining to drive.
Newer BMW's do appear to be more troublesome than the typical daily driver sedan, but those who actually buy them new and take care of them report no unusual problems relative to more pedestrian makes.


That's been my experience as well. I have a 318ti that has been dead-nuts reliable both on and off the track, and I ran a 2004 X3 2.5 for 12 years and over 180k miles with only one expensive repair. My son's 2009 328i hasn't had any catastrophic failures and is running great. I plan to keep the M235i for at least another 6-8 years so I guess I'll learn first-hand about the reliability of the newer BMWs.
As cars get more complex across the board(turbos, connectivity, telematics, etc.) I suspect that differences in reliability will narrow considerably.

 

[Blinker]

Yes it has 177,000 miles but the amount of repairs to get it this fair is absurd. Currently it is at a Chevrolet because the AC drain is messed up. Not clogged but messed up, something about a failed gasket where the evaporator case meets the heater core.

There is a TSB on the issue.

However it should have never happened. They should stand by their mistakes. It's these design problems where GM has gone way down in quality.

 

[jeepman3071]

Originally Posted By: MCompact

As cars get more complex across the board(turbos, connectivity, telematics, etc.) I suspect that differences in reliability will narrow considerably.


This +1

The Germans have always had a bit more complexity, but now many brands are adopting a lot of the same technology, so complexity is becoming pretty similar across the board.

 

[Vikas]

If you are arguing with the Doc about statistical method, you will lose that argument. I can guarantee you that the other guy arguing has no idea if there is a difference between sample and population

I think the Doc has PhD in stats. Tread carefully.

 

[FutureDoc]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
If you are arguing with the Doc about statistical method, you will lose that argument. I can guarantee you that the other guy arguing has no idea if there is a difference between sample and population

I think the Doc has PhD in stats. Tread carefully.


I had to take my stats classes with the mathematical sciences PhD program... but I am not a stat PHD.I am thankful to pull a B in ExStat and their other methods courses, I know I am a dim candle in a dark woods compared to some of the true PhD statisticians. I did teach the statistics class for non-math Masters and Undergrads folks (those that did not have to go to the ExStat program) as part of my assistantship. I am a much more down-and-dirty analysis for policy needs. When Sequestration happened in 2012, I "pre-retired" at 30 (PHD earned at 28), moved to NC and I am now working for a moderate sized agency and get to manage a fleet on the side (somewhat by accident... they gave the "car-guy' the fleet stuff since he did fuel economy work). I do have staff to handle a lot of the operations but I kinda take a hands-on approach. Lead from within right?

My PhD is in Urban Planning (with a Civil Engineering lean) since I am a Transportation Planner/Policy Analyst. So, my statistics/qualitative analysis deals with "dirty data" and a lot of census/survey work. Dealing with trans-oceanic shipping projections (aka planning port capacity) and fuel economy (community resiliency to fuel spikes/shortages) kinda flushes out my background. I was lucky enough to work as a sub-contractor for a firm doing market research for one of the big three because of my stat work and fuel economy (CAFE) work. Folks can always talk about stats with me, heck I might learn something. But don't fight me when there is "quick math" and capacity/projection numbers around. That is where I am quick on the draw.

Now "internet grammar" is a completely different issue, I dont have time to proof