People buy terrible cars even when they get awful reviews

Interesting....surprised that the Mercedes-Benz S550, its flagship model, was on that list. Many, myself included, had considered that car as the "world's best" in many measures. Guess I'll have to rethink that....

I guess it considers "value for money" and the Mercedes S550 probably isn't the best "value for money" you can get.

PT Barnum was right, " A sucker is born every minute!"

Anyone who buys vehicles made in Europe, especially Rovers and Fiats, has more money than sense, and deserves the money eating pieces of crap they overpay for!

Land Rovers are well known to "Fall apart" after a year.

So most of these appear to be in product niches where There Is No Competition.

If you want a Mini, what's competing with it? I guess there are some tiny cars from Fiat, but they have even worse repair records and are more expensive. You'd have to be *extremely* fed up with Mini's repair record in order to agree to buy a larger car; they have a unique selling point.

Which makes me think of Amtrak customer service, of course. If you want to take a *train* from Syracuse to New York, you take Amtrak; the days when you could choose from the NY Central, DL&W, Lehigh Valley, and Pennsylvania Railroad are long gone. (For solid economic reasons, since train service is a natural monopoly.) As a result, even with bad customer service records, they're still going to keep selling lots of tickets, because they have a unique selling point: *it's a train*.

I own both a Mini and a Jeep, both purchased within the last six months

The Mini I actually somewhat regret - luckily it's actually a lease, so I'll be out of it within 3 years. Minis are "quirky", but I can't say it's actually a poor quality car. It just doesn't work in the ways I expect a car to work and I suspect many people freak out about a lot of the weird little things Mini cars do. I did too, initially, though now I suddenly feel a weird compunction to defend it. For one thing, it is actually almost entirely a BMW at this point - the only thing separating it from any other BMW is that final assembly takes place in England. (And that's just so they can say that it's "built in England", even though all the components are shipped over from Germany.)

As for the Jeep, I owned a 2004 Grand Cherokee until just about a week ago and it was an amazing vehicle. It was unstoppable even in the worst northeast blizzard, and the only time it let me down was just about 2 months ago, when it started spewing coolant all over the street. I can't fault a 10 year old vehicle that's been through some horrendous winters for that, though. But it did convince me it was time to buy something new. I replaced it with a 2015 Cherokee (not "Grand"), which so far I like a lot because everything it does reminds me of my old Grand Cherokee. It feels a lot tougher than the other crossovers I test drove, and it has a selectable 4WD system (and I bought it with a real off-road suspension). I sort of regret not getting it in Trailhawk trim, which both gives better wheels and tires and also just looks cooler, but my idea was to save some money by just adding all-terrains later, which I still plan to do.

I agree that Mini has no real competition but I also think Jeep doesn't really either. Jeep is still the brand you buy if you want a real SUV, or at least SUV-like features in a crossover. All of the others I looked at were basically just big hatchbacks. The only other vehicle my wife and I seriously considered was a Nissan Xterra, which is probably the last of the true truck-based compact SUV's, but it's a really old design (almost as old as our 04 Grand Cherokee) and it only has a part-time 4WD system. But we hated our Jeep dealer so much that we kept saying to each other just one more misstep on their part and we'd be buying an Xterra. They barely kept us long enough to take delivery.

spacecadet said:

I own both a Mini and a Jeep, both purchased within the last six months

The Mini I actually somewhat regret - luckily it's actually a lease, so I'll be out of it within 3 years. Minis are "quirky", but I can't say it's actually a poor quality car. It just doesn't work in the ways I expect a car to work and I suspect many people freak out about a lot of the weird little things Mini cars do. I did too, initially, though now I suddenly feel a weird compunction to defend it. For one thing, it is actually almost entirely a BMW at this point - the only thing separating it from any other BMW is that final assembly takes place in England. (And that's just so they can say that it's "built in England", even though all the components are shipped over from Germany.)

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France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_engine

spacecadet said:

Minis are "quirky", but I can't say it's actually a poor quality car. It just doesn't work in the ways I expect a car to work and I suspect many people freak out about a lot of the weird little things Mini cars do. I did too, initially, though now I suddenly feel a weird compunction to defend it.

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Interesting. You seem to be the exact sort of buyer the article is describing.

spacecadet said:

For one thing, it is actually almost entirely a BMW at this point - the only thing separating it from any other BMW is that final assembly takes place in England. (And that's just so they can say that it's "built in England", even though all the components are shipped over from Germany.)

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BMW's are by no means considered dependable and their repair costs are in the stratosphere, just like Minis.

spacecadet said:

It was unstoppable even in the worst northeast blizzard, and the only time it let me down was just about 2 months ago, when it started spewing coolant all over the street.

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I've driven a half dozen Hondas into the ground but never seen one spew coolant. Then again where I live roads are extremely common. Maybe you live where there are no roads and have to drive down dry riverbeds and up steep cliffs to make it to the nearest convince store.

spacecadet said:

We hated our Jeep dealer so much that we kept saying to each other just one more misstep on their part and we'd be buying an Xterra. They barely kept us long enough to take delivery.

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I was really interested in a Passat at one point. All the dealer had to do was keep his mouth shut and take my money. Unfortunately that was just a bit too much to ask and I ended up having to walk. The more he tried to manipulate my words and play his silly mind the games the more he pushed me away. By the time I walked out I was certain I would never buy a Volkswagen for as long as I lived. Dealerships must be one of the most pointless and annoying inventions ever created. It's amazing how many of them have managed to talk their way out of a sale even when I had cash in hand.

Devil's Advocate said:

I was really interested in a Passat at one point. All the dealer had to do was keep his mouth shut and take my money. Unfortunately that was just a bit too much to ask and I ended up having to walk. The more he tried to manipulate my words and play his silly mind the games the more he pushed me away. By the time I walked out I was certain I would never buy a Volkswagen for as long as I lived. Dealerships must be one of the most pointless and annoying inventions ever created. It's amazing how many of them have managed to talk their way out of a sale even when I had cash in hand.

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This is so incredibly true! So much so that these days when I walk into a dealership I tell them up front that their best chance of selling me a car is to keep their sales pitch down to zero, and just let me decide on my own. Any peep from them and I am out of there. Usually I have done enough research to know well enough when they are bulshitting, which happens to be more often than not.

BCL said:

France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_engine

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That is not the engine in my Mini. The engine in my Mini is a B38, assembled in England from German parts. (btw, my sticker lists the parts content from each country, as is required in the US.)

Devil's Advocate said:

I've driven a half dozen Hondas into the ground but never seen one spew coolant.

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By "driven into the ground" you mean what, exactly? Presumably all six of the Hondas you drove died somehow, if you "drove them into the ground".

The one Honda I owned died due to its suspension literally falling apart prior to 70,000 miles, if we're going to trade anecdotes. It would have been a far more expensive fix than replacing a radiator hose in my Jeep cost.

On the other hand, that Honda was dead in the snow - I may as well have not owned a car. And it clearly was not able to handle NYC potholes.

When Saturn ( GM) first came out they had no Dickering Pricing, and they consistently finished on top of Customer Satisfaction ratings! Soon as GM reverted to the old Shell Game @ Dealerships, Sales went into the toilet and now Saturn is gone to the auto graveyard to join such other brands as Studebaker, Packard, Pontiac,Olds,Mercury,Plymouth, Desoto etc. etc.

The only " professions" that are held in lower esteem than car salesmen are Politicians, Wall Street Sharks and Lawyers.

Auto dealerships and Vehicle Manufacturers are businesses that prey on those that don't know anything about finance or vehicles, they have lots in common with Payday Loan Joints and Title Loan Stores! ( aka Loan Sharks)

jis said:

Devil's Advocate said:

I was really interested in a Passat at one point. All the dealer had to do was keep his mouth shut and take my money. Unfortunately that was just a bit too much to ask and I ended up having to walk. The more he tried to manipulate my words and play his silly mind the games the more he pushed me away. By the time I walked out I was certain I would never buy a Volkswagen for as long as I lived. Dealerships must be one of the most pointless and annoying inventions ever created. It's amazing how many of them have managed to talk their way out of a sale even when I had cash in hand.

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This is so incredibly true! So much so that these days when I walk into a dealership I tell them up front that their best chance of selling me a car is to keep their sales pitch down to zero, and just let me decide on my own. Any peep from them and I am out of there. Usually I have done enough research to know well enough when they are bulshitting, which happens to be more often than not.

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Concur.

Speaking of VW, when your car breaks while I'm test driving it, no amount of cajoling is going to get me to buy the car. Talk until you're blue in the face about how great you'll fix it up, but if your car can't handle 5 miles when fresh off the truck, I'm not interested.

To be "fair" to GM, Saturn also failed because their cars were both way behind the times at that point, and they didn't offer anything unique. They didn't have their own niche like Jeep and Mini do. They were just kind of the 5th or 6th best choice among a couple of car segments that were themselves becoming less and less popular (the econo-sedan and the sporty small coupe). GM let Saturn languish; it wasn't just the standard pricing that did them in.

The whole point about the cars in the linked article here is that they do something unique and people who buy them actually *demand* that they not change too much. So it's pretty obvious why they're successful despite "bad reviews". It would be a lot stranger to see something like the Scion tC on this list, which gets middling reviews *and* doesn't sell that well because there are just a million other cars that do the same thing better.

jimhudson said:

When Saturn ( GM) first came out they had no Dickering Pricing, and they consistently finished on top of Customer Satisfaction ratings! Soon as GM reverted to the old Shell Game @ Dealerships, Sales went into the toilet and now Saturn is gone to the auto graveyard to join such other brands as Studebaker, Packard, Pontiac,Olds,Mercury,Plymouth, Desoto etc. etc.

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Saturn had far more issues than that. For one, many realized that the no-haggle pricing often meant that the price wasn't that good. Another is that the supposed residual value compared to MSRP didn't really compare well to other cars where one didn't typically pay MSRP.

Sales dived at Saturn because they didn't have more than just two models for the longest time and only two engine choices. They had noise/vibration/harshness issues that were handled by adding insulation, but where the added weight killed the performance.

Roger Smith also left GM, and he was their biggest supporter inside the company. The dealership model frankly didn't kill the company so much as the poor support when it came to coming up with new models. The other deal was that large SUVs took off, but Saturn was stuck with compact cars only until after 2000.

I feel bad for the folks who gave up their seniority to help create and establish Saturn only to be burned later on. However, my main issue with dealerships at this point is that they have been so successful with their anti-competitive lobbying that they have managed to outlaw the act of selling directly to the consumer. Probably because they realize that without the law on their side nobody would bother with them anymore. This is why it remains illegal to buy a vehicle directly from Ford or to buy a Tesla anywhere within a backward hypocritical state like Texas.

spacecadet said:

By "driven into the ground" you mean what, exactly? Presumably all six of the Hondas you drove died somehow, if you "drove them into the ground". The one Honda I owned died due to its suspension literally falling apart prior to 70,000 miles, if we're going to trade anecdotes. It would have been a far more expensive fix than replacing a radiator hose in my Jeep cost. On the other hand, that Honda was dead in the snow - I may as well have not owned a car. And it clearly was not able to handle NYC potholes.

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By drove into the ground I mean the suspension was shot. Those cars could still get you where you needed to go but it was a bumpy and jarring ride after having been through 150,000+ miles of rental car style driving. The suspension could be repaired but that's usually when I decided it was time for a new car. We don't have many potholes where I live but we do have an ever growing number of oversized speed bumps, many of which I simply ignore at this point. I'm not talking about speed bumps in school zones or quiet neighborhood streets where they might make sense. I'm talking about literally thousands of humongous speed humps located along major thoroughfares, sprinkled throughout parking lots, and infesting nearly every business park. I guess I just don't see the point of going out of our way to save people too clueless to stay out of the road of their own free will.

It is interesting to see how relatively small Tesla, which produces "the best car Consumer's Report ever tested", is in an epic battle with the establishment in trying to expand into other states that currently outlaw direct manufacturer marketing....

I hope Tesla succeeds. I get angry at laws like those that require franchised dealer's as middlemen between manufacturer's and consumer's....truly a corrupt system.....