Consumer Reports rates minivans

Yeah, yeah, I *know*, Nate. You've made some kind of a compact with the
devil that lets you get amazingly reliable and long service out of VWs.
Those of us who've made no such deal are in a different situation
entirely.

McDeath still sells the Big Mac.

Strong? Who said anything about "strong"? The question concerned the
overall quality of engineering and reliability of the hardware.

DS

 

Yeah, and Paul T. managed to make 2.6s run well and last. And Hemi A. has
some ungodly number of hundreds of thousands of miles on the 3.0 in his
minivan. *shrug*

As I was saying...

As you were saying...

 

Exactly, and I've had exactly two issues with engine internals in over
10 years of driving VWs with the same basic engine - a burned valve on a
newly-acquired 1.8 16V that had been sitting a long time and had a
spotty maintenance history, and some worn rod bearings on a Corrado G60
(which apparently was due to VW using a new type of bearing for that
motor which was supposedly stronger, and which was easily rectfied by
dropping the pan and replacing with the standard bearings)

Really, the only major issues with VW drivetrains that I'm aware of that
can be attributed to VW (I'm not counting things like the recent
ignition coil fiasco or the window regulator thing, which were supplier
issues and would have been a non-issue were their dealer network not
populated by combusting rectums) are the fact that the G60 supercharger
is essentially a maintenance item - you rebuild it every 80K miles - and
the close-ratio 020 transaxles were missing a c-clip that caused them to
grenade at about 120K miles or thereabouts (the regular wide-ratio
trannys are apparently OK, however.)

Of course, we can agree to blame VW for their shitty heater cores, I'm
totally with you on that one. There's no excuse for heater cores that
fail every 8-10 years like clockwork on a well maintained car.

nate

 

Yeah, sounds like the Renault Alliance, Defiance, Appliance, etc. Oh
wait... you said every 8 to 10 years. I thought you said every 8 to 10
months.

Toyota MDT in MO

 

I'll concede the point that the *basic* engine and _manual_ transmission
are fine. The stuff that gets bolted on and draped around the basic
engine, OTOH...and the automatic transmissions...

I remember getting the recall card for the heater core fittings on our '90
Jetta. Seems they "could" fail and cause a high pressure/high-temperature
leak...directly onto the driver's feet.

 

The Renault Alliance/Encore recall notice said, paraphrased, that its
heater core could rupture and spray hot coolant on the occupants legs,
scalding them. I'm sure this did happen to some unlucky people, but
everyone else suffered a heater core that weeped coolant just enough so
that you could always smell it. Usually a couple months after
replacement. Those cars were cool in a lot of ways for the time, but
the coolness was more than offset by the godzilla sized shit designs of
virtually every system on the vehicle.

Toyota MDT in MO

 

Well...yeah, I guess if you cross your eyes and squint and maybe take
large quantities of thoughtfully-combined pharmaceuticals, "zero to sixty
in forty-five minutes" is cool in a lot of ways ;-)

 

Yep they left out the engine. But weren't they the ones with pedastal seats
in the front so rear passengers had more leg room? That was a decent idea
for a small car at the time. And I thought the hood shape was interesting.

 

interesting.

Yeah, the seats could move more ways than most modern power seats,
including the "astronaut move". And just like every other inovation or
standard feature they brought to this compact econo car class, it was
with glaring fault. I saw the left side seat tracks rip apart when
heavily used (delivery people, etc) causing the driver to flip into the
passenger seat on a sharp turn. I'm sure you can agree that's
dangerous.

Every theoretically nice feature on these festering, moist, piles of
dung was plagued with mass failure rates.

Toyota MDT in MO

 

About here is where ol' Lloyd would pick up the CR torch.

Did he die or something?

--Geoff

 

Probably finally realized that he doesn't have much reason to post here
since he hasn't owned a Chrysler product in years.

Or got fired and lost his free internet access through Emory


But hey, we've got Glickman as a replacement. And if nothing else at
least he's less predictable than Yoid was...

;-)

 

Talk about being damned with faint praise!

=:-O

-Geoff