Of all the things we want our cars to be, “reliable” is always way up at the top of the list. No matter how narrowly focused a car may otherwise be as an off-roader or street carver or luxurious cruiser or something else, the one thing we’d all like the machine to do is start, run, and return us home (or to the finish line or trailhead) without breaking down or failing to start in the first place.
And when it comes to daily drivers and work vehicles, nothing trumps reliability. No one can afford to be late or miss a job with any regularity. Everyone needs reliable transportation, and a reputation for reliability can only be earned. No amount of marketing can spin a car that lets customers down into one they can count on.
For a lot of buyers, that means Honda and Toyota top their preferred brands list, though they aren’t the only reliability stars. Getting more granular, specific models like Civic, Corolla, Accord, and Camry are singled out for bulletproofness. More knowledgeable car buyers might advise budget-conscious shoppers to look for anything with a Buick 3800 V6 for day-in, day-out infallible transpo.
No matter what advice you’ve gotten or like to give about which cars can be counted on and which to avoid, there are always surprises. A low-mile Corolla that somehow becomes the bane of your motoring existence. The high-mileage luxury European car everyone told you not to buy has, incredibly, never let you down. And so, today we’re asking What Supposedly Super-Reliable Car Was A Lemon For You (And Vice Versa)?
Says Matt,
People always complain about old German luxury cars, but my 240k-mile BMW is great. I treat it like a Honda Civic and, other than a flare up here or there, it acts like a Honda Civic. I realize by saying this I’m dooming myself.
I fully expect that Matt’s BMW, now jinxed, will strand him within a fortnight. (Yeah, I say “fortnight” now.)
David, meanwhile, had a terrible experience with what shoulda been a no-worries ride:
I bought a 1995 Honda Accord; it was, to this day, the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever owned. Everything broke at once, and it wasn’t that easy to fix. I loathed it. And the fifth gear synchro didn’t work. Could it have been abused? Sure. But that doesn’t excuse it abusing me.
Matt piped in:
Between a Honda Accord and Saturn Vue, I would not have picked the Vue as the reliable daily. Who would?
Stephen also hated an Accord. Am I taking crazy pills?
One of my most-difficult to own/fix was one that ha sa reputation for not breaking. ’08 Honda Accord Sedan, I bought it off of a local door guy that had just gotten in a RF fender-bender (with accompanying DUI) and hit the local Pick n Pull to piece it back together. Fender, headlight, bumper cover, fender skirt, brackets, etc. Once it was back together and painted, I kept getting an transmission shifting issue that pointed towards the speed sensor. Popped a new one in, same issue. The part I purchased had the same dimensions and connections as the one it replaced, so I figured there must be some other internal issue with that transmission. Sold the car for cheap with the concern. Later, I learned that Honda uses both an input and output speed sensor on that transmission that both use the exact-same pigtail connector and are identical! Of course the sensor that I had swapped out was The Good One (Input) and all the next owner had to do was swap out the Output sensor. A solid learning experience.
Your turn! What Supposedly Super-Reliable Car Was A Lemon For You (And Vice Versa)?
Top graphic: Toyota
I had a 2004 Dodge Intrepid ES with the 3.5 engine and the infamous “Ultradrive” automatic. I towed a 3500# pop-up camper in the mountains regularly with that car, although I did install a transmission cooler.
Common wisdom today is that either the transmission would grenade or the head gaskets would blow. It was faultless for over 200k km. The only repair I can remember was the crank pully/balancer had to be replaced when the rubber disintegrated.
Lemon of a reliable car would have to be the ’04 focus pzev auto. Two transmissions, a head, a whole new engine, and the intake manifold system was asinine because of the pzev crap. Couldn’t get it to pass emissions no matter how hard you tried, finally gave it to my little sister who lives in a non emissions controlled county.
Reliable lemon is the ’97 ram 2500 v10. Not known for reliability, but mine went aproximately 1/2 a million miles on the v10 without a rebuild. We had to replace the clutch packs in the transmission twice but at that high of mileage they’re simply wear parts. Truck finally got killed by a grease fire that put itself out when the radiator hose ruptured. We had it for 13 years and I don’t think we washed it once, thus the grease build-up from oil seepage that lit on the exhaust.
My e11 Corolla was the one that lasted the shortest time before it crapped out,but my 2005 Ford Mondeo was the lemonest car I ever has,shit broke on that thing all the time. My 2010 Passat on the other hand rarely missed a beat,except for the odd warning lights now and then it never needed anything but wheel bearings and brakes.
’93 Honda Prelude Si. Wasn’t my most unreliable car (that honor goes to an ’86 Ford Bronco II), but I had expectations of the Honda. It failed spectacularly to live up to them.
There was one failure that was at least amusing – I was doing a burnout in the parking lot of an upscale mall (yes, I was that guy) and the muffler chose that moment to succumb to failure due to rust. Made the burnout slightly more epic than it would have been otherwise. I did end up fixing after a few days it because it sounded like a cheap fart can muffler, and despite that being popular at the time I couldn’t be that guy.
I was a victim of the Honda shitty automatic transmission in the early oughts. Bought a 2001 Acura CL Type S brand new. Soon, a letter arrives from Honda stating they are extending the warranty on the transmission. Hmmm, wonder why?
Eventually, I start experiencing grinding gears. Never had that happen in an automatic before. I go to the dealer and the tech feels it as well. But, there is no code, so he says, “there is nothing I can do.” This was the second highest performance Acura available at the time (behind just the NSX), and there’s nothing they can do about this?
Eventually, driving home one day, as I pull away from a signal, the dash lights up like a Xmas tree, and the transmission really is grunting.
I take it to the dealer, and NOW they’ll do something. After some time, I get it back. My son notices two hard lines going to the front of the car that weren’t there before. We conclude they put in coolant lines. A mechanic I knew confirmed it. It wasn’t just this, just about any Honda with a V6 and an automatic had this issue. Honda thought they could engineer an automatic without any external cooling.
With their uncaring attitude, pretty much burned me on Honda products.
I bought a used CL S as my first car and it didn’t make it 45 minutes. No joke
Super Reliable and had no right to be reliable. I had a 69 Fiat 850 Spider, the thing would not die, sure you had to push start it most of the time, but the damn engine would not die. I ran that thing ragged, add a few quarts of oil every few weeks and she was happy to keep going. I hated selling it, but I wanted to downgrade to an 1800. That thing ran on hopes and prayers, at least once a week something went wrong with it.
This is an easy one for me — I’ll go with the low-mile ’95 W124 Benz wagon I purchased a few years back, with intention of my wife using it as a daily. She’d pined for one for years, and I found a (seemingly) immaculate version for a reasonable ask in the DFW metro. It was in beautiful unmodified condition from front to back, and came with a stack of service records, and ran and drove beautifully during my test drive. Oh, and I was sure to confirm that the biodegradable wiring harness had been swapped out as well.
The trouble began shortly thereafter. I trailered it home to our place north of OKC, and noticed while I was unloading it that it had dripped some fresh oil on the trailer deck. Further investigation determined that the leak originated from between the cylinder head and the block, near the firewall. Lovely. So, that’s how I found myself shelling out something like $3200 the first week I had it for head gasket replacement at the local indy Benz shop, because you might as well do the waterpump and tensioners while you’re in there. Oh, and because they broke the plastic intake during removal, and because it was “an old car and we can’t guarantee things won’t break” I had to pay for that too.
If only I’d known that this was only the first of an endless string of issues that would come to define our time with the car. Some other memorable issues include (but certainly aren’t limited to):
After a couple years of this nonsense, I finally came to my senses and sold the car during one of the rare instances when everything was mostly working as intended. God, was I glad to see that car go. Never, ever again.
My mom bought a new 1980 Volvo 245 wagon back in the misty past. For a car that’s legendary for reliability and longevity, hers was a bummer. By 1986 or so, the automatic transmission was needing its second rebuild, despite regular service from a specialist shop.
She sold it and replaced it with (hold onto your hats) a Mitsubishi Colt wagon. DSM cars were supposedly terrible (and I hated it), but it never broke, except when my little sister spilled a can of coke into the cassette deck, which was never the same afterward.
I wouldn’t call it “unreliable,” but my 1988 Toyota pickup with the supposedly legendary 22R engine was a miserable ownership experience, and very unpleasant to drive. It always acted like it had a vacuum leak, despite me replacing every vacuum hose and intake-side gasket I could think of. Sometimes it would barely idle at all. The timing chain slap on startup was alarming. And it was gutless, which could have also been timing-chain related. But I wasn’t about to dig into it and find out. I sold it on its reputation alone, and got $500 more than I paid for it, and good riddance.
Similar; I had a 2nd gen 4runner with a 22RE and that thing was juuunk. It wouldn’t idle sometimes. It overheated. The motor mounts completely rusted away. The rear power hatch glass didn’t work any more. Easily the slowest vehicle I’d ever driven to the point that it was concerning to get on a freeway if it had a short ramp. The 4wd and low gear worked though, so it got me through 1 winter, then I re-sold it.
In the UAE, our family had a second hand early 00s Epica…That was good for sometime, but started giving problems….It spent a fair amount of time in the garage and developed a very bad oil? leak at one point, at which it had to be towed.
Switched to a Pajero after that, did not have mechanical issues other than the SUV being pretty flimsy…..
To be fair, the Epica was at 200k kms and was given to someone else….cannot remember if it still gave problems or not.
The Geo Metro was the butt of many jokes, but I had a ’91 Metro and it was rock-solid for years. I hit a couple of deer with it, but had it repaired at a body shop. I sold it to a friend, and it lasted a few years more, surviving 3 more deer collisions.
Simplistic beaters. Have heard stories of these with the atrocious Aveo and the Cavalier….they either die early or run horribly forever…
This one ran great forever. But it had the Suzuki 1.0 3-cyl, not the 4-cyls from the Cavalier or the Aveo.
But 160,000+ miles is a long way to drive on 12-inch rims.
With how many deer it hit, I presume its Torch’s Pao’s long-lost cousin.
The last few months my buddy was driving it, he just took the hood off since it didn’t want to stay closed anymore. (he only had liability insurance on it and couldn’t afford to have it fixed at a body shop)
Amazing it survived so many deer hits! Reminds me when my ’91 smacked a deer on a rural highway. Was doing 70 in a 55 and only had enough time to take my foot off the throttle before the deer went flying over the car. State Patrol came along and asked how fast I was going. Told him 55. He said he knew I was lying because the animal cleared the roof. Said I was lucky and began telling me this gruesome story about a deer going through the windshield and kicking the driver to death.
Was going to get a tow but with a few bunjee cords and some water it drove home. Damage wasn’t that bad but the cop’s story got me nervous about highway wildlife ever since.
Actually, the first deer I hit with it died. I was going about 50-ish and it just started to drizzle. I took my eyes off the road for a split second to push that wiper button and when I looked up, she was running across the road right in front of me. I stomped on the brake, but by that time her head and back had shattered the windshield, which took the brunt of the impact. I skidded to the side of the road, looked in the mirror to see if anyone was behind me on the road… And I saw the deer come down behind me and land in the ditch! She wasn’t dead right away, but wasn’t going anywhere. I felt bad, but I didn’t think the little tire iron in the Metro was beefy enough to put her out of her misery.
Other than the exploded windshield, the damage on the Metro really wasn’t that bad. Apparently I just clipped her legs with the front end. The driver’s side turn signal was toast, the corner of the hood was folded in, as was the corner of the front fender. A passerby ended up giving me a ride to the police station so I could fill out an accident report. (this was the first insured car I had ever been in an accident with, and I was unsure of the reporting procedure) By the time an officer gave me a ride back to the Metro, the deer had died. He said he was happy she landed in the ditch so he didn’t have to drag her off the road.
So I ended up getting a new hood, a new fender, and corner light assembly. Three weeks after I got it back from the body shop, I was driving down the same highway on my way home after work. I had just pulled away from a stop sign and hadn’t even reached 4th gear yet when 2 deer ran out onto the road ahead of me and just stopped in the middle of the road.
I stopped, beeped the horn to try to encourage them to get out of the way. One ran north and the other ran south. Then the one who ran south decided she wanted to go with the northbound one, turned around… and ran smack into my passenger side door, breaking off the side-mirror and putting a big dent in the door. Speed at time of impact: 0 mph.
Deer are stupid.
If you could stop them dissolving they would last forever.
Honda CRX was my surprise lemon. It was my first car, back when I was in college and hadn’t learned much about working on cars. At that point, it took me about 5 hours and tons of asking people questions on internet forums (this was long before youtube instructional vids) to do the front brakes. It was an ’88 DX which you might remember had the “dual point fuel injection” which put the injectors in the throat of the throttle body just below the butterfly valve. It was less fuel *injection* and more “modified carburetor.”
It started stalling one day so I took it into the shop and he replaced the igniter and coil and charged me $500. It still kept stalling so I took it back to the shop and he replaced the whole distributor and charged me another $600. Still kept stalling and almost $2k later the mechanic still hadn’t figured it out. Fast forward to me parting it out and we discovered that one of the injectors was bad, and on that car just one failed injector was enough to stall it out. It was a rusted-out rolling crap pile anyway so I wasn’t too sad because I’d bought another CRX in damn near factory condition (which I still own today) but that was an incredibly frustrating experience with a usually crazy-reliable model.
The surprise reliable car was an ’89 Caravan that I bought from my dad for a buck as a winter beater after he’d already blown the head gasket. I replaced the gasket but didn’t have the money to send the head out for milling so I just put it back together and hoped. Damn thing ran until I finally gave it away to my intern. Just wouldn’t die, and it’s still one of the best deep-snow vehicles I’ve ever driven.
It didn’t even suffer the usual age-related bullshit of many American cars of the era. No drooping headliner, no plastic bits falling off the interior, the seats still looked new, etc. Everything worked. I sometimes wondered if Dad hadn’t managed to buy a press demonstrator or something.
No one in my family, including myself, has ever had a reliable American car of any kind. It’s a rather large sample size, too. Some even had the “legendary” 3800 V6. The problems ran the gambit, engine, electrical, transmission, brakes, paint, rust, you name it. I’m not saying no American cars are reliable but with our luck we’ll be sticking to imports for the foreseeable future.
Plenty of people with the opposite experience. Some have had money pit Toyotas and Hondas as well….
Oh!!! I was hoping somebody would post about the “legendary” GM 3800 with 4T60 xmission. Soooo many people swore by their Bonnevilles as being bulletproof. I should have learned after the first one. Terrible terrible terrible drivetrain (and cars).
You can get a lemon unfortunately. Early 3800s had their own share of issues…
2004 Monte Carlo SS, 3800 non – supercharged. I did the intake, the exhaust and the plugs, and it outran Mustangs all winter! Only rust could kill it, and I couldn’t stop it forever…
94 Toyota Pickup V6 4WD 5MT with 49000 miles on the odo when I bought it, called the Hilux in other countries.
Under high load (AC or Heat with the lights on), if I turn on the blinker all the electrics go dead for a second or two while driving, including the engine, when the battery is getting close to needing replacement it goes to 3-5 seconds.
Best solution I’ve heard so far involves ripping out the dash and testing every wire in the wiring loom, which would obviously sideline the truck for a long while.
I had a 99 Mitsubishi Galant I got it for $300 with around 90k mi kept it for 15 years racking up 250k mi. Incredible drivability with all original suspension. The biggest thing I had to do was throw a $100 eBay cat back on it because the factory exhaust rusted out.
I also had a 88 tempo that just kept going and going it has 300k mi and trans finally went.
Meanwhile my mom bought a 03 Camry new and it was nothing but problems then she bought a Saturn Vue with a cvt after it got lemon lawed that got lemon lawed then they gave her another one because the dealer was really useless and it should have been lemon lawed. She then bought a Subaru Forester with a cvt that was basically lemon lawed. Nissan leaf seems to have solved that for now.
1974 Holden Torana LH.
Admittedly it had the 4cyl motor which was just the V8 motor chopped in half.
Either way it was a POS
My $2000 in 1970 1960 Maserati convertible. Pretty reliable.
Actually, it was Maserati’s first road car and everything that might be found on a race car was incredibly overbuilt. Apparently, since many of their customers were kings or dictators that lived in the desert, 100 degrees California weather was no problem.
From what I understand the company learned to make cars that lived up to the reputation for reliability established by Ferrari by the end of the 60s.
Everyone I knew who had a ’98 Windstar had major problems with it.
Except my mom, whose Windstar was almost flawless for 15 years. The one time it broke was when a mouse made a nest on top of the fuel pump and caused it to overheat. But other than that, perfect.
Everyone always pretends the Jatco Xtronic CVT is such a bad and unreliable transmission, but they’re all wrong. How good they be unreliable? They’re so good that the fluid never even needs changed or even looked at!
I’ve talked about my ex-rental Chevy Sonic before. Dents on every panel. I was trying to chase down a p0420 code for a while before saying screw it and putting a spacer on the back 02 sensor. Hooray no inspection state. It just goes. I do maintenance, but I am amazed this little hatch lasted through cheap-league rental duty and is pushing 150k. I gave it a healthy dose of Fluid Film before this winter, but it’s not too bad. This spring, I’m going to give it a go of replacing the timing belt, because it seems it’s never been dealt with. I took it on a couple of road trips this last summer with no worry and once that timing belt is done, I probably would do the same again. It’s surprisingly comfortable on the freeway, and a set of blizzaks make it snow impervious. One guy’s winter beater is my improbable daily driver. Best 4k I’ve spent, probably.
I have one of each:
Bad reputation, good car for me: The Chevy Bolt. Much of the poor reputation comes from the battery recall. They’re otherwise pretty solid vehicles. Mine has been absolutely bullet proof. It’s over 100k miles now and I’ve only just recently had the first thing wear out on it. We use it for our small business and beat the ever loving mother out of it and it’s just taken the abuse like nothing
On the other hand, I got a 2001 Jaguar XK8 because they’re *supposed* to be the “reliable” Jaguar. That hasn’t been the case by a long shot. I’ve owned it for a year now and put over $6k into it in repairs.
It’s been in the shop as much as it’s been in my garage.
Much of that was grievously deferred maintenance, but it feels like something breaks every 3 times I drive the damn thing. The battery is dead from winter storage and will not take a charge so there’s another $250 come spring time. I’m also pretty sure it needs a rear wheel bearing. Such is the life of a Jag owner.
Single-owner warm-climate-owned 2004 Lexus GX470 with barely 100k miles and a decent maintenance history. Everyone is always on about Land Cruisers lasting forever, so I thought I was safe. Somehow, it needed $20k in repairs almost immediately. Many other things went wrong, including the paint peeling off the entire vehicle. Then, it needed a new engine before 200k miles, at which point I gave up on reliability and got a 2016 XC90.
Wow. That was bad. Did it recieve all maintenance? What exactly happened to the engine?
But Toyota loyalists claim” ToYOta is the Safest Car You CAn GeT WithOUT waRRANTY and LESS LIKELY to RuN into ISSUES, Other BranDS ARE mONEY PITS ……”
Paint peeling is a common issue in GX SUVs. Really bad since Lexus is supposed to be BETTER quality than Toyota.
I picked up a 20 yr old Lexus 330 (aka Camry V6) for my grandson and at 100,000 miles the cam covers were leaking oil all over the exhaust manifolds, messy AND smelly. While their metal parts are beautifully made, their elastomer seals are low grade and turn to bakelite hard consistency over time. The spark plug tube seals literally had to be chiseled out of the cam covers.
That would be a nightmare to fix.
The only car we had issues with was a Korean made Daewoo Epica (was at high mileage, so….).
my mom’s 2003 grand am passed on from her to my brother , to me for drove 180,000 miles borderline neglected with zero mechanical issues. only got rid of it because it was wrecked i did not trust its safety. still sold it for $2500 after 19 years of service. and used that as a down payment on my current car a prius. If you look anywhere online people act like the pontiac grand am was one of GM’s worst vehicles.
I got to 250k miles out of a used 1988 Ford Tempo. Bought it used for a grand with 110k miles and it didn’t require anything but a brake/rotor change and regular oil/fluid attention. Who woulda thought?