Car question

[Rooster]

My wife and I have a discussion every so often about getting a different (second actually) vehicle. One of the cars that comes up is the Jeep Wrangler because of the modular aspect of it where you can take the doors off etc. However, I am unlikely to ever pull the trigger on one because of its' inherent unreliability. Every year it seems Consumer Reports consistently gives it its' worst rating, primarily due to the maintenance and tendency to break down. This year was no exception. Indeed, this occurred today:

http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/03/15/ ... -road.html

Perhaps some of you work in the auto design industry? My question to you is this: Is the poor reliability built into the car with purpose in terms of build quality or is it some aspect of the design itself where the very style or purpose of the car creates problems?

We talked about how if you intentionally made the line bullet and bomb proof, it'd make the Jeep line unbeatable-- over and above a very popular choice already --but there doesn't seem to be any desire to make that happen no matter who owns the brand name.

[smackaholic]

I,ve been driving an Escape for the last month +. I really liked it. Handles well, is pertty quick with the 2L ecoboost. Comfortable on long drives. I might buy one, were I in the market for such a vehicle. Prior to that I had a Jeep Compass. Seats were torturous. Interior had that typical Chrysler look/feel to them. That's a bad thing, if you didn't know. Another nice thing about the Escape was that it was very capable in the snow. The fulltime AWD is quite nice.

Whatever you do have interest in, I would suggest you rent one for a week or so first, if you can.

[smackaholic]

And rack 88's point about driving based on what others think. If you do that, you're a fukking moron.

[Dinsdale]

The bottom line is... ever since Chrysler took over Jeep from AMC (1987?), they've been garbage.

[Rooster]

I get that people should drive what pleases them regardless what other people think, yet I don't wish to purchase a vehicle that will kill me in maintenance over the long haul. Case in point: We drive a MB ML350 diesel which is largely bomb-proof. Granted, when something does go wrong the costs are exorbitant, but fortunately that rarely happens. The diesel engine is a tank and the body is solid. There are a couple of persistent things which that particular line has trouble with, but Mercedes has gone out of their way to fix those niggling problems permanently. I'd have no trouble purchasing another one if it came to that because of its' reliability.

But in the Jeep line and with some other car makers there seems to be a distinct lack of concern for long term reliability and that is what puzzles me. If we were talking about 1960s and '70's US cars I'd chalk it up to intentional disposability or making them obsolete with an eye to next year's' product. But times have changed and that mentality is gone for the most part except in terms of overall maintenance in certain vehicles. And the Jeep is one of them, despite changing ownership and production lines.

You'd think there would be a sense of pride that a line of cars increases in value for a number of reasons like low maintenance, looks, etc, yet you don't see that with Jeep. Instead they sell based on their niche as an off-road vehicle with a specific look. Nothing wrong with that except the maintenance issue-- at least for me.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone has any experience in this aspect of design, be that cars or any other product.

[kcdave]

My wife and I have a discussion every so often about getting a different (second actually) vehicle. One of the cars that comes up is the Jeep Wrangler because of the modular aspect of it where you can take the doors off etc. However, I am unlikely to ever pull the trigger on one because of its' inherent unreliability. Every year it seems Consumer Reports consistently gives it its' worst rating, primarily due to the maintenance and tendency to break down. This year was no exception. Indeed, this occurred today:

http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/03/15/ ... -road.html

Perhaps some of you work in the auto design industry? My question to you is this: Is the poor reliability built into the car with purpose in terms of build quality or is it some aspect of the design itself where the very style or purpose of the car creates problems?

We talked about how if you intentionally made the line bullet and bomb proof, it'd make the Jeep line unbeatable-- over and above a very popular choice already --but there doesn't seem to be any desire to make that happen no matter who owns the brand name.

Unless something just gets a flat out horrible rating, I wouldn't pay much attention them. If you want some peace of mind, view ratings
of comparable vehicles. There probably won't be much difference. At that point, it just matters what you like best. I used to own a Wrangler,
loved it, and never had any problems. I would still have it, but it doesn't mix well w/ my allergies, and wanted more room.
I would not buy a new one. But I would NEVER BUY ANY NEW VEHICLE. Such a terrible waste of money. Buy a nice used one and save yourself
some cash. However, if you don't already know, they will still cost an arm and a leg. The Wrangler is consistently top 5 in resale value. Has been
that way for years and years, and there is no reason to expect otherwise. Which in itself is a good indicator of the Wrangler. If it such a piece of
crap, why are they always worth so much?

[smackaholic]

If off roading is something you plan on doing, then the Jeep may be your huckleberry, but if you want a 4x4 just to get you through the snow on days like yesterday, pretty much any of today's CUVs would be a great choice. You prolly wanna pass on a Subie Outback though as you are not a lesbian, to the best of my knowledge anyway.

The larger truck based SUVs are nice if you will be towing anything. If not, they are a waste of money, IMHO. In the end, it's your money, your choice.

[Rooster]

...though as you are not a lesbian, to the best of my knowledge anyway.

Well, I do eat grannies... :grin:

[Rooster]

Ok, so the engineers have to be aware that their product is inferior, right? Comparatively, one particular line of vehicles or refrigerators or weed eaters have a hierarchy of reliability, at least within the price point that a company is striving to reach. And the cheaper a device, the less margin a manufacturer has to make a device substantially better-- I get that. But in terms of big ticket items like cars, I would think that the up side of earning a reputation for quality vehicles would translate into better sales. Yet with automobiles like Jeep that doesn't seem to play not the process of designing the car or into the quality control that you'd think would go into the build of a vehicle.

Again, maybe with the Wrangler line it doesn't much matter since people seem to buy them anyway, but to gain a better reputation for quality would seem like a useful end in and of itself.

[Rooster]

Whoa. That's something I think we all can agree on: Mikey's nipples need to remain hidden from view. Miley, don't do it. I promise to gently give that sock of quarters to those panhandlers instead of hitting them over their lazy heads with it if you keep your nips under cover.

[Left Seater]

I say drive the biggest heaviest beast you can. Keeps you safer from all the idiots on the road.

I.E. a suburban.

[Rooster]

Dodge has always had tranny issues (insert purse joke here Marty)

They've made some good looking trucks over the years, but I'd never own one

Why do you think they've never fixed that problem?

[smackaholic]

Dodge has always had tranny issues (insert purse joke here Marty)

They've made some good looking trucks over the years, but I'd never own one

Why do you think they've never fixed that problem?

I had an '03 Caravan and it was a great car. Tranny was rock solid when we sold it at about 140k miles. Apparently they finally figured that tranny out sometime around the late nineties. The solution was a ginormous tranny cooler. I had the displeasure of seeing it up close after my daughter plowed it into somebody and I got to rebuild the nose. Did that job when it was about 15 degrees out. Fun times.



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[Joe in PB]

Wranglers:

1. Piece of shit
2. Dangerous as fuck
3. High insurance rates
4. You're too old to have one
5. Mikey's gonna show us a picture of one of his nipples if you get it

A voice of experience?

From what I've heard from friends who have owned them is mpg sucks, and acceleration sucks, making hwy driving a PIA.

Most people out here who own them 4x4 a lot, or are college aged chicks. If you don't deal with snow for 6 or more months, or 4x4 a lot, I'd pass.

[Bucmonkey]

Wranglers:

1. Piece of shit
2. Dangerous as fuck
3. High insurance rates
4. You're too old to have one
5. Mikey's gonna show us a picture of one of his nipples if you get it

A voice of experience?

From what I've heard from friends who have owned them is mpg sucks, and acceleration sucks, making hwy driving a PIA.

Most people out here who own them 4x4 a lot, or are college aged chicks. If you don't deal with snow for 6 or more months, or 4x4 a lot, I'd pass.

Very true. A 4wd pretty much insures you twice the chances of having a transmission fucking up!

:?

[Dinsdale]

While Bucchumpy is an idiot who is incapable of articulating even the most basic thought, I might agree with him.

What does having a transfer case bolted to the back of a transmission have to do with transmission problems?

[Dinsdale]

If off roading is something you plan on doing

My spreadsheets suck, but doesn't Rooster live in Texas?

A Smartcar with big tires would do just fine.

[Rooster]

Spreadsheet update:
I used to live in Texas, but moved to Tennessee after traveling around the US in an Airstream for a couple of years. As for the Jeep, I don't see myself purchasing one unless it was a restored CJ-5 or a WW2 Willys.

I've given consideration to these, (https://www.fj.co/ourwork) but the price tag is a bit steep. However, they are fully restored and the innards are simple to work on, unlike today's computer chip laden machines.

[Rooster]

My love for off-roading vehicles stems from my introduction to Willys Jeeps in a mech infantry unit I was assigned to when I was a shavetail lieutenant and had one as my command car. I was amazed at the tiny spaces that car could slip through while driving through the woods and wanted one for my own ever since. Later, during the first Gulf War despite that I don't really have any interest in driving a car off road, I got my very own personal Humvee, which is what this story is about.

We were sent over to Saudi as a special unit hand selected by the Joint Chiefs due to our background as Gulf of Mexico offshore oil field pilots. There are very few helicopter pilots in the Army who have any experience flying low over water and our unit was chock full of them. We had been picked to fly casualties to the USS Hope and Comfort in the expectation that there were going to be massive numbers of injured servicemen. By way of showing how skilled our unit was in comparison to regular Army units, their senior pilots might have a grand total of 1500 hours. I had logged 5000 hours by this time and all I was pretty much allowed to do was monitor the voltmeter. Our average total flight time was 13,000 hours and we had some guys who had over 20,000 flight hours in helicopters-- which, when you understand that a bag of gas is roughly an hour and a half of flying, that's a lot of seat time.

Needless to say, there were very few casualties in that war, so all those trips overwater to the hospital ships never materialized. Meanwhile, the Army was flying their birds into sand dunes, so we were reassigned to teaching these young whippersnappers how to fly low level under goggles and to move Iraqi POWs to internment camps way out in the desert. It was during one of these POW runs that I got my personal Humvee.

We had just made a trip to Bahrain for equipment/parts and, as always, made a side trip to the Class VI store at the Navy installation there. For those of you who don't know the various logistics classes in the military, the Class VI is personal items which just happen to include booze. So we were loaded for bear and had stashed a few bottles in the hidey-holes located around the airframe. Later that day we received a mission to go and drop off a few POWs to a camp in the middle of nowhere, so we loaded up and headed out. On our way back we needed fuel, so we stopped off at a POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) station which were located all over the map for the aircraft and vehicles traveling around the country in support of the war effort.

When we hovered up to the fuel point I noticed that there was a huge parking lot of vehicles of all types, shapes, and sizes. I asked the fuel jockey what were all those vehicles were doing there, and he says, "We're a POL and a wrecker unit. We go out and pick up stranded vehicles out on the road." With the pace of the war and the push by high command to get each and every unit up on the line as soon as possible, if a vehicle broke down, the SOP was to grab everything on it that was integral to combat and leave the vehicle behind. So these guys would go out and bring them back to their base and fix them up for their own entertainment. The fuel monkey told me that even the lowliest private had his own truck or car due to the glut of vehicles they picked up almost daily.

So I asked him what it'd take to get one for myself, so he asked me back what I had to trade? When I told him I had a fifth of Jack, his eyes bulged and he quickly made the trade. If we had more people in the back, we could have driven (sorry, bad pun) a harder bargain. So he pointed out a Humvee that he said was in perfect condition and offered to top off the tank.

So for the rest of my time there I had my own personal truck with free gas and maintenance. Subsequently, I had a number of great stories that stemmed from that one fortuitous trade, but those will have to wait for another time.

[Imus]

Were you also on company time when you wrote that diatribe?

[Rooster]

Company time? Diatribe? Maybe it's time to hang up the microphone, Imus.

[smackaholic]

If you want a reasonably quick very comfy highway bomber, the following pic makes a good argument for the maxima.




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[smackaholic]

36 mpg at 70 mph avg. for a full sized sled. I'll take it.


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[BSmack]

If you want a reasonably quick very comfy highway bomber, the following pic makes a good argument for the maxima.




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Dashboard photography at 72 MPH? Is the Maxima also self-driving? Or are you just most suicidal motherfucker alive?

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

If you want a reasonably quick very comfy highway bomber, the following pic makes a good argument for the maxima.

You're doing 70 and you're taking pics of your dash? You fucking moron...

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Wait...on second thought...You're doing great, buddy! More awesome pics, please!.

[Smackie Chan]

I'm interested to see the MPG @ 90 mph.

[smackaholic]

I'm interested to see the MPG @ 90 mph.

Not gonna find out. The speed limit on the Maine Turnpike is 70. I suspect they'll give you 80, but not a mile more.

[smackaholic]

If you want a reasonably quick very comfy highway bomber, the following pic makes a good argument for the maxima.




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Dashboard photography at 72 MPH? Is the Maxima also self-driving? Or are you just most suicidal motherfucker alive?

Relax Nancy. It's the fukking Maine Turnpike and taking a snapshot is about as dangerous as changing the radio station. The biggest danger driving that stretch of road is dozing off from boredom. Fiddling around with your phone actually helps to keep you awake. After dark is different. Best to slow down a bit and keep your eye out for Moose. They are damn near invisible and hitting one at 70 mph would not go well...for the moose or driver.

[BSmack]

I'm interested to see the MPG @ 90 mph.

Not gonna find out. The speed limit on the Maine Turnpike is 70. I suspect they'll give you 80, but not a mile more.

Go little bit further north. There is a fairly long stretch where the limit is 75 mph.

[smackaholic]

Yeah, that is the other side of Augusta. I didn't go that far. Drove the fukk outta that thing since Friday. Friday went to Burlington, Vt. Stayed over waiting for parts. Yesterday drove to Wells, Maine. Then Rockland this morning, Augusta, then back home. About 1000 miles give or take a few. Never was a big fan of Leather seats, but I turned the interior temp down to low 60s and put the heated seats to full afterburner. Back feels like a million bucks now. Think I'll hang on to this thing for a bit.

[Diego in Seattle]

Was there....fog?

[Dinsdale]

Best to slow down a bit and keep your eye out for Moose.

Drove from The Other Portland to Waterville, ME. Firstly, that was the first and only time I've ever ponied up money to drive down the fucking freeway (and we were just about out of cash after the last toll booth. Pooled the bills and quarters and made it, with a few cents to spare.. Bastards don't take cards). And every couple of miles, they have a sign warning of moose. Being from a place with massive elk, I understand. Shit kills people.

Was there....fog?

Well played, good sir.

[smackaholic]

Ct did away with tolls on 95 back in the 80s after a tanker truck jockey nodded off and plowed into a toll plaza and barbequed a handfull of people. But, I am afraid they'll be back soon since Mass has demonstrated that you can have toll roads without toll booths. They have a system which snaps your license plate and mails you a bill if you don't have an ez pass transponder. I am certain Ct will jump on this technology and they won't be alone. I suspect you left coasters will also jump on this new source of revenue.

[Joe in PB]

I think you buy a 4x4 like you would a car that is planned to be raced, expecting ever increasing maintenance the harder it is driven. Certainly more than a typical commuter car.

[Bucmonkey]

Train of thought...Dims...