>>Nothing French or italian, so including jeep/chrysler or nissan.

Add Mitsubishi to that list. They are now owned 35% by Renault/Nissan so all new models will use common parts from Renault/Nissan. The older ones are fine though.

There are some people here who will never be buying another car with some of the no nos..........

:)

Yes, I'm the mug who, despite advice to the contrary, bought the Powershift.

Its an odd situation in some ways, because the B Max itself, and the other Ford variants which have that box are by and large excellent cars ruined by a rather silly experiment which has caught more than one manufacturer with their pants down. Oddly enough I don't regret buying it, because although it cost me money to buy, the extended warranty means that someone else will hopefully pay to make it into a very good car between now and next June.

Its in the garage today and I have a 56 plate Nissan Note auto loan car for comparison. Sharp off the mark, but the rev counter dances all over the place as you're driving, unlike the B Max which, when its working, is smooth as silk. Perhaps its just had a hard time.

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable to give an informed view about which cars to avoid, but I'd concur with the above and say any auto box which is really a manual, and anything that gets a bad time from the regular contributors to this forum. Stick around, rather than relying on this thread alone and you'll soon find out which ones they are. ;0)

Edited by argybargy on 03/10/2017 at 13:43

For me it's any car with some new 'market leading' feature or innovation. The first generation of electric parking brakes were dire, but now it's no longer a feature which would put me off.

Similarly, everyone was really worried about dual mass flywheels failing early about 10 years ago but they seem a lot better now with most getting past 100k miles with no problems.

On current cars, I think it would be the 'driving aid' features such as adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance systems. My limited experience of both on nearly new hire cars is that their operation is erratic and gets it wrong more often than getting it right.

Two complete lines in the sand for me at the moment though are diamond cut alloy wheels and touch screen controlled heaters.

Personally speaking, I find its a bit unfair for Which and some of the motoring press to castigate manufacturers who don't achieve five star ratings for their cars - many of the latest features are, in my view, installed in cars to either help save the lives of idiots who don't look where they're going and walk into the road, or are incapcable of doing so and aren't supervised, or for drivers who's attention wanders when it shouldn't. In some ways, they actually (to me, anyway) encourage worse driving, as people start to rely on gizmos to stop them having accidents. To me, its been very noticeable over my years of driving how much faster people now drive, particularly in poor waether, probably because they think ABS, TC and SC will save them if needs be. Better driving standards would see a HUGE drop in accidents, and as a result, deaths and serious injuries.

Are such media outlets saying that ANY car that doesn't have such modern safety features should be banned - No. Many of these features add large sums to the build costs of the cars, often pushing people on a budget towards older cars precisely WITH less safety features, which to me seems daft. I do recall someone here saying that NCAP base their score on that achieved by the base model, which often is the lowest selling variant and thus not representative of the car - I would suspect that insurers take into account the extra saefty features of the middle and higher end models when deciding which grouping it will fall into.

Those cars Which listed aren't terrible cars in terms of safety, but fair-to-average in today's terms and a little better if compared to 11yo cars like mine that scored a 4star rating under the old system.

I agree with most other posters that a 'bad car' is very subjective - its often specific features of the car that make it bad (very dependent upon age and how its been previously looked after), and often very poor customer service that makes the ownership experience all the worse.

The only real way we can compare the latest cars to those from, say 10 - 15 years ago is for NCAP to make a comparison table, and for government figures for accident rates (for all different types of accidents and injuries sustained [not just death rates, as medicine improves and result in less fatalities and more full recoveries from serious injuries) to be available for all to see.

www.youtube.com/user/AutoExpertTV

That guy is obviously based in Australia, but he recommends avoiding the same cars that most on these forums do.

He really hates Ford and VAG with a passion too ;)

Good ol' John Cadogan. He hates Holden (GM's equaivalent of Vauxhall [well, until PSA bought it] in Oz) even more. To be honest, he doesn't 'hate' Ford and VAG cars per se, but he is scathing about both's poor reliability (especially their DSG and powershift gearboxes - he actually highly rates the cars in terms on performance, handling, ride, etc) and customer service.

I can understand why, as unlike in the UK, where most people can get toa garage (at the very least) and preferably a main dealership relatively easily, in a country as large as 'Stralia (his term) with large distances from communities to them and lots of arid outback, people need dependable vehicles and manufacturers who look after their customers.

Maybe best to avoid the 1.0 Ecoboost unit especially those with fitted DMF's if you want to keep the vehicle for the longer term. No way are these units capable of covering the same miles as the Sigma Zetec-S (Yamaha) unit or Mazda Duratec units. Not likely to cover a quarter of the miles that the robust now discontinued Zetec-E unit could. The unit might be fine for the indebted short term 3 year PCP brigade but of little use to the long-term buyer that wants to actually own and keep vehicle for the long term.

This looks like one to avoid:

www.autoexpress.co.uk/nissan/101209/nissans-sweat-...s

Checked it wasn't 1st April

"...when cars needed servicing every 1,000 miles..."

Takes me back to American cars in Kuwait during the '70s - if you didn't change the oil to get rid of the sand, the engine was gone within 12/18 months

"I can understand why, as unlike in the UK, where most people can get toa garage (at the very least) and preferably a main dealership relatively easily, in a country as large as 'Stralia (his term) with large distances from communities to them and lots of arid outback, people need dependable vehicles and manufacturers who look after their customers."

There was a story of someone living in the outback in the days when cars needed servicing every 1,000 miles. This guy bought a new car, but lived 500 miles from the nearest garage.

He soon learned to service his car himself.

I still have a handbook for the 1947-1952 A40 Austin Devon (my second car in 1961). Recommends oil change (engine,gearbox and rear axle) on a new car after 500 miles, thereafter every 2000 miles.for engine, 5000 for gearbox and axle. Also recommends weekly greasing of 15 points on the chassis.

I must admit that I didn't keep to this schedule, I suspect few owners did.

<< The one thing I noticed was that I never went for an absolutely brand new model. Always the model that had been out for some years and had the teething faults eradicated. >>

That's been my basic mantra for 50 years or more. A couple of years after launch is a reasonable time to allow for debugging and for initial hype to be replaced by a balanced opinion; then another couple for used values to settle to a comfortable level .... :-)

There's a strong case, when buying used, to go for a basic model rather than one with lots of electronic gadgetry. Engines and gearboxes (including torque-converter automatics) are generally pretty reliable nowadays: but the same can't be said for some of the electrinic gimmicks.

The French largely stay loyal to their own country's cars: that's because more of them buy the basic models and avoid the options that give French cars a bad name over here. As a race we British are too status-conscious and think we'll impress the neighbours with our upmarket variants, forgetting that only about 2% will actually notice and be able to tell.....(let's keep it polite) the first part of 'Titanium' from the second.