Anything French or Italian or Vauxhall according to my local recovery company.

And JLR have the same reputation in the USA as here.

""Agree to a certain degree, complexity adds to the likelihood of failures but other prestige brands manage to do the job better. I don’t see many Lexus products or Volvo's sat with their necks broken in lay-by’s""

Again the whole argument is about volume of sales. The two mentioned are not volume sellers so the odds of seeing them moving or broken down are very low.

Both Lexus and Volvo are volume sellers of cars

Both Lexus and Volvo are volume sellers of cars

Lexus had a record high UK market share in 2020 - 0.84%.

Volvo had 2.85%.

Both BMW & Mercedes ~7% each.

Which makes them volume sellers...they are mass produced cars in huge factories and produced in the thousands...these are not small hand made manufactuerers.

Wasn't the simple point being made that the denominator is considerably higher for BMW & Mercedes than for Volvo & Lexus?

It wouldn't signify a big difference in reliability if you saw 7 times as many conked out BMW's as Lexuses, or twice as many as Volvo's, would it?

That said I'd far rather have the Lexus. In reality you'd probably see at least 20 times as many broken down BMW and Mercedes as Lexus, but unless you're a tow truck driver it's a fairly rubbish way of measuring reliability. I can only remember seeing one broken down car in the last year or two, and that was a VW Up.

The original point from Sammy was saying that Lexus and Volvo are not volume sellers and you are unlikley to see many of them moving let alone broken down...Volvo are Lexus are hardly cars you don't see every day...especially Volvo.

No. The point was the SMALL volume of sales of Lexus and Volvo compared to the total cars manufactured. Volvo 2.85 Lexus 0.84 total 3.69% for the two 96.31% for the rest. Far fewer cars around to breakdown. I don't remember the last time I even saw a Lexus!

Other than the large makes like Ford and VW most will only have a few percent market share. If you drive a lot you do see quite a lot of breakdowns and someone that works for a break down organisation will get a feel for what cars tend to have more problems.

Keep your eyes peeled for a Lexus plenty about to see :-)

You must have missed mine then, a few years ago, dash lights came on returning from Heathrow on the M40. Stuck there for a while before being escorted back home by the AA. Eventually our local dealer found a short circuit between the high and low circuits. £400 to fix it, followed later by £660 (yes!) for a wheel bearing, I did 110k miles in it, an extremely uncomfortable driving position for a tall chap like me. I very much like Toyotas, but not this one. I plan a Lexus at some time though.

Edited by MGspannerman on 16/10/2021 at 20:22

I’m shocked to hear that about the Prius.

My Indie told me he had to change a wheel bearing on a Lexus and the genuine part cost approaching £1000 so he matched the original up with one from the local bearing supplier for less than £20.

But we don’t see many abandoned Hi Luxe’s in war zones on the TV !

Maybe just ran out of fuel ? :-)

Maybe just ran out of fuel ? :-)

He was 100 yards from a filling station.

Maybe they were just lazy? :-) I might've said that perhaps the filling station was out of whatever fuel they needed, but I think that 'crisis' has now ended (for the moment).

TBH I'm surprised that there hasn't been more cars with punctures over the last 18 months, given how many cars have sat idle for months on end, either getting flatspots and/or severely deteriorated tyres because they've been left to go completely flat.

Or flat batteries for similar reasons (lack of use). I did come across one person in my town (other than myself [July 2020] - but then my car's battery was around its historical 'replacement age' anyway) whose car also had a flat battery that needed replacement, otherwise that's it round my way.