Mr Bond

Many of my friends has Audi or BMW and in reality they dont have more problems than any other manufacturer. But ok, they are not older than 3-4 years. On the other hand , what do buyers of new cars care about what happens 6-10 years after he/she sold it ?

I think the difference is what kind of problems some of the cars have. My IS250 was a nightmare in terms of rattling interior and "bad" material quality. But it never left me stranded, never had any eletric issue or high oil consumption, auto gearbox fail, and so on. So in fact , my IS 250 never had any reliability issues. But is it fair to say that it was "better" and more "high quality" than an Audi with high oil consumption. Im not so sure about that.

CEOEngr

I absolutely concur with you. I am one of those who has other manufacturers vehicles and have never been stranded or faced major issues other then a tire blowout.

If you visit Northside Lexus & Westside Lexus (sister dealerships) and listen to their SA's selling unnecessary & expensive repairs to the soccer mom's in the waiting area. One would quickly come to the conclusion that Lexus vehicles fall apart immediately after expiration of the warranty i.e. oil leaking from the shocks, power steering, corrosion of fuel rails or brake lines, etc.

I caught them once in a blatant attempt to sell bogus repair when my wife took in our LS460L (sold). Fortunately she said no. It has been our experience that on subsequent visits they found other problems but never the same previous ones. It was apparent to me that their technicians are commission based. This attempted fleecing happened once too many times and that is when I decided to move on to other brands.

rxonmymind

Commissioned based? That's a first for me if true. That would be ugly.

Moving on. I'd also like to applaud Audi for working their butts off the last eight to ten years to claw their way up to number 3 in contesting position number 2. they certainly had a fire in their belly.
I'd be interested to know how the 2014 RS 7(560hp & 516 lbs ft ) will do in terms of reliability 5 years from now. That specs on that car surpasses the LFA.

spwolf

thats why we have surveys, so you dont have to rely on "many of your friends"... instead you get many of magazine readers, in this case huge amount of magazine readers.

Mr Bond

It is the type of issue that is important, not just how many. I can for sure tell you that I would have rated my IS 250 "1 star of 5" when those rattle problems occured. Luckily nobody at "consumer reports" asked me back then. And thats actually a big problem here: You get a new product and it does not meet your expectations and the whole picture turns very negative for a while, no matter how serious the problem actually is. But If they would asked again after they finally fixed the rattle issues I would have given it a high number again.

mmarshall

Bond raises a good point here. Lexus, IMO (and I concur with him) has indeed allowed the solidness of a lot of its interior and exterior materials to deteriorate for about the last 10 years or so. But, underneath those rattles/squeaks and tinny-closing doors lie some of the best engines and transmissions in the industry for long-term durability. You can usually take a long trip in a Lexus with reasonable expectation that you won't be broken down on the side of the road somewhere, unless a tire goes flat.

sears1234

I have owned Mercedes E350 for over two years, and I have zero issue, and bought another Mercedes for one year, and also very solid.

My experience with Lexus is they are very reliable, but most of them had rattle inside, not feeling solid. They never meet my expectation.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

we don't know how many '(CR) magazine readers' for any given lexus model because CR doesn't publish the sample sizes. for some models they say the sample size was too small but what does that mean? if only 3 veyron owners fill out a survey for CR do they consider that too small? given how rare the vehicle, maybe it's not too small. but for a lexus, which obviously sells in much higher numbers, how big is the sample size for a given model, and thus how representative is it really, either of the CR readership, which doesn't necessarily reflect the public at large, or the public as a whole. we'll never know because they never say. CR does not have any real statistical credibility because their methodology is so vague. even with big 'enough' sample sets, the surveys are purely subjective about reported problems - is having a transmission replaced the same 'amount of problems' (i.e., 1) as a squeak in the dash? if so, that's a totally stupid analysis.

again, it's STILL great that lexus is on top, and deserved, but the difference in aggravation between owning a lexus and something 'mid pack' or 'worse' may be trivial to many people. plus, with the number of infotainment issues (as an example) that get reported on some vehicles, the results might be very different with those out of the mix.

precisely.

spwolf

CR is largest survey in the world... so they have most vehicles of anyone. Statistically, when it comes to science of statistics, as low as 1000 samples is considered good..

With Toyota, MB and BMW selling over 300,000 vehicles per year, their statistical sample is huge.

Not to mention that the same results are obtained in almost any survey in the world. For most cases, they match each other.

Different surveys also rate different things differently - for instance VDS from JDP rates actual dependability over minor issues while some others take minor niggles as serious as big ones.

And besides, we can talk all day about this, we all know that these results also mirror our own experiences in real life, hence many people here who own MB/Audi/BMW openly say they lease them and would likely never own 5 year old one.

Or for instance, when it comes to Tesla and what is being shown as significantly worse reliablily is actually mirrored in various long term tests as many mags reported powertrain failures that everyone tried to dismiss as one of the kind. It is all great since most cars are still under warranty period. But next year, many people will start getting p/o when they have to start paying for out-of-warranty expenses.

Problem is of course that cars dont get recycled when they are out of warranty, which is usually 3-4 years or 50k miles... I think average age of car in the USA is around 11 years... So after warranty expires, cars are driven for 10+ more years and of course that quality surveys are very important. Heck, most people on CL have cars with that are way older than 2-3 years.

Having worked in the industry with many dealers as friends, not only there is huge difference in quality between the brands, but also even the best brands have enough problems. So dismissing quality is just nonsense.

gyrase321

True that. Here's a survey from Auto Express published Oct. 2015 with 61,000 respondents in the UK. It showed Lexus vehicles on top of the heap. http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-ca...to-own-in-2015


Overall

1. Lexus IS
2. Skoda Yeti
3. Hyundai i10
4. SEAT Leon
5. Renault ZOE

Most reliable cars

1. Toyota iQ
2. Lexus NX
3. Lexus IS

Best for build quality

1. Lexus NX
2. Lexus RX
3. Lexus IS

Best for running costs

1. Renault ZOE
2. Skoda Citigo
3. VW up!

Best performance

1. Porsche 911
2. Jaguar XK/R
3. Jaguar F-Type

Best road handling

1. Porsche Boxster
2. Porsche 911
3. Subaru Impreza

Best ride quality

1. Land Rover Discovery 4
2. Lexus IS
3. Range Rover

Easiest to drive

1. Lexus IS
2. Renault ZOE
3. Skoda Yeti

Comfiest seats

1. Lexus RX
2. Lexus GS
3. Volvo XC70

Best for practicality

1. Subaru Outback
2. Jeep Grand Cherokee
3. Land Rover Discovery 4

Best for in-car tech

1. SEAT Leon
2. Lexus GS
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

which is why i take jdp more seriously than cr.

definitely... i said above lexus deserves to be on top!

i don't think anyone is dismissing quality... just CR's shoddy 'methodology'.