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Hmm, maintained M5 versus never maintained Toyota Corolla is actually a good question. It'd be interesting to take a bunch of Corollas and see if they can make it to around 100k with no maintenace which is when M5s start needing the more costly "maintenance". Vanos tend to start going out, so that's about $2,500 each, engine get gunked up, $10,000, clutches on the manual... relatively minor compared with replacing an engine but then you could drop in a new engine in a Corolla several times before you got close to what it would cost to get an E39 M5 through the normal issues.
Alternatively, you could look at it the other way and assume proper maintenance. Corolla will probably get to 200k without a whole lot of major issues assuming it's maintained. An E39 M5 would not. Probably a good idea to budget a Corolla or two for the expected repairs that usually happen on properly maintained ones. I'd had to see how often they'd break things if you just drove it without ever doing any maintenance.
First of all with modern cars what scheduled maintenance does one really need to do, even in the first 100K miles:
Fluid changes: oil, tranny (coolant lasts 100K+ now, most cars don't even have power steering fluid anymore)
Spark plugs: Sure, most at 60K, others beyond 100K
Filters: Oil, cabin, engine, maybe fuel
Beyond that nothing else really needed. Just a bunch of inspections if you read the owners manual
Hmm, maintained M5 versus never maintained Toyota Corolla is actually a good question. It'd be interesting to take a bunch of Corollas and see if they can make it to around 100k with no maintenace which is when M5s start needing the more costly "maintenance". Vanos tend to start going out, so that's about $2,500 each...
The operative question for a bottom-feeder like me, who’d buy either the Corolla or the E39 M5 when either has 150K miles, is – how much residual utility can I extract from either vehicle, with minimal maintenance, before driving either car into the proverbial graveyard (theirs, not mine)?
As a personal data point, I have no experience with the E39 M5, but I do with the E36 M3. I bought mine some years ago, when it had 170K miles. Today it has just over 200K miles. It runs fairly well, but I decided that it’s too fragile and temperamental to be driven with any regularity. I de-registered it. It sleeps in my garage, getting driven perhaps once every other week in summer, just for joint-cracking exercise (its, not mine). On the other hand, I had a 1990 Corolla, which I bought around 15 years ago, and drove for around 5 years. It reached well beyond 200K miles, but eventually succumbed to rust and to cascading minor failures, to which I eventually didn’t bother to attend. It was sold to a metal recycler.
Oh, and regarding VANOS... when that fails, typically from a worn rubber O-ring that no longer retains oil-pressure, bye-bye midrange torque. The engine feels gutless - eviscerated. The DIY repair is not outrageously difficult, and our local BMW club has a perennial clinic where we repair each other's VANOS. But it's such a frequent failure at 100K-150K miles, that it should almost be a maintenance item.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IShootNikon
First of all with modern cars what scheduled maintenance does one really need to do, even in the first 100K miles:
I can't speak to cars built within the past 10 years, never having owned one. But for cars from the 1990s and early 2000s, typical culprits include cracking radiator, worn water pump, faulty ignition components (good luck diagnosing one bad ignition coil, when there are 6 total!), mysterious short-circuits that drained the battery or caused one or another parking-light-bulb to keep blowing out, and my personal favorite - bad secondary oxygen sensors (not affecting power or fuel-economy, but throwing an OBD-II code and the "check engine" idiot light).
The operative question for a bottom-feeder like me, who’d buy either the Corolla or the E39 M5 when either has 150K miles, is – how much residual utility can I extract from either vehicle, with minimal maintenance, before driving either car into the proverbial graveyard (theirs, not mine)?
As a personal data point, I have no experience with the E39 M5, but I do with the E36 M3. I bought mine some years ago, when it had 170K miles. Today it has just over 200K miles. It runs fairly well, but I decided that it’s too fragile and temperamental to be driven with any regularity. I de-registered it. It sleeps in my garage, getting driven perhaps once every other week in summer, just for joint-cracking exercise (its, not mine). On the other hand, I had a 1990 Corolla, which I bought around 15 years ago, and drove for around 5 years. It reached well beyond 200K miles, but eventually succumbed to rust and to cascading minor failures, to which I eventually didn’t bother to attend. It was sold to a metal recycler.
Oh, and regarding VANOS... when that fails, typically from a worn rubber O-ring that no longer retains oil-pressure, bye-bye midrange torque. The engine feels gutless - eviscerated. The DIY repair is not outrageously difficult, and our local BMW club has a perennial clinic where we repair each other's VANOS. But it's such a frequent failure at 100K-150K miles, that it should almost be a maintenance item.
I can't speak to cars built within the past 10 years, never having owned one. But for cars from the 1990s and early 2000s, typical culprits include cracking radiator, worn water pump, faulty ignition components (good luck diagnosing one bad ignition coil, when there are 6 total!), mysterious short-circuits that drained the battery or caused one or another parking-light-bulb to keep blowing out, and my personal favorite - bad secondary oxygen sensors (not affecting power or fuel-economy, but throwing an OBD-II code and the "check engine" idiot light).
Yep, and none of those are maintenance items besides water pump
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BellaLind
I had an interesting conversation with my boyfriend about cars. He said just about any car, with few exceptions, can be a reliable car as long as you properly maintain it. He added, that some cars are able to take more abuse such as lack of proper maintenance and still run well some models can't take the abuse. The ones that can take the abuse are the cars that get the reputation for being "reliable." But that if you take a car, any car, and properly maintain it, it will run well and be reliable for you. Of course, barring some very unusual engineering problem.
The reason this came up, is because I told him I wanted a reliable car for my next vehicle. And I was looking into reliability statistics because of it. He said the statistics are misleading because so many people don't take proper care of their cars. He said if you take for example, a Honda owner and a BMW owner who don't take good care of their cars, the Honda owner will see his car is more reliable because it can take the abuse more than the BMW. But if you had a Honda owner in a BMW owner who both properly maintain their cars, there really wouldn't be any difference in reliability.
It was his opinion that I should look at other factors in getting a car with reliability being a secondary attribute to look for because he says I maintain my car very well. I think it's his opinion that I should look into safety first. And then maybe comfort.
It kind of makes sense to me. I've never had an unreliable car, then again I've always taken care of them. I was just curious of others find this to be true. It's hard for me to really be objective about it because I haven't had that many cars to compare. Maybe I've been lucky.
Something as simple as seats: My grandfather owned a '64 Buick with front bucket seats as comfy as all, but were so underspring, understuffed, whatever, he said that after only a few years they looked like ELEPHANTS had sat in them! Vinyl bottom upholstery all torn, etc. wrinkled, flat as a pair of placemats. Mind you my grandfather, dad, etc, were not what you'd consider heavy or big people. With the seats in modern cars, 2000 and up, it would probably take 30 years for them to look half that awful.
Was that just a case of inferior engineering or of maintenance or both?
As far as underhood goes, following recommended service intervals for your specific make certainly won't hurt, as well as being a careful driver. Anything that goes consistently wrong despite all that could be chalked up to engineering, design.
Last edited by TheGrandK-Man; 07-25-2017 at 12:45 PM..
Engineering design plays a major role in reliability. Situations where engineers made decisions to cut costs, used cheaper materials, made compromises to resolve fitment issues, etc., have a big impact on how reliable a car will be after a period of use. For example, a manufacturer who decides to minimize costs by using a lower quality plastic for timing chain guides, or maybe cuts corners somewhere in the electrical system, or makes poor material choices for gaskets, can kill the reliability of a vehicle regardless of how well the owner takes care of it.
Where owner maintenance and engineering merge, for example, could be using the correct fluids. My previous example mentioned timing chain guides. Audi's 1.8 and 2.0 engines used a timing belt and a chain for some time, and the chain tensioner had plastic shoes on them which were prone to failure, ESPECIALLY if the correct oil was not used, because incorrect oil would cause undue friction on the wear surface of the shoes and eventually compromise the tensioner, which would ultimately cause oil consumption issues. Instead of using the manufacturer's suggested 5W-40 oil, many owners would ignore the recommendation and dump in any oil. So, reliability can also be dictated by whether or not the owner follows the manufacturers recommendations, as many design decisions are made such that failure issues can be mitigated by using certain fluids (oil, fuel, trans fluid, etc.).
Engineering design plays a major role in reliability. Situations where engineers made decisions to cut costs, used cheaper materials, made compromises to resolve fitment issues, etc., have a big impact on how reliable a car will be after a period of use. For example, a manufacturer who decides to minimize costs by using a lower quality plastic for timing chain guides, or maybe cuts corners somewhere in the electrical system, or makes poor material choices for gaskets, can kill the reliability of a vehicle regardless of how well the owner takes care of it.
Where owner maintenance and engineering merge, for example, could be using the correct fluids. My previous example mentioned timing chain guides. Audi's 1.8 and 2.0 engines used a timing belt and a chain for some time, and the chain tensioner had plastic shoes on them which were prone to failure, ESPECIALLY if the correct oil was not used, because incorrect oil would cause undue friction on the wear surface of the shoes and eventually compromise the tensioner, which would ultimately cause oil consumption issues. Instead of using the manufacturer's suggested 5W-40 oil, many owners would ignore the recommendation and dump in any oil. So, reliability can also be dictated by whether or not the owner follows the manufacturers recommendations, as many design decisions are made such that failure issues can be mitigated by using certain fluids (oil, fuel, trans fluid, etc.).
I blame the plastic shoes. If a car breaks down due to using a different viscosity oil I'm sorry but that is bad engineering.
I blame the plastic shoes. If a car breaks down due to using a different viscosity oil I'm sorry but that is bad engineering.
While the plastic shoes sound like a dumb idea overall, there may have been entirely sound reasons for the designers to specify a particular type and viscosity-range of oil... for example, for maintaining a particular curve of pressure vs. rpm. So, while it is unreasonable to blame owners for what was fundamentally a compromised design (plastic timing-chain shoes), the onus is on the owner, to use the proper motor-oil.
Per my earlier posting in this thread, a more robust design - though NOT necessarily one of higher quality - would have been, well, more robust to different motor oils, or perhaps even to a low oil fill-level, or to infrequent oil changes.
Something I just though of for those who have traveled to poor countries such as Mexico and most of the Caribbean. How many POS cars do you see on the roads in these countries that are considered low end low cost models such as a Corolla vs high end models like BMW or Mercedes ?
Granted the high end sample size will be smaller since less people can afford them, but one should expect to see an BMW or Mercedes rolling down the road with trashed suspension, broken doors, and bad steering once in a while.
I can tell you from personal experience that the Dominican Republic is loaded with 20+ year old Corollas in conditions you'd never imagine with 200+k on the clock. If Toyota were smart they would film a commercial there.
I on the other hand have never seen a trashed high end car like a BMW rolling the streets of the DR.
I on the other hand have never seen a trashed high end car like a BMW rolling the streets of the DR.
This could be a cultural thing. In the US, it's entirely common for people who are too frugal (or too impecunious) to buy a new or freshly-used high-end car, to nevertheless be keen on owning an older model, that's sustained considerable depreciation. But, being frugal or impecunious, they're not much interested in assiduous maintenance. In much (most?) of the Third World, the sort of person who'd buy a high-end car, would not car for an older one, or a run-down one. Those who are frugal, would buy the Corolla, or just contend with public transportation.
The US is unusual in the plethora of older (run-down or otherwise) high-end cars.
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Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
This could be a cultural thing. In the US, it's entirely common for people who are too frugal (or too impecunious) to buy a new or freshly-used high-end car, to nevertheless be keen on owning an older model, that's sustained considerable depreciation. But, being frugal or impecunious, they're not much interested in assiduous maintenance. In much (most?) of the Third World, the sort of person who'd buy a high-end car, would not car for an older one, or a run-down one. Those who are frugal, would buy the Corolla, or just contend with public transportation.
The US is unusual in the plethora of older (run-down or otherwise) high-end cars.
On that last point: It's because it's so damn expensive to live here! We may be the "land of the free", but are we really free? $Thousands per year in vehicle and real estate taxes. Landlords jacking up rents for people who don't own their homes, etc. So owning a 10-15year old Lexus or BMW beater is the only way for lots of us to own a high-end car.
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