The problems were quite serious... the car would mysteriously turn, and other problems like that which can create accedents.

It could have been how that car was maintained, but being the owner of the car wash's car, I would think it would have been maintained quite well.

 

I belive they only publish a numerical index for the top 25 most unreliable cars...

When I went to the NHTSA website, it did not mention an index for any car, even the ones in the list, unless you were looking at the list itself. The website is quite crappy, I am sure if you give them a call, they can tell you more.

 

Well, what kind of things looked bad on it?



and shame on you for taking your black car to a car wash!




go back to page 1 where I did an edit and found some curious info on the side airbags of the TT

 

Its a total hand wash. For 15 dollars, the guys there practically do a detail. The clean everything, and then put a spray on wax. I saw lots of scratches... it was like swirl marks, but you could see them in the dark, and they were lines. The color was also washed out a bit.

 

lol... I hope thats a one off incident.

 

yea, swirl marks aren't a sign of a bad paint job, that's bad upkeep. I've yet to see a car wash use a towel i would dare touch my car with. And we have some high end wash's out here.


It'd be interesting if the color would wash out, that would mean that somehow they would of gone through a few coats of clear (something very rare, unless someone at the carwash took a rotary to it a few to many times, which is possible cause car wash's don't teach those guys jack about how to properly use those things)

 

That quote was from what the guys at PCNA told him

 

Dollar for dollar, go with the Z06 for sure. I'm sure MTI or Lingenfelter will soon release head cam package for that and a plethora of mods.

 

they are already out for the LS2's

 

Mehrabani, given that we disagree on just about everything, I'm not surprised that we disagree on this as well.

I am one of the few people on this board to actually OWN a C5 Vette and it was THE most reliable vehicle I've ever had. True, the body tolerances were not as great as a japanese or german car, but it was a pretty darn tight car.

Every iteration of the Corvette has improved significantly over the previous generation, and I see no reason that the C6 will be any different. Given that American cars are climbing in reliability ratings and now beating MOST German cars, I think the C6 will be a fantastic car, especially for the money.

With respect to being rated one of the worst cars, I'd sure like to see their criteria. Consumer Reports rated the 1999 C5 as a "Recomended Buy", and the 2003 model has "Excellent" or "Very Good" ratings in every category that they review.

It's hard to imagine that Consumer Reports could be so very wrong...

 

Actually, I did some more digging into your allegations. Turns out that the NHTSA doesn't "rank" or "rate" vehicles, nor do they acknowlege reliability or lack thereof. They merely register complaints about vehicles - any kind of complaints.

The website you referred us to is a FOR-PROFIT law firm specializing in lemon-law litigation. THEY compiled the data from the NHTSA in order to form the "ranked" list. However, NOWHERE does it claim that this is a list of "least reliable" cars, nor does it claim that this is a list of most-lemoned cars.

Case in Point:
Remember when the H2 Hummer first came out? It was rated by JD Power as one of the WORST new vehicles on the market. Why, you might ask? Well it turns out that people really hated getting 10MPG, so they complained about it. Everything else was OK with the H2. So based on the complaints of fuel economy, JD rated the H2 as unreliable when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

 

I owned one if the first C5s made - a March 1997 delivery '97 Z51 6speed. Owned it for two years - never had a single rattle or squeak due to the stiff frame rail structure.
Traded it for a '99 996 , which had up to 10 different rattles and squeaks - many but not all traced down, but then recurring in doors, dash,pillars sunroof rear area , ...... Even my Turbo has a long term right rear qtr squeak that dealers have never been able to track down.You should see the factory TSB list for rattle and squeak fixes for '99-'01 996s - there are like 8 for the doors alone.

 

Yes, JD power rates customer satisfaction in their dependability studies.

The Scion xA and xB were rated among the lowest. Toyota bought the data and found the complaits resulted mostly from suspension stiffness and inadequate of a/c cooling.

A much better reliability survey is done by CR, their readers send only reliability issues. It also has -*/more data since many more surveys are submitted.

 

Porsche really shouldn't be using mass produced VW parts for their interiors.

 

Great info guys, that really helped clear that up a little bit