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Comment by cameronh90 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I feel like German cars have an undeserved reputation for quality. German cars are superficially well built, quite fast, and make satisfying thunks when you close the doors. However, they are fairly unreliable, sensitive, and when they do fail, cost a lot to repair.

I'll take a Japanese car any day, however, Hyundai, Volvo, Skoda, Kia, Peugeot and Ford are also better engineered than most German cars nowadays in my opinion.

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This is just a personal anecdote - I got a brand new Mercedes in 2016, it was even fully made in Germany - and it was probably the worst assembled vehicle I have ever owned in my life(and I used to own a 1995 Fiat Cinquecento), the number of creaks and rattles coming from all places in that car was almost funny if it wasn't so upsetting. I've had several visits to the dealership just to fix rattling seats, upholstery, dashboard and sunroof. Drove very well and never had any mechanical or electrical problems, but the interior was horrendous.

Then in 2020 I swapped it for a brand new Volvo XC60(made in China!) and in the last 3 years this car has literally been completely trouble free. No rattles from anywhere, nothing. Extremely well put together, comfortable, drove it across Europe multiple times now and literally no issues with it whatsoever. Such a stark contrast to mercedes for me.

Are you sure it's made in China? For most markets XC60 are built either in Sweden or indeed in China, but I always wondered about chinese-produced ones. Fellow Volvo owner (XC90/2022 - Sweden-built though), car's a dream.

Yes I'm very sure. The car was built in Chengdou in January 2020 then transported over here by train (option which no longer exists at the moment because Russia closed the land link so cars have to be brought to Europe by ship the old fashioned way). It's a T8 plug-in hybrid for the British market.

Mercedes' reputation for reliability is mostly a legacy of the 60s and 70s. Their cars from that era were absurdly overbuilt, especially the diesel powered models. You will still find diesel MBs from the 70s on the road today, some of them having racked up 500k miles or more.

My father has a 98 S320, with over 1 million kilometers. The engine just recently started to have overheating problems and needs to be rebuilt with new gaskets, but otherwise runs fine!

As a former Audi owner, the old saying was absolutely true: if you can afford to buy two Audis, you can afford to own one. Absolutely fantastic vehicle until it blows up and then you are buying VW parts with Porsche price tags.

Where does this German engineering saying come from? I find German engineering unnecessarily complicated and it looks more or less designed by a committee of bickering members.

Japanese engineering on the other hand in my experience is very solid and also pretty cheap. It is easier to repair and vehicles are like mountain goats that can go anywhere and can be handled roughly.

Skodas are just previous gen Volkswagens btw

I understood Skodas are usually _next_ gen Volkswagens. At least when I lived in Europe they always got the new chassis/engine/gearbox to beta before it rolled out to VW, did that change?

Not even previous gen any more. They just get interiors that aren’t quite as nice (more plastic).

My Skoda is the most boring, unsurprising, uninteresting and reliable car I every driven. I love it.

I'm sad they've stopped making functional-first cars like the Yeti, and now just do versions of VW models. I think Dacia might have taken up the mantle of no-frills and reliable though.

I've driven mostly BMW's and their build quality has been decent.

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