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Comment by deng | Hacker News Reader

What a disaster for VW and Mercedes, but it pretty much confirms what everyone here in Germany is saying: reliability has gone downhill, with exception of BMW and Porsche (but it'll cost you), whereas Japan is at the top for ages, with South Korea (Kia, Hyundai) providing a good, cheaper alternative.

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After your 3/5-year warranty at BMW you can maintain your BMW at your local workshop, and the costs are similar to other cars. They are not expensive cars to maintain, specially the latest models (F-series, G-series).

What do they say about Audi, since it is so related in parts with Porsche via VW parent group?

Audi usually scores pretty well (but again, it'll cost you, the Audi A1 is extremely reliable, but you don't get much car for your money...).

Also, you go for Audi (standard models) mainly for how chassis is modeled (aka looks), internals of VW conglomerate are almost identical to cheaper VW or sometimes also Skoda or Seat.

Interestingly, one of my colleague's worst car experience was Audi, not sure if A1 or A2, but he was very disappointed how unreliable it was. Case point 1.

5 year old A5 here and it's an excellent car. didn't go for any bigger engine etc. Close friends have a Q5 and it's got bugs galore. Seems kind of random.

Something that not a lot of people are mentioning is that north american made VAG (vw, audi, etc) cars are made in factories that have shown much less reliability. Everybody in Europe praises VW for how affordable and reliable they are (since they're made in-house in Germany for the most part) - excluding the 2009-2014 years since they had quite a bad Golf line in terms of reliability

So how come American-made Toyotas and Hondas top the list?

Because they care more about north american consumers, seemingly

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