Most reliable work horse car ?

K.C. Leblanc said:
The trouble is when they do need parts they pricey. That said many years ago I bought a 8 year old Chrysler Neon for £1200. I ran it for about 5 years and the only things it needed was suspension arms and brake disks.

The VW 1.9tdi in it's 90 or 110 bhp forms are fairly indestructible. My Octavia is about to clock up 200,000 miles. It is however a thoroughly horrible car, it's basically a VW Golf that's been 'improved' by the accounts department.
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Thats the problem with a lot of those VW/VW based vehicles - run of the mill passat, golf, octavia, etc. they'll run forever and eat up the miles for long runs but as a driving experience urgh not even sure how to describe it - I want to say mundane but that doesn't really convey it.
 
The 1.9TDI is pretty bulletproof yeah. Dad has one in his A6, the 115PS one and it has 180K on the clock currently, no major issues to report. And a friend of mine has an ex taxi Octavia with the 90PS 1.9TDI and that has... wait for it... 430,000 on the clock. Yes, 430!!!

I am fairly confident it has had a turbo or two in its time though. :D
 
Pfft! A measly 300-400k our family once had a 2.3d Sierra (originally dads car, then mums car, then mine). It wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding but our family had it from 68k and it was heading towards 600k when we got shut of it. All on its original engine, clutch, gearbox and diff!

Body had rotted off, it had 3 lots of seats in over that time, new bottom arms every 2 years as I don't think pattern parts were up to the heavy old pug diesel lump (with a ford aluminium head though). I did change the oil & filters every 5k whilst it was in my custody which probably did it no harm.

As above though stay away from the turbo oil burners and get yourself a nice simple-ish jap 4 pot petrol.
 
Firestar_3x said:
Those numbers as BS for a number of reasons, wouldn't read too much into them.
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They might not be perfect, but what else do we have to go on?
I know they'll be skewed, but it's still going to be more reliable than "my mate down the pub had an XXX and it was constantly breaking down".

I've never seen any other genuine reliability reports. JD is sometimes quoted, but that's primarily subjective, i.e. "do you think your car has been reliable".
 
I doubt that 2.3d sierra would have been on its original clutch at 600K, the rest I can believe, but that is practically an impossibility. Unless you never changed gear or it was an auto? :p
 
I'm also looking at this exact spec for my next car, I do 40miles each way commute.

Mercedes E-class looks good and a bit of luxury for the price, not sure on reliability though and when it goes wrong I imagine it'll be expensive to fix

Looking at the 1.9VW engine, there's hundreds online... maybe that's the best shot
 
Just because a car is used as Taxi doesnt necessarily mean they are reliable. I have a family member who is a Taxi driver, uses a Korean car, most of the other drives in the firm drive Vauxhall's which are regularly at the garage getting fixed, where as the Kia has never stepped a foot in a Garage for repairs.

If you want proper real world reliability, not just in terms of the engine but other areas, the smaller things that aren't often thought about e.g.g water pumps, then you can't beat the Japanese. Other brands can make solid engines, but you will get numerous faults in other areas which can make ownership a nightmare.
 
Firestar_3x said:
Based on that you must be buying LSD by the bucketload.
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I buy it on pallets.

Though you can have fun in a small FWD low powered car, especially one with a funny little 3 cylinder engine which sounds great when you thrash it. :D

Dad says he prefers driving my car to his A6. :p
 
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Don't need LSD when driving Primera's, maybe when looking, they were/are great to drive cars, so much so Ford benchmarked the Mondeo on the P10 when replacing the Sierra, they were ahead of their time. The P10 GTE and P11 GT are fantastic drivers cars.
 
My Nan used to have a Primera 2.0eGT, it was superbly awful. :p

But that was probably because she had the CVT auto, in grey. :D
 
Acme said:
My Nan used to have a Primera 2.0eGT, it was superbly awful. :p

But that was probably because she had the CVT auto, in grey. :D
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I think your thinking of the P12, the dolphin shape one aka the last generation of Primera, the eGT was the P10, one from early 90's. they never had CVT, and they were awful because they were essentially a Renault, the styling wasn't bad though, much more adventurous then older models.
 
Primera GT was far from aweful, great cars to drive, just down on power to be considered great.

Handling was excellent, much better than its counterparts at that time. I havent seen a Primera GT with CVT ever, not even sure if they did a conventional Auto.
 
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