JA4T

In regards to the new Consumer Report that is ripping on our beloved A4,,I am trying to do a quick correlation study. Here it is:

I think that there is a positive correlation with number of years owned and amount paid to fix various "problems" outside of maintenance. Yet,,I do not think that number is so outrageous that CR should rip our cars apart like they continue to do in comparison to other makes/models.

My idea is,,that the amount does not go up, rather there is a true plateau after 3-4 years of vehicle life. The "problems" usually are caught after the first two years and for the most part do not cause further issue. It is also hard to do this correlation study, as many owners trade their cars in after 3-5 years. I just don't think the B5 A4 is as bad as Consumer Reports suggests. I think their studies are somewhat flawed.

I have owned my A4 for a long time now and did reach a plateau with these issues after the third year of ownership. May be this is too abstract or out of the box thinking for some of you,,but in short,,I will not accept the Consumer Report on our beloved A4!! ;-)
J

gh0st

my car was fixed after it hit 100k

Mr Paul [T-28]

Question,, how come you use two commas at once?

qfrog@work

they compare cars based on failures overall.

A car that has 10,000 parts might have the same number of failures as a car with half the parts... that would make it twice as reliable imo. However if you just count failures overall its only as reliable. If you alter those numbers, you can end up with a much more complex car that is by the number of parts/systems more reliable.. but overall by total number of failures a less reliable car. This is one of the areas where I think audi gets fvcked badly since they put soo much stuff in their cars. What if the rear door ashtray glide mechanism made by Fisher automotive fails... another car might not even have a rear door ashtray, so how could that car have a problem with a part it doesnt have?

It is almost impossible to compare apples to apples based on equipment among different car mfg's based on the overall performance of the car.

So lets compare a car without ABS to one with our $2K ABS pump.... Apples to oranges baby.

Liam in Montreal

fascinating isnt it. I havnt read the post yet, only noticed the commas

Mr Paul [T-28]

Good point

TristanP

I know the CP failures a couple years ago did bad things (warranted or not) for the rating. Typically, our cars do worse compared to the CR darlings (Accord, Camry, Civic, etc) simply because those other vehicles don't have the expensive faults (TB tensioners, sludge, control arms, etc) that seem to plague the B5 design. The other designs are sterile, boring, but more reliable in general.

BSCA4

Agree. Toyota reliable because they use the same damn parts for over 20 years

Reggie

One might believe you must be one of these conspiracy people who see something devious in everything

RageRacer

J.D. Power and Associate's VDS (3 years of ownership)

VW and Audi both perform poorly. Even when the study was measuring 5 year ownership, the Japanese pounded American and Euro cars. American cars tend to have outdated technology...but thats not the case w/ Japanese cars. They tend to have cutting edge technology.<ul><li><a href="http://www.jdpower.com/awards/industry/pressrelease.asp?StudyID=749">http://www.jdpower.com/awards/industry/pressrelease.asp?StudyID=749</a</li></ul>