AudiOx

He drove an '81 200SX for 10 years w/ minimal problems, and a '90 Pathfinder w/ even less problems.
My stepmom drives a '93 Honda Accord. It's has tons of problems.
Just yesterday, my financial advisor was telling me about trying to buy an ?'92? MR2 Turbo, and his mechanic winced heavily and steered him away.

On the contrary, Honda and Toyota are supposed to have far superior reliability than Nissan. My family and friend experiences have shown otherwise. Personally I feel so much comes from how you treat a car. My dad is the most boring driver you'll ever find, and never has any problems. Then again, so is my stepmom, and her Accord has been problematic.

I totally believe the statistics. I'm just saying my experiences have been to the contrary.

I also never look back at any my or my family's Hondas or Nissans when leaving.
Whereas, I'm obsessed with the S, and always look back. I just love it.
Basically the S and (my previous A4s and GT Coupe) left an impression on me that kept me comin' back.

Even my GT Coupe never left me on the side of the road though I did put a decent amount of money into it to keep it that way. My Civic, my mom's Civic, my ex-fiancee's Camry, and my old Grand Wagoneer all have left me or one of them on the side of the road at one time or another.

AudiOx

What I'm noticing on this board (or at least my perception) is that there are less occurances of turbo and tranny failure happening.

If this is true, it seems reasonable to believe that most of the 'bad' or 'unluck of the draw' turbos have been rooted out. If the failure occurances kept rising, then it would seem that the turbos have no reliability. It appears more so, that there is a quality control problem, and that too many 'bad' seeds make it into the cars. Once they are all gone, the remaining 'good' seeds seem to be doing ok. Time has yet to tell how well the 'good' turbos do around 100K miles. There are too few cases out there.
We'll see.

pattersom

Its the perfect combination of size (4-doors and room for 2 more, but still compact), power (how can you complain), handling (feels like a CRX or MR2), design (still find details that make me smile), and comfort (love the climate control and other features).

As far as MR2 turbo. If the car has the proper regiment of oil changes (this is typical for turbo cars) and has not been modified (alot of people have bypassed the engine system - different than chipping) the engine (made by Yamaha by the way) is incredibly robust. It is truly derived from a race engine that produced upwards of 400-500 hp (stock is 200 hp). Have a Toyota mechanic who is familiar with MR2 turbos (or Celica All-Tracs) to inspect (this may be hard to find - when my MR2 was in for the alternator, they had all the mechanics come over and learn for the afternoon because they are so rare). If I didn't have mine, I would buy one again...in a heartbeat

WECoyote-SuperGenius

if it wasn't for this forum, i wouldn't have the least bit of paranoia about blown turbo's, ripped tbb's, defective bpv's, bad 1-2 syncro's, voided warranties etc. (no need to go on, you know the drill).
ignorance is bliss!
as far as german cars vs. japanese, a good friend once said to me: "the german's are innovater's, the japanese are imitater's".
just my $.02