I bought my 1995 LeSabre with 135,000 miles on it from my mechanic. It looked like shit in the interior, but I bought it because I knew that they were generally mechanically reliable, and because I am now an old man, I thought I’d try an old man’s car, lol.

Warranty expired?

Here in St. Louis, Missouri you can see a high of seventy with a low below freezing some days in the winter.

In those days, American car companies could make a car with all the poor qualities of both large and small cars in one package.

My 1980 Pontiac Sunbird(based on the Vega) was still running at under 100,000 miles(I think about 80,000) when I had to throw it away because the front sub frame had rusted away too much to be repairable. It had already been welded once, which gave it another 30,000 miles of life.

What started Nissan’s good reliability reputation were their little pickups and their entry level hatch B210 in the Seventies. The 240Z made them “cool”.

Actually, those first gen Saturns were pretty reliable, almost Japanese reliable.

Exactly. Which is why CR only publishes 10 years of data, because beyond that it’s more or less meaningless. Back when I was a kid, they only published 5 years of data. That’s how much cars have improved in the last 50 years.

I think even in Europe, the automatic transmission is slowly taking over.

My 2003 Corolla was burning a quart of oil every thousand miles. When I was recovering from surgery, a relative drove it, and ran it dry. I actually had to put in more oil than it supposedly held, and after that it needed a quart every 300-600 miles depending on how hard I drove it. Lasted another 100,000 miles until…

Uh, a 210. My high school driving class had one of those, and several 510 wagons. God, the 210 sucked. This from a guy who learned how to drive on those cars and the family 1973 Westfalia. It just shows how much cars have improved. It was one of the best econoboxes of its time.

I think that might have been when Toyotas were still biodegradable. Isn’t Michigan a salt the roads state? 

The only thing I think it could have used was an optional higher power engine/transmission upgrade. It was a much better Yaris.

I also had a used 1995 LeSabre. I think my relative that totalled it was surprised I didn’t go ballistic.

New cars should have green double arrows in all categories. Just the fact that a new car has average or below average reliability in anything is a red(heh) flag.

CR doesn’t look at reliability long term because after a certain point, it’s just not predictable no matter what model. Back in the day, they only published 5 years of data, and now 10 years as cars are more reliable.

There was a year, and I don’t remember what it was, when rust went from being a massive issue for Japanese cars to being just as good, if not better than anyone else’s.

I’ve had several Mazdas, not recently, and none had rust issues. I consider St. Louis to be pretty Midwestern.

The only unkillable German cars are the old school Mercedes diesels. The most reliable cars when I was a child/young adult were Toyotas(until they dissolved into rust) and Mercedes diesels. This was well into last century.

Accords, in spite of their reputation, are not Camry reliable. Their reliability goes up and down year to year, although never below average. 2014 was an above average year, not a much above average year.