• madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    🤔 💭 Our cars aren’t selling… Hmm… Should we make them last longer? No. Should we make the interior out of anything except hard plastic? No. Should we make our cars easier to repair and not have even the most basic shit require specialized tools? No. I got it! Subscriptions for basic shit that gauges the few customers still buying our shit!

    • poopkins@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I understand your point, but have you driven a VW in the past decade? They are reliable, relatively easy to repair and have comfortable interiors that aren’t with “hard plastic.” Perhaps you’ve confused VW with Ford?

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        Reliably cheating emissions regulations, maybe.

        Relatively easy to repair compared to a smartphone maybe.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        I fix cars for a living every day.

        reliable

        Maybe, compared to a BMW or other “luxury” car marketed to rubes. But a Honda or a Toyota would totally eat VW’s lunch in regards to reliability, at half the purchase price.

        relatively easy to repair

        The VW Beetle is famously easy to repair, basically every modern VW model sucks ass. It needs some proprietary tool to access half the vehicle on more than half the models. I do not like working on them. We also get wonderful examples of German Manufacturing Precision™️ where you have a half a millimeter clearance to remove a part. This was worse in older VW’s in my experience (the Germans really took to AUTOCAD like fish to water when that became common, methinks) but it still happens.

        comfortable interiors

        Actually totally agree here, the interior of most modern VW’s is pretty nice. Shame that doesn’t extend under the hood.

        VW also got caught straight up lying about their emissions testing a few years ago so that also destroyed basically all trust that I had in their brand. They’ll sell you a car that runs, but there’s really no knowing if the numbers that it reports are actually accurate.

      • Sarmyth@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Yeah. I think my car has a pretty decent build overall but the (I shit you not) 14 recalls ive had to bring it in for ranging from door handle replacements, firmware updates, back hatch issues makes me raise an eyebrow to it. I let a few stack up before I bring it in because I never notice any issue before or after, but better to get the free service than not.

        Evidence strongly counters my own feelings on the matter.

        • poopkins@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          No doubt they are all overpriced, but I thoroughly researched my Škoda before buying it in 2020 and it was competitively priced, especially with its reliability score and relatively low maintenance cost. In my case of course anecdotal, but I’ve had no issues after 90,000 km with a lot of Autobahn.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Does “relatively easy” mean in comparison to modern cars, and not easily repairable older cars? I don’t follow cars but if it’s anything like other tech then it’s soon to be crippled by part tying.