I highly doubt it. We have 4 Hondas in the family that have gone over 200,000 miles without any major component failures. My 15-year old 92 Accord has over 282,000 miles at the moment. And I can say with confidence that she'll definitely reach 300,000 and more without breaking down. Sadly, I don't have any confidence that my 550 (if I decide to keep it that long) will ever see 200,000 let alone 300,000 miles. And besides, it's reliablity was already shattered the day the power steering hose blew up, leaving me stranded on a major freeway in a downpour when the car was only 6 months old. None of our Hondas have ever been on a tow truck, yet my 6-month old BMW (at the time) has already been on a flatbed!

 

I read the post as "European car repairs are expensive rather than European cars start to fall apart".

So my question is: are Japanese car repairs expensive "too" or is that just a feature of repairing any high-end car (since I guess, in the US you don't import "low-end" European cars)?

ABC

 

Depends on how you compute the cost. Repairing a car that is paid for versus new payments. I have a 318ic with over 150 k miles and I try to be smart about the maintenance. I do what I feel comfortable working on, a nearby independent mechanic does some of the work, then I sometimes take it to the dealer; depends on the repair. However, the car is rarely in the shop. I will say though that a four cylinder '95 does not have all of the electronics the cars do now. I do not feel I pay an arm and a leg though. The E60 is at 27 k miles with no repairs, but the long term jury is still out.

 

I used to own a Honda Pilot for a car pooling machine and I found the dealer could be fairly expensive. I quickly learned that their major inspections entailed more than was called for in the manual as a way of skimming more of your hard earned cash. I would go to the dealer with the manual open and state that I wanted done only what was listed in the book for a specific interval. They would also try to convince you to go with the severe duty schedule which was a bunch of malarkey. I could get the cost down quite a bit. Regarding break-downs, the Pilot never required one repair of something broken and I owned it 3 years 35k miles. That tells me that long term ownership was likely much cheaper. However, the Pilot was BORING to drive so I figure there is a cost to owning a higher performance vehicle.

My daughter begins driving within a year and I plan to buy her a pre-owned Civic just for reliability! Son is driving my old 318.