What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?

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What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?

I also forgot to add, that you should add Audi to the middle of the road list. They’re just VW’s in fancy dress. Same engines, same faults, for some reason people pay more for the same car. You’d think for the money they could put some effort in like Fiat did with the 500/Panda - people are actually surprised when you tell them they’re the same car underneath!
 
Interesting stats - how does this compare to number of cars sold? From a market share point of view Fiat is relatively small in the UK compared to a lot of those brands - even the prestige marques.

You can try and twist this how you like, Mercedes sells considerably less cars than Fiat, something like 2million globally every year and that's it, they are not part of a bigger group that sells lots of different brands like Fiat or VW, their cars are absolutely packed with electronics a 15-20 year old merc can have far more complicated electronics than a new Fiat, and a 15 year old range rover with air suspension terrain response and all manor of electrical systems is ridiculously complex and notorious for going wrong, but still people keep putting them back on the road when they go wrong. Needing a new set of brake pipes and a couple of bald tyres on a 15 year old Fiat can be enough to see it in a scrap yard.

You can try and spin it anyway you want but more expensive cars new carry their value for longer and so end up on the road for longer, cheap throw away car have a much bigger environmental impact, which was the original argument.
 
It's no more than simple economics...the more expensive it is the longer it remains too expensive to walk away from. Doesn't stop the car from being triggers broom, it's just that successive owners have forked out for repairs whereas on a cheap car they'd have called the scrap man.
 
Expensive cars aren’t like expensive clothes or what have you, you’re paying for comfort and technology. They’ll all rust the same. They’ll all sink in value like a brick.

As far as I can tell a LOT of Range Rover’s from the 90s were scrapped because of poorly designed complex features like air suspension. The following model was no better.

I think it comes down to the people who buy them are more prepared to sink money into them (a poor choice really). Whereas if a serious problem happens a cheaper car the owner can’t afford to fix it.

Nothing to do with the cars being of any less quality..

If anything, VW group cars are throwaway. There’s a guy on my street with 3x A3’s and they p*ss so much oil I’m surprised nobody has reported it. Every time one gets fried (typically one a year) he buys another). I fail to see the superb quality and engineering in his case. These are 01 era models. Total scrap heaps compared to my throwaway Fiat. But then, it’s all economics right?
 
This is an interesting debate. And that's the trouble, people are getting bogged down in details and semantics. Unless there is a single collaborative world-wide consensus on the environment a debate is all it's ever going to be.

I recently listened to the Skeptoid podcast on the VW dieselgate scandal. The episode looked at it from a purely science based perspective and was very interesting and goes to show that the governments can't even look at the issue holistically and make stupid decisions where politics come first and science second ( I'm a scientist btw!)

I'm of the view that I'm being more environmentally friendly keeping an old diesel Fiat on the road rather than getting a new car due to the energy required to scrap mine and produce a new car. Whether that's right or wrong is a PhD thesis in itself.

One last thing. I love Fiatforum as it is usually a nice friendly and helpful place to visit. I would hate it if threads are eight pages of people slagging each other off! Lets leave that to Pistonheads!!!
 
It is economics, nothing to do with quality.

Basically if your 10 grand 8 year old car breaks, you have hobsons choice.

An example from work. Man had a BMW 320d that was 7 years old. As BMWs diesels like to at that age it shat it's timing chain. If it was a 7 year old Suzuki/Fiat you'd scrap it. It's not worth buying a new head for, plus new cylinders and a new chain. BMW man had 2 choices, sell it for spares and take a huge bath...pay the man to fix and take a smaller but still sizeable hit. Basically because of the value of the car it had to get fixed..
 
This is an interesting debate. And that's the trouble, people are getting bogged down in details and semantics. Unless there is a single collaborative world-wide consensus on the environment a debate is all it's ever going to be.



I recently listened to the Skeptoid podcast on the VW dieselgate scandal. The episode looked at it from a purely science based perspective and was very interesting and goes to show that the governments can't even look at the issue holistically and make stupid decisions where politics come first and science second ( I'm a scientist btw!)



I'm of the view that I'm being more environmentally friendly keeping an old diesel Fiat on the road rather than getting a new car due to the energy required to scrap mine and produce a new car. Whether that's right or wrong is a PhD thesis in itself.



One last thing. I love Fiatforum as it is usually a nice friendly and helpful place to visit. I would hate it if threads are eight pages of people slagging each other off! Lets leave that to Pistonheads!!!



You’re right. But calling Fiat’s throwaway cars on the FiatForum isn’t nice either sigh
 
It may not be nice, but it is true. As much I enjoy my £500 Punto, I'm at the point now where there are a lot of things needing done (like, probably more than the car is worth to sell). I've gotten 30k miles out of it in the last 18 months, but it likely makes more financial sense for me to bin it and get something else (which would cost less in tax/fuel) than spend the money on it.
 
The problem here is you're taking it as a personal insult, rather than being able to take a step back and look at things objectively


It’s okay I don’t take it personally. I like the debate and sometimes the clashes. I hope other people don’t see it that way, or that it comes across aggressive.

To be honest a lot of the time your responses give me a reality check so I appreciate them.

But I have this burning itch to reply sticking up for the poor old Fiat side of the coin lol
 
You can try and twist this how you like, Mercedes sells considerably less cars than Fiat, something like 2million globally every year and that's it, they are not part of a bigger group that sells lots of different brands like Fiat or VW, their cars are absolutely packed with electronics a 15-20 year old merc can have far more complicated electronics than a new Fiat, and a 15 year old range rover with air suspension terrain response and all manor of electrical systems is ridiculously complex and notorious for going wrong, but still people keep putting them back on the road when they go wrong. Needing a new set of brake pipes and a couple of bald tyres on a 15 year old Fiat can be enough to see it in a scrap yard.

You can try and spin it anyway you want but more expensive cars new carry their value for longer and so end up on the road for longer, cheap throw away car have a much bigger environmental impact, which was the original argument.
Twisting it? What's wrong with comparing like with like? That's hardly twisting it. Even if the comparison was the same class of car that, at least would've been a more robust comparison. I own a VW group city car and a Fiat group city car. The quality of the interior of the former seems better than the latter - however the former has an inferior air conditioning unit, gearbox, brakes and suspension on my experience of a year's ownership. That's like with like. They've obviously spent more on perceived quality than the oily bits.
 
If you go and read back, you'll see you tried to claim that Fiat didn't sell many cars in the uk, when compared to Mercedes, this is very much not the case and was in my opinion trying to twist things to suite the argument.
You're still not comparing like with like. (E.g Ford Ka Vs Fiat Panda). MB sells twice as many cars as Fiat in this country. There's a Merc on every street corner around here.
 
Bout 4 years ago my boss bought an 02 range rover in 3 years he spent more on repairs than my 14 plate second hand panda cost (bought at 18 months old 6000 miles) yes over 5 grand on repairs in 3 years.
Would you spend 5 grand on repairing a 11 year old fiat probably not. Most 10 years old mercs/bmws/audis are still selling for a lot of money where a small fiat/kia/peugeot etc of 10 years old is worth very little in comparison hence not worth spending large amounts on to keep on the road just economics really is it more harmful scrapping small cars as they become uneconomic to repair i dont know.
Lets face it global warming was got rid of for climate change because as the climate warms up and cools naturally this gives governments a get out clause in case we are not to blame. As temperatures have been higher and lower in the past many times the planet will survive regardless there are lots of things that are environmentally bad but the motorist is a cash cow.
 
You're still not comparing like with like. (E.g Ford Ka Vs Fiat Panda). MB sells twice as many cars as Fiat in this country. There's a Merc on every street corner around here.

I don't think you're getting it but let's try a different tack.

We're not talking about like with like, we are talking about the longevity of an expensive car versus a cheaper car.

So mini sell as many cars in the uk as Fiat do (give or take a couple of thousand)

Go look at the autotrader figures for cars that are 10 years old and above, there are double the amount of minis still up for sale than there are fiats (944 Fiat's, 1,943 minis)

Volvo which sells 20,000 less cars a year than Fiat do, at 10 years, still has 1,297 cars on autotrader (350 more than Fiat after 10 years)

I can compare Ford if you really want, Ford sell 5.2 times as many cars a year in the uk than Fiat do (which is why I'm confused you're arguing that Mercedes is not like for like because Mercedes sell more, then want to compare Ford)
In any case after 10 years and bearing in mind that fords are a little more expensive than Fiat, after 10 years there are still 6,931 fords up for sale, which equates to 7.3 times as many Ford for sale compared to Fiat, so fords continue in greater numbers after 10 years than Fiat, a higher percentage of fords are still in circulation.

I'm not going to keep explaining every brand but if you go and look you will find that there are less cheaper brand cars around after 10 years than there are expensive cars, the actual number of cars any one manufacturer sells is irrelevant as you can still the same trends if you factor this out. Like it or not, Fiat are a cheaper brand.
 
It isn't necessarily valid to infer longevity from the number of a particular model or brand on sale, as customer demographics could be having a major influence.
For example, it may be that owners of a particular model are significantly more likely to retain that car for longer, or that a particular model becomes unfashionable or less desirable whereas a similar model is unaffected. Or higher relative trade-in values could have an effect on turnover.
Current RFL status may be a better data set to examine for accurate information.

However, the general theme makes sense - people are more likely to spend more on a car with higher market value than one valued significantly lower.

One complication is that as more components move out of the expertise range of independent garages, the choices for repair become more limited. In this situation, a simpler cheap car may now have a big advantage.
I suspect that this balance has been changing since about 2000.
Certainly that has been my experience so far across a range of manufacturers.

It would be worth spending a few hundred pounds fixing a £1000 car, but not to spend £8 or £10k on a £10k car.
 
I don't think you're getting it but let's try a different tack.

We're not talking about like with like, we are talking about the longevity of an expensive car versus a cheaper car.

So mini sell as many cars in the uk as Fiat do (give or take a couple of thousand)

Go look at the autotrader figures for cars that are 10 years old and above, there are double the amount of minis still up for sale than there are fiats (944 Fiat's, 1,943 minis)

Volvo which sells 20,000 less cars a year than Fiat do, at 10 years, still has 1,297 cars on autotrader (350 more than Fiat after 10 years)

I can compare Ford if you really want, Ford sell 5.2 times as many cars a year in the uk than Fiat do (which is why I'm confused you're arguing that Mercedes is not like for like because Mercedes sell more, then want to compare Ford)
In any case after 10 years and bearing in mind that fords are a little more expensive than Fiat, after 10 years there are still 6,931 fords up for sale, which equates to 7.3 times as many Ford for sale compared to Fiat, so fords continue in greater numbers after 10 years than Fiat, a higher percentage of fords are still in circulation.

I'm not going to keep explaining every brand but if you go and look you will find that there are less cheaper brand cars around after 10 years than there are expensive cars, the actual number of cars any one manufacturer sells is irrelevant as you can still the same trends if you factor this out. Like it or not, Fiat are a cheaper brand.
I wasn't arguing with expensive versus cheap. I was pointing out that your original use of Autotrader to back up your argument didn't prove anything because it doesn't take into account original sales, class of car and, indeed, for that matter, how much money has been spent on keeping them on the road in the first place. I actually feel we are at cross purposes for no reason as I'm not disputing that luxury brands etc. are kept on the road for longer because of their overall value. I don't question the longevity of those types of cars but the longevity of some of those expensive 'superior quality' components in those cars ought to be better.
 
I think that if cars were seen more for their value as a means of transport, rather than their monetary value, then there would be a lot more older cars made by less "desirable" brands still on the road.
 
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