Thinking of buying a new car?
Every year here at The Weekend Australian we try to give you a few hints to avoid being completely done over. If you want a reprint of our complete guide to buying a car in 800 words or less, just email me.
Being in the car caper I naturally have a lot of good friends who are dealers (car dealers, that is). So remember the words of my industry pal who said: "Buy your car off me. You might as well be ripped off by a friend rather than someone you don't know."
Today we are going to focus on duds and turkeys. Consumer Reports is a non-profit outfit in the US that actually has its own test tracks and gathers big data from consumers. The "turkeys", as they so quaintly call them, include: the Kia Rio, the Jeep Compass and Patriot, the Hyundai Velostar, the Mercedes CLA and the Nissan Altima.
The most unreliable are the Ford Mustang with 17 potential trouble spots, the Fiat 500L "with the worst reliability scores among all cars", the Mercedes S Class, the Ford Fiesta and the Tesla Model X.
The cars with the highest satisfaction (but not necessarily reliability) are the Tesla S and the Porsche Cayman, Macan and 911.
If there is one industry that is ready for disruption, it's the retail car industry. Unless you have a PhD in new and used vehicle trading including a specialty in accessories, trailing commissions and negotiations, you are never going to get the best of the salesperson.