Ten Ten Worst Used Cars and Trucks - Prius among them ???

I think it's interesting that the warranty time listed for things is different than what the Toyota warranty actually says.
I doubt the source.

 

I trust Consumer Reports' reviews and recommendations, even with their imperfections, a lot more than this. CR rates the Prius very highly among used cars.

 

No car is perfect, even our perfect Prius. There have been reports of MFD failure, sometimes replaced under warranty and sometimes not. Prius have stalled on the freeway, and a TSB for flashing the ECU fixed things if it was performed. There even have been reports of the motors burning out due to one fault or another, disabling the PSD. Some dealers know what they are doing, some don't. Some will fight for their customer's warranty work, some won't.

All that said, Consumer Affairs is pretty well know as a schlock operation, trading on the Consumer's Union (Consumer Reports) name but really in the pocket of manufacturers, IMHO. I'm really surprised their number one and two POS were Fords. Maybe Ford didn't pay them off.

 

At the moment, the Prius is one of the best selling cars around, especially here in the Silicon Valley. Nothing succeeds like success....

As a used vehicle, I do have some concerns though. The Prius is technically the most complex mass produced vehicle currently available. The more parts you have in a vehicle, the greater potenial for failure. Yes, there are some unique failure modes to the prius because of the hybrid technology. Over time, I'd suspect that the long term reliability of the Prius would be about "average" compared with all other normal vehicles in spite of its' very complex hybrid drive system. If anybody can make a complex reliable, it is Toyota. Time will tell...

Keith

 

From the article, and I quote:

"One reader reported to us that in her 2004 Prius the hybrid display began to malfunction and “did not work with the result of being unable to get gas into car."

hybrid display? Not able to get gas into the car?

????????

------

And here's more:

"A California reader told us that the 'monitor' is also failing in his Prius and said that Toyota is unwilling to provide any assistance because the monitor is no longer covered by the Toyota warranty..."

Are they referring to the MFD, I wonder(?)

--------

Or, how about:

"A Texas Prius owner with 91,000 miles on his hybrid said that "the dashboard lit up with multiple warning lights. The dealer picked it up and said that the transmission went out and it would cost $6,000 to fix."

They probably spend $6,000 just *looking* for the transmission in the Prius, and still never found it.

------

Don't know who sounds more clueless...the customers who wrote these complaints, or the dealers who attempted to respond to them. I'll be the first to say that I'm curious to see how my Pri holds up, but I don't think this article is enough confirm my worst fears.

 

How they rate the Prius, which has one of the highest resale values of any car, as one of the ten worst in beyond me.

 

I got my 2002 Prius used and it was supposedly sitting in a garage for 2 years. At that time I didn't know that the battery was suppoed to be charged for 30 minutes every 2 weeks. I haven't had a problem with my battery despite the fact that it probably wasn't charged like it was supposed to be. Of course I could have lost a lot of charge in my battery without knowing it, but it's surely not hurting my 60+ MPG tanks that's for sure.

We have a Toyota that's well over 15 years old now and we have had no problems with sludge either, and I know that that car doesn't get it's oil changed at recommended intervals, though we have used synthetic in it for a quite a while.

Most of these complaints are all on US manufactured cards too: Ford, GM, and Dodge(?). Shows you that they are only out to get money anyways.

I don't always trust the consumer on things like this, but if these cars had that many complaints then I'm sure at least half of them are genuine.

What they needed to do was look at complaints for how many cars were sold in the US. That would have given a more clear picture.

Also, I haven't heard too many complaints about the Prius, let alone the MFD not working. And even if it did, how would that affect you other than not being able to change the radio station?

 

This is NOT Consumer Reports. This site plays on the trust of people ASSUMING that they are affiliated with Consumer Reports. They are comsumeraffairs.com, not .org. They have paid advertising as their only source of revenue. Nowhere do they state how they obtained these results. Anyone can file a complaint, and nowhere was I able to find out who this Joe Benton was. And they only exist on the internet. Can't find a physical address for them. This just proves that you can't believe everything you see on the internet.

 

don't forget there are also bad dealers out there...yes even toyota. we had an original sienna with a terrible oil gel problem that the dealer repeatedly tried to pawn off on us even though we had been maintaining the vehicle. we mitigated it via a variety of non-toyota-authorized means b/c the dealer eventually said they would not honor warranty claims on our engine at all. well...years later we find out that toyota was quietly fixing the oil gel problems that were randomly hitting the sienna, extending warranties at dealer discretion, etc. given the adversarial way the dealer worked (or didn't work) with us, i could see a few of these complaints stemming from just plain bad dealers...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Swanny1172 @ Jun 18 2007, 05:28 PM) [snapback]464280[/snapback]</div>

The only way I can figure it is this: the resale value of the Prius is so high, it almost makes no sense to buy a used Prius. You may as well spend a little more and buy new.

 

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007...rius_aging.html

amazing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Neicy @ Jun 18 2007, 02:56 PM) [snapback]464302[/snapback]</div>

Definitely not Consumer Reports. ConsumerAffairs.com is a front for ambulance chasing lawyers soliciting for action law suits:

Oh, yes, this information is buried deep in an obscure portion of the site.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IsrAmeriPrius @ Jun 18 2007, 07:16 PM) [snapback]464424[/snapback]</div>

That's for sure. I looked around a bit to see who they were; gave up, although it was obvious I wanted nothing to do with them.

 

prius. are we surprised, coming from this website?
older toyotas. HA!! right. we've owned 3 "older" toyotas that were near 20 years old, and they all ran like champs till they day the rust became too much/we sold it/some mofo smashed it for us.

 

I trust Consumer Reports

Consumer Affairs??? Nope!!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Neicy @ Jun 18 2007, 05:56 PM) [snapback]464302[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IsrAmeriPrius @ Jun 18 2007, 10:16 PM) [snapback]464424[/snapback]</div>

Since I was the first to mention Consumer Reports, I want to make sure you folks realize I was NOT mistaking this for CR. If that's what you think, please re-read my previous post.

 

My guess is that ConsumerAffairs.com is funded by GM and/or Nissan. Nissan because there are no Nissan products anywhere on the list, GM because there are no specific GM products listed, but just a type of anti-freeze they used at one time, and it's all the way down at number 10. By doing it this way, it doesn't look like the list is biased towards GM competitors alone.

It's simply inconceivable that no GM or Nissan products make a list of worst cars in the timeframe they're discussing. At the very least, the Nissan Armada SUV is well-known to be a pile of crap and should have been on the list.

I mean, c'mon, the full-size Expedition and F-150 top the list and the Explorer, with it's widely publicized tendancy to flip-over, doesn't make the list? That looks like a direct effort by GM to slur the primary competition to their biggest money-makers, i.e., GM's large pickups and SUVs. They don't mention the Explorer because the roll-over debacle took it out of the market and the Explorer's GM competition, the Trailblazer, is currently doing okay.

Likewise, listing the BMW automatic at number 3 looks like an effort to boost sales of Cadillacs. They don't mention BMWs in general because anyone interested in a manual transmission BMW won't be in the market for a Caddy.

The whole list looks quite fishy, to me.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nytimez @ Jun 18 2007, 09:22 PM) [snapback]464389[/snapback]</div>

I guess that depends on where you are, because I just bought a 2006 Prius with 4,000 miles for $4K under invoice.