The Sunday News
Lovert Mafukure
Reliability
Japanese cars rank very high in terms of reliability all over the world. Autoguide confirms that Toyota and Honda have been at the top of the durability index with Lexus topping for over fifteen years. Toyota has some of the best vehicles that money can buy and oftentimes they keep it simple. My old man always told me that simplicity shows intelligence — Overcomplicating technology has proven disastrous for some carmakers as many of us can second.
A lot of them put the cart before the horse running ahead to mass-produce unproven technologies that provee to be not so reliable in the long-run. A good example is the CVT transmissions. While they are good and better than automatic, they are not so durable and we the people eventually receive the shorter end of the stick when the curtain closes in on their short life span.
Spares
The weirdest thing about Japanese cars that many people will never get is the fact that spares are more expensive than whole cars in Japan. It’s like a drumstick being more expensive than a whole chicken, it’s not logical, it doesn’t make sense at all but that is how it is. Spares are not readily available here hence the need to be careful when choosing a car to buy. Only now has the situation improved with spares becoming more available.
Trained personnel
The issue of reliability goes further and wider than just poor workmanship on the manufacturers part. With all the recalls on defects on some cars produced by our dear Japanese carmakers, who is going to take back a car to Japan after recalls? These are sold vootstoets and do not have any after sales service of any kind. To make matters worse, this is also imported first world technology that neighbourhood mechanic knows nothing about.
Colleges do not teach all that first world stuff as yet — we are still learning about the Datsun 1200s and manual transmissions here. We are poaching technology but its slowly and coming in and we will learn more as time goes on but we will only learn from experience. That is the only way. To stay safe, buy a simple car with old technology proven over the years. Proven technology simply refers to a Toyota or a Honda with a manual transmission or the old 4 speed automatic. Once your steer away from that, you will still be good but just for a while.
Technology we cannot handle
Toyota has taken its time getting into the CVT craze and most of their late models still use the 4 speed automatic while others like Nissan shifted into overdrive and started producing the CVT driven vehicles. So far these haven’t had a good run and everyone is shunning the CVTs on reliability basis. Since its poached technology that comes as grey imports, there is no back up support and trained technicians that deal with such although a few have learnt to get around their problems.
The same goes for some of the engines that we are getting from abroad. Technology improved from carburetted engines to fuel injection and now direct injection. Technology is good but its only as good as we are able to understand it and fix it when it goes wrong. Carburettors were quite simple and still are. Fuel injection was the best and now direct injection is giving people problems. For Nissan Cars with DD engines, Mitsubishi with GDI — they use direct injection. As the technology improved the efficiency, power output also improved but direct injection has not yet proven itself reliable.
It’s a common occurrence in Nissan Sylphys with DD engines. They need injector replacement after a while when they really begin to be a problem. It’s the same with common rail diesel engines. Once it starts giving problems you may want to throw it away. I once had a chat with a veteran mechanic and he said something that I respected.
He said I do not touch these cars (common rail) simply because I do not have the machinery to fix common rail system. They have become so complicated and advanced. The machines also cost a lot because it’s quite recent technology. The plight of car importers is that one day if not careful it will break down and the cost of repair will be out of reach and cars eventually rust away in backyards — somehow it’s the way things are — its poached technology.
This is an introductory article and beginning this coming week, we will look at some of the cars that you should stay away from if you want a stress free life. Cars that do have poor spares backup, complicated technology and rank low on reliability scale. So till next time — Eat Sleep JDM.
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