Hate to say it but GM has piss poor body engineering. I've owned quite a few GM vehicles including vans and trucks for a business. What I've learned about GM over the years: drivetrain is pretty stout mechanically. Rarely had big problems with engines or transmissions and they will last 10+ years and 100k+ hard city miles. Everything else is crap. You spend a lot of time fixing little things. Broken plastic bits in the cabin are the first items (dash and door pieces) followed by silly things like door handles, hoses, small plastic bits on/around the engine, and other minor yet highly aggravating issues.

And don't get me started on their sad excuse for door handles. They've been producing cheap trash designs since the 90's. Even my old 95 Tahoe suffered a few broken door handles. They can't help but make a flimsy plastic carrier and a thin flimsy cast zinc handle that fails after a few years. The usual culprit is a small thin bit of plastic which holds the whole thing together breaks or the handle snaps from mechanical fatigue. It's laughably pathetic and partly why I won't ever touch another GM ever again.

GM in a nutshell: A decent drivetrain surrounded by plastic trash.

" I've replaced 5 (yes 5, not all the same one either) door handles on my $90k Escalade. I've replaced the suspension entirely (including air compressor for the rear shocks) twice. I could go on..."

Actually these problems still would exist in an EV.

Fair enough. You raise a good point. I've only replaced one transmission ever (it was the Escalade). Most cars these days don't have drive train issues. I see your point. Maybe if they keep making cheap doorhandles these dealers will be fine.

Considering how unpleasant it is to deal with car dealers I am happy if they go away. Buying from a dealer sucks royally (why not sell cars at a fixed price? why do I always have to go through hours of stupid negotiation?) and for service I prefer independent mechanics.

If I were buying a $90k car and you told me that $50-$100 of that went into sturdy door handles, I'd be entirely okay with that. Unless I'm buying a track car, I'm expecting the high price tag to be reasonably good parts and then the "death by a thousand cuts" of small design and engineering details meant to make a better driving/riding experience. That's the 80% of the work/cost that makes 20% of a difference.

Badge engineered vehicles with extras tacked on are bad news because there isn't any real ownership from engineering. Trade it in for a Tahoe and you wouldn't have these problems.

I hope this doesn't sound like an attack, as I'm asking it sincerely: So why do you keep it? When I talk to friends with high-priced vehicles like yours, all of them mention how many times they've had it into the shop. My lady friend was spending $xxxx / year on her BMW before she got rid of it, plus it required premium gas. Yes, my car is a piece of dirty junk, but its maintenance costs are minimal. I have been trying to derive whether owners of high-end vehicles simply talk more about their problems (because they are presumably more expensive than repairs on more pedestrian vehicles) or whether these cars really are more of a pain.

My personal experience is that when you spend a substantial amount of time driving (an hour a day for me, commuting), the car's amenities and its driving experience add up. That's beyond just being a signal of wealth/identity.

A BMW really does feel better to drive than a Camry (more responsive acceleration, more responsive steering), and it comes with all sorts of small amenities that you get used to.

I drive a Camry because it's cheap and reliable and gets me from home to office with minimal drama. But I can definitely feel when the engine power lags and gears shift awkwardly going up hills or onto highways, and steering feels kind of numb and floaty. Think of the difference between cheap clothes and expensive ones: you can feel the difference, but it's unclear how much that difference is worth to you.

Also, if you look closely, you can see where the designers were careful to cut corners. Some of the button interfaces on my Camry's steering wheel and certain other panels aren't beveled, so it's harder to use them while your eyes are on the road because you can't navigate the buttons by touch. There's no automatic climate control, so you fiddle with it more. And so on. I wouldn't pay an extra $30k over 5-8 years to fix those things now, but if I had the spare income and knew I'd be spending an hour a day in my expensive box, I might.

Someone hasn't driven the 18 Camry.

I own the 2018 Camry LE. It's an improvement, but the lag going up hills is pretty obvious, and you really notice the jerkiness of the 8-speed transmission too because the car changes gears four times just going up to 30mph from a stoplight.

All of my criticisms were based on my observations driving the 2018 model. I think the Camry is the reigning champion of "best bang for your buck," but it leaves plenty of room for improvement if you have a bigger budget.

Yep, simpler is better. A fancy lifestyle (which means expensive "things" above and beyond their utility function) often end up requiring too big of a time requirement than they're even worth.

It's my wife's car, she's attached to it, and I paid it off rather quickly. The car did not hold its value and therefore the equity wasn't worth selling it and going into debt on a new car. I've kept a running total of how much the car cost to fix and over time it's still been cheaper than buying a nice new luxury auto, albeit not much cheaper.

Its hard to add up the entire cost of the car. There's the cost of time spent; time without a car; lost opportunity due to car issues. And in the end, you're driving an old, worn car which isn't as 'valuable' as driving a new, unworn one.

Depending on how all this is weighted and added up, it can be the right thing to replace a car sooner than later.

In a thread about Tesle and Mercedes, I'm not sure I'm 100% qualified to speak to the luxury segment, but having traded a 2001 Hyundai Elantra in for a 2006 Mini Cooper some years ago (a pretty significant difference in fit and finish) I've done some thinking on this.

Luxury cars aren't build to last. The target market is generally not keeping their cars around for more than a few years. I keep the proverbial purse strings pretty tight for most things, but even for me, the additional cost of premium gas is largely unnoticeable. I do get frustrated by some engineering choices: On the Hyundai, if you had 13mm & 10mm sockets and a Phillips head screwdriver you could practically disassemble the entire car, but on the Mini I needed three different size Torx heads to take the stereo out - thanks BMW.

I largely avoid the dealer for maintenance, but after a few snafus at my local garage, I went to the dealer for a new radiator, and they gave me a brand new Mini as a loaner, and I lived 40 miles from the dealership - which in many ways feels more akin to an Apple store than a garage with a sales office. Every time they work on the car, no matter how small the job, it gets a complimentary car wash there.

Parts are marked up tremendously compared to my Hyundai, but again, the cars aren't necessarily built to last, so much as they're built for experience. This is exemplified in my Mini by "lifetime transmission fluid." There's no (easy) way to drain and refill the fluid in my automatic transmission (I'm in a city, I'm done with stick for now) because the fluid is "good for the lifetime of the car." At 12 years old and 150,000 miles, I've definitely exceeded the expected lifetime of the car.

But it's fun to drive. It's easy to park. It's surprisingly well equipped for something so old. The interior trim is nice, although particularly with a Mini, there are more than a few "form over function" UX issues. People express shock when I tell them how old the car is. The experience at the dealership is tailored for people who have more money than free time, and who trade for a new car after two or three years. No one ever expressed excitement about getting into my Hyundai, but I still get people telling me, as we get in the car, that they've "always wanted drive a Mini Cooper"

The other thing luxury vehicles offer that's less sexy but worth the premium: Advanced safety features. It used to be that you paid extra money for things like chrome and leather interior. Nowadays, what sets luxury vehicles apart are the cutting edge tech and safety features.

All that being said, my next vehicle is probably going to be a Ford Transit Connect. Hard swing back toward utility and serviceability. I'm going to miss the Mini though, warts and all.

> on the Mini I needed three different size Torx heads to take the stereo out - thanks BMW.

That's very obviously an anti-theft measure to deter casual smash and grab jobs.

>That's very obviously an anti-theft measure to deter casual smash and grab jobs.

Torx head, sure. Two different size Torx? I mean, fine. Three? Now the crowbar comes out, and they've ruined your entire interior. I say this as someone who lives on a street that has had a lot of smash and grabs, before my wife and I began weekly garbage cleanups & installed a very visible camera on our building facade.

In many cases with BMW/Mini, I would contend that it's very obviously a deterrent from having you do casual work on your own car, and pushing you into their service model. By comparison, Hyundai publishes their service manuals online in their entirety, for free - or at least they did in the 2000s when I was driving that car.

Funny you mention that because I've been drooling over the Transit Connect for a few years now. Looks like such a simple, utilitarian vehicle at a practically cheap price.

> At 12 years old and 150,000 miles, I've definitely exceeded the expected lifetime of the car.

It should have at least another 5 years and 50-100K miles in it.

It's going to still cost a fair bit to get that far. Unless I'm lucky, the supercharger's due to fail soon, based on what other drivers of the same vehicle have experienced. Already spent a bunch on the valve body for a known shifting issue with the Aisin transmission. So if I make it to 2023, I'll have a neat looking car with terrible safety ratings compared to modern options.

I mean, I get it - my father drives his 1973 Z28, and it didn't make it all the way to 2018 without a lot of work over the decades. I think that if I lived in a suburban house with a garage, I'd lean towards keeping it as a project car. I've got a project building in Philadelphia instead (small venue, Airbnb & home, with walls originally erected in 1761!), and I walk ten minutes to work, when I'm not working from home, and it's a three minute walk to the subway/bikeshare/bus stop.

I used to find joy in taking care of my car, but in my current situation, it feels like I've got better things I could do with my time.

It looks like your Cadillac dealer would have been equally happy to sell an electric Escalade. None of the problems you listed is related to the powertrain.

I stand corrected.

Replacing door handles is definitely not a common maintenance requirement for cars. Sounds like your 90k Escalade may just be an overpriced lemon.

Or maybe the GP poster just needs to be more gentle on the door handles? Break 1 maybe it was a defective. Break 5 and I start to wonder what you're doing to the things.

Ironic, considering the issues Tesla has had with uncommanded door issues...

So I'd imagine that the Escalade repairs are being charged back to the manufacturer under warranty, or to you, so I'd imagine the dealership is happy to fix those doors 5 , 6 , 10 times or whatever.

Issues with luxury cars is a different thing than maintenance. If you have air suspension on your car luxury car, it's not going to last the life of the car. My 10-year-old Lexus still gets frequent recalls like airbags, melting dash and other things. There are lots of wear items on cars that affect both EV and gas cars like shocks and brakes.

I had to replace 5 of the 4 door handles on my early Model S -- every car manufacturer puts newer widgets on their high-end models, and then has reliability problems with them.

Tesla model S also have common issues with door handles breaking.