RC:
REALZEUS:

From personal experience, I have found that the most reliable cars are the Japanese, however stereotypical that may sound. I have had a lot of issues with German cars. That said, I don't like to categorise product quality based on the country of origin alone.

Two Fiat and four Lancia...all of them had issues and all of them had serious issues.

All my friends had Fiat Uno or Ritmo by that time, these cars were pretty popular and all of them were crap.

I really think that Ferrari and especially Lamborghini made a leap forward regarding quality but I still think they could do better. Japanese cars are good as long as you don't torture them and the quality degrades after a couple of years. So far, german luxury (sports)cars have been extremely reliable in my opinion, I know many people who actually own these cars and even some Ferrari owners agree. Smiley

I slightly disagree. DR is probably one of the most tortuous environments a car could ever encounter, bad roads, less than great standard of fuel, unforgiving weather, and as an added bonus unforgiving traffic with bad drivers and no laws. And over here you see 20 and 30 year old Japanese cars being driven around all day as public transport with only minor issues. I agree that under "normal" conditions European cars will remain better cars for longer periods of time, but under harsh conditions Japanese cars present way less issues. I attribute it to simpler mechanics dealing better with the conditions, modern European cars have more things that could and do go wrong. Most people here buy Japanese because its been proven time and time again that they endure the bashing better. If you go to any MB, Audi, or BMW dealership you'll see tons of cars going in every day to fix things that wouldn't go wrong in a Toyota or a Honda. Not to mention that in our market fixing a similar issue between European and Japanese would cost you more than 3 times as much. I can't give you an exact reason why, but it's just the way it is.