livyx95gt said:
My two cents worth...
I personally check forums to make myself a better consumer by researching the type of problems I can expect from my ride, not to just hear how good it is - h*ll, I already like it enough to have bought it. But no car is perfect, and I like to know what I'm getting into.
Just as an example, my current ride is an 2002 Acura TL-S, which will be replaced (hopefully!) in May or June by the GT I ordered on the 1st of March. I found out, thanks to Acura forums way before I had any hint of trouble, that the A/T was troublesome with a high replacement rate. same thing with the front brakes. This enabled me to 1) expect the problem, and 2) be in a better position if it would become an issue at the dealer. As expected, my A/T died on me at 46,000 km (a few thousand more k's than most other failures, so I was not that hard on the poor thing!), and replacement was a non issue at the dealer, which replaced (not repaired!) the A/T with a brand new one from Japan (which, BTW, might still have the same defect - so you see, imports don't always fix things right the first time!). And same issue with the front rotors, where I did had to fight a bit for a replacement under warranty (the same brake problems applied to my 60 yr orld father and his 2004 Accord).
One thing that seems to be different with domestic car manufacturers is that they almost always wait for a recall to advise customers about a possible problem. Again, with Acura (or Honda if you prefer), as soon as it seemed that they had a higher failure rate on their TL's A/T, they sent a letter to the owners advising them that they would extend the warranty of the A/T to 7yr/150,000 km instead of the 5 yr/100,000km - that before any "official" recall was issued. Compare that with Chrysler/Dodge and their infamous minivan A/T...