According to an international car-safety advocate, Australian motorists have been tricked into thinking European cars are the best when they are the most dangerous. Let us take a while of break from checking this Acura CL strut assembly to have a closer look at this issue …
Based from smh.com, New Zealander Clive Matthew-Wilson, author of The Dog & Lemon Guide 2008, said that Australians were risking their lives as they buy European models. He said, “In Australia and New Zealand, European cars have a certain exotic cachet. It’s so often that people have the impression that they’re getting something better than average when in fact it’s the opposite.”
Matthew-Wilson claims that European cars have a “shocking shelf life”, are poorly built, unreliable, expensive to fix and consistently feature at the bottom of British and German customer satisfaction surveys. He said, “Mercedes Benz definitely hovers among the worst, so does Volkswagen … Yet if you asked 19 out of 20 people on the street they’d say they’d be well above average.” “The best of the Europeans equals the worst of the Japanese. Australian cars are somewhere in-between. Australian cars are really the best for the Australian environment, as obvious as that sounds,” he added.
Matthew-Wilson mentioned that the biggest “lemon” was the Land Rover Freelander 1997-2006 models. Based on the records from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ VFACTS, 7431 units of those models were sold in Australia up to the end of 2006. Matthew-Wilson said that the vehicle has been released to the public with 132 recognized faults, which includes engines that blew up after a few months, gearboxes that “disintegrated without warning and drive shafts that fell off while the car was being driven”. By fact, in the past year, Land Rover was the ninth most popular off-road passenger vehicle in NSW.
Contrary, European cars were featured on the list of the most popular vehicle makes. It has joined the Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Volvo and Audi.
Jack Haley, NRMA manager of motoring research, said that European cars performed well in the organization’s crash tests. He claims that there was no evidence that the vehicles had shorter shelf lives than other makes.
This is really confusing, don’t you think? Well, a big portion of the real answer to this issue is the experience held by the actual drivers and owners of the European cars. And, a study focusing on this matter would do great help.
Based from smh.com, New Zealander Clive Matthew-Wilson, author of The Dog & Lemon Guide 2008, said that Australians were risking their lives as they buy European models. He said, “In Australia and New Zealand, European cars have a certain exotic cachet. It’s so often that people have the impression that they’re getting something better than average when in fact it’s the opposite.”
Matthew-Wilson claims that European cars have a “shocking shelf life”, are poorly built, unreliable, expensive to fix and consistently feature at the bottom of British and German customer satisfaction surveys. He said, “Mercedes Benz definitely hovers among the worst, so does Volkswagen … Yet if you asked 19 out of 20 people on the street they’d say they’d be well above average.” “The best of the Europeans equals the worst of the Japanese. Australian cars are somewhere in-between. Australian cars are really the best for the Australian environment, as obvious as that sounds,” he added.
Matthew-Wilson mentioned that the biggest “lemon” was the Land Rover Freelander 1997-2006 models. Based on the records from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ VFACTS, 7431 units of those models were sold in Australia up to the end of 2006. Matthew-Wilson said that the vehicle has been released to the public with 132 recognized faults, which includes engines that blew up after a few months, gearboxes that “disintegrated without warning and drive shafts that fell off while the car was being driven”. By fact, in the past year, Land Rover was the ninth most popular off-road passenger vehicle in NSW.
Contrary, European cars were featured on the list of the most popular vehicle makes. It has joined the Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Volvo and Audi.
Jack Haley, NRMA manager of motoring research, said that European cars performed well in the organization’s crash tests. He claims that there was no evidence that the vehicles had shorter shelf lives than other makes.
This is really confusing, don’t you think? Well, a big portion of the real answer to this issue is the experience held by the actual drivers and owners of the European cars. And, a study focusing on this matter would do great help.
