Do some people just have crap luck with cars?

[Erin]

I am a backyard mechanic. I tend to buy cars that need some attention and fix them when possible.
Yet, some of those fixer-uppers fall apart faster than I can repair them like say the 94 grand prix, 97 Acura, 90 Cavalier, and a few other fine machines. 97 Acura started having serious transmission problems.
Some of them had insane milege and some did not. My 99 Lesabre was 6 years old and had 68,000 miles when I got it back in 05 yet even it had things fail (nothing major)

Funny thing is, my present car is a 99 Cougar, which by all accounts, are suppose to be total POS car. Yet mine starts EVERY time and even with serious transmission problems (CD4E’s WILL eventually have band failure), gets me everywhere I need to be each day.

Now take my soon-to-be room mate. She has a 97 Grand Am that she had wrecked a couple times, probably never checks fluids, drives it hard etc yet the damn thing keeps going. It is not without it’s problems but it still runs.

I pretty much hate cars these days. I always wonder with some of them, “what is gonna f*** up today?”

So what gives?

Topic

[James O’Hara]

It is the luck of the draw and other times what is wrong is more evident. With used cars it also depends on who had it before you and how they took care of it.

Take me for example I am going to be on day 7 on a truck at work that should have not taken more then 3 days. Why you might ask because Murphy (as in Murphy’s Law) has decided it was my turn to be messed with.

[Mike]

It’s just differently a car is used by one owner to the next. My dealership sells a lot of used cars, most makes included, up to 120k miles is typically the limit. We have a very common thing happen that I call “new owner syndrome”. This is where a car that has been properly vetted, and sometimes daily driven by an employee for a few days or a week to make sure it’s all sorted out and all the bells and whistles work, comes back after delivery with problems that showed no signs of being there when we had it. People’s “bad luck” is the same kind of thing that causes new owner syndrome.

People just do weird things to cars much of the time. I know one particular customer that will damage any manual transmission he owns. Whatever the weak point, he’ll make it fail. I’ve rebuilt 1 Civic, 1 Mazda 3, and 2 Eclipse transmissions he’s had. Sell him a stick shift used car, it will be back with a trans issue no matter how fine it was before he got to it.

You ever seen a workout or gym “fails” video, where people are using gym equipment so incorrectly that they look like a fish flopping around out of the water? Most car owners are like those people at the Gym, in the sense that they don’t understand the machine they’re trying to use and therefore use it in ways it’s not designed for. It’s the same way that one of those people would ride in my car and tell me I’m beating the **** out of it and going to kill it and so forth. In reality, because I fully understand all the mechanisms in the car, I know how to exert forces on it that it’s designed to handle and prevent forces that it’s not designed to handle. In practice, my cars are very reliable and parts wear evenly in a predictable manner despite many laymen telling me things like “you’re gonna destroy this thing!”.

[Mike]

Some people are indoctrinated at an early age and are forever attracted to POS cars. For instance, if dad or Uncle Fergus was a Chevy guy, this gets handed down. I am completely amazed by the number of people who still seek out old Berettas or Cavaliers just because there’s a bowtie on the car.

There’s a lot of psychology at work when it comes to vehicle preferences, and it doesn’t always make good sense.

[Author]

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