An elderly woman is crying profusely over the phone, and all anyone can do is listen and try to console her. Through no fault of her own, she?s now beside herself with a $7000 repair estimate for a car that has become a 3500-pound paperweight. The only thing she knows about cars is how to drive one. Guess who was responsible for this tragic scene" The guy writing this article.
That?s right. I was guilty?not by intent, but by association and anecdotal experience. Guess who recommended to her that she buy that car" Yep, that was me. I bought a reliable version of the same model?a car that?s still on the road with 350,000-plus miles on the odometer?more than 20 years ago. In fact, my evangelizing about the reliability of that daily driver, a 1994 Toyota Camry coupe, eventually led my family to buy four more Camrys. Between 1994 and 2012, those were the only cars bought by my parents and brothers. I drank the industry Kool-Aid that makes many of us believe that, out of that ocean of millions of cars, only a few chosen models can offer you true long-term reliability. That?s no longer true. Soon after that woman on the phone (my mom) was given that jaw-dropping estimate, I decided to do two things. First, I replaced a sensor and told the dealer where he could stick that estimate. And second, I became involved with a project called the Long-Term Quality Index (LTQI), a four-year-old, collaborative effort that studies the reliability of used cars. The study now include...