fiatlux

I think you're missing the. Mopars are the shit.

leomio85

I talk about my personal experience, surveys as well as a number of posts from other users here. You have no experience with Tesla and cherry pick an issue and demean owners, thinking you’re an intellectual when nothing could be further from the truth. The hypocrisy is scathing. You’re a fool, plain and simple.


I just love talking shit about them. They DO put out quite a lot of turds. But, I’d be lying to myself if I said there aren’t plenty of stuff they put out that I’d love to park in my driveway. Plus, I love their new “Put a Hellcat in EVERYTHING!” model they have going on.

DriverOne

It's pretty funny how you're upset that I don't buy your "everything is bad about Acura" line and are really angry about me making fun of Tesla owners. It's almost like I exposed your agenda and now you're mad.

hand-filer

I did for 4 years and would definitely consider a KIA in the future. If you need to own a specific brand to feel you have issues.

jmhumr

Since the natural inclination is to seek a correlation with the production location, owners often provide that info and many have cited Japan-built ones with the same QC issues. It makes sense. When it comes to rattles and shakes, it's not like the production workers make the parts. They snap plastic Part A and snap it into plastic Part B. There's no room for adjustment.

When comparing Lexus, Acura, and the Germans, it's all about how they prioritize where they put the money. Here's how I see it:

Acura: Focused on sportiness and style; fit and reliability sometimes suffers
Lexus: Focused on fit and reliability; bore to drive and style suffers from use of dated/over-engineered parts and lack of product refresh ("if it works, don't fix" mentality)
Germans: Focused on fit and sportiness; customer pays a premium in price and ownership costs to have both

Simply put, if you want a car that drives and looks like an Acura and is as solid as a Lexus, then you gotta pay up to a German car.

jmhumr

There's no reason to even bring up Tesla in this thread. They're cutting-edge, and humans have have a long history of accepting defects/quirks to own a piece of the next big thing. A lot has been written about how that exclusivity won't last forever and eventually Tesla will need to clean up its quirks, but for now, it's a non-factor.

DriverOne

This is where I don't think people understand where car companies are coming from. Many people say that Lexuses are boring to drive, but that's not because they can't figure it out. They deliberately make their cars that way because that's what their target demographic wants. Lexuses are driven by people who want a comfortable drive, which people who are into other cars describe as "floaty" or "boat-like."

Acuras do focus on sportiness and style, but that's not why they may have what some people on this forum describe as "reliability issues." (I say that because I'm not aware of the claim that people on here make that Acuras are "known" to be poorly built. And I maintain that if someone "knew" that Acuras are poorly built and still bought one, that says a lot ...about them, not Acura.) The RDX gave people pretty much everything that you'd need to pay extra for in higher-end cars for half the price. Then people bizarrely compare it to "same in class" Volvos that literally cost tens of thousands of dollars more and conclude that the RDX is inferior. That's like saying if some guy is a paraplegic without prosthetics and you barely beat him in a race then you're awesome.

For example, look at the conclusion regarding BMWs. Everyone knows you "pay a premium price," so of course it should be a better car. What's so shocking about that? What I find more surprising is that German cars are infamous for having so many problems and being so expensive to fix that you have to get rid of them as soon as the warranty is over. If you're paying that much for a car, it should really never have problems. But for some weird reason, people don't mind that BMWs and Mercedes have problems because "they're performance machines."

And as far as Teslas, I agree: people are willing to excuse their problems because they view them as "cutting edge," which I mentioned earlier. Like we're supposed to marvel at their autonomous driving and then, if a few drive into trucks and kill their drivers, everyone just shrugs and says "the price of progress." But since RDXs (or most any other cars) are viewed as "conventional" cars, nobody cuts them any slack at all. Like a Tesla, you can claim that it has shatter-proof glass and right in front of everyone your demonstration fails and everyone just laughs and then says "yeah, I'll take five."

hans471

Everyone has their own favorite, its why more than one car company can stay in business. People buy a certain brand based on their personal preference, what they are use to, what they had in the past, etc. . People ask me what is the best car for them to buy. I tell them it all depends on what is important to them. My brother-in-law is a drifter. It use to be Saab's, then he went with Honda. The local Honda dealer he went to ripped him off on service so often he went with BMW's. The cost of keeping those up drove him crazy and he finally dumped them and how is driving a Subaru. Who knows what it will be next. In my family, between us (brothers, sisters, nieces, etc) we have bought over 35 Honda vehicles over the past twenty-five years. (And I think most of them are still running!) Of all of those only one ever gave anyone a serious problem and we aren't really sure if that one might have been just "driver error". Anyway, you may have only owned one Honda vehicle and had issues, it happens and you will judge the company by your limited experience. That is human nature. I won't own a GM car again, even though my father retired after thirty years there and the whole family drove nothing but GM. I bought many new Chevy's in my life. While working at GM I had two new Blazers back to back over four years and both of them were bombs! I just can't trust them. Other family members also had issues. Now must of us drive Honda products due to reliability experience. You experiences may vary. Its your money, buy what you want.

acuraada

lol, this is too funny. You obviously don't spend time in Tesla Forums.

Let's see...
In Reddit:
r/Acura 11k members
r/Teslamotors 832k members

In Twitter:
Tesla 6.3M
Acura 177.4K

You think Tesla doesn't get bombarded with trolls? More than Acura.... This includes the shorts, not just some random guy with bad experience. The fact remains, no one is talking about Acura, if Acura went dead on the street with limp modes, no one talks about it, no news, no by stander taking videos or photos... the Industry doesn't care. A Tesla parked on the highway with a flat tire? It makes the internet news.... trolls/shorts all arrived.

One troll shows up and we get all too excited to defend the brand. Relax and enjoy your RDX. There will always be trolls.

DriverOne

That's because Telsa is the new Prius, like I said. It's not about the car. It's now about "people who drive Teslas are smart" or "people who drive Teslas are ethically superior because they're saving the planet," both of which are idiotic statements. That was how Priuses were also viewed in the past decade. There's a lot of backlash against Teslas for the same reason. I've said very openly that I don't care one way or the other if someone wants to buy a Tesla, but I hate Teslas for the simple fact that taxpayers subsidize them. But at least I'm open about that and I don't pretend like "oh, I'm a totally objective reviewer and they suck or they're amazing." That was my point about surveys. There are lots of people who give survey answers based on their own personal agenda. Therefore, they are completely meaningless.

acuraada

Subsidies to buyers are not just limited to Tesla. It’s available to every Manufacturer with 400k quota. They just sold faster than anyone else.

Buy a Mustang Mach E now, $7500 tax credit to you. Do you hate Ford too?

DriverOne

It's available for any manufacturer who has a "green" vehicle, you mean. And yes.

acuraada

Ah, all of this make sense now.

And off to Tesla forum I go....

DriverOne

It upsets you that I don't think taxpayers should be paying for people to buy green vehicles? Don't let the door hit you.

GhostTL09

iTrader: (1)

Madd Dog

fyi. https://www.theguardian.com/environm...s-abolish-them

acuraada

it became obvious who the troll was and I was mistaken. trolling goes both ways.

DriverOne

I see that claim made often. Then, if you look into the report -- which is by Oil Change International, a group that opposes fossil fuels -- it says that they classified a subsidy as "any action that lowers the cost of production, the cost of consumption, or raises the price received by producers." So they classified any tax deduction by an oil company as a "subsidy." Then, they laboriously wrote an additional 40 pages of report to hide that one single sentence and then the Guardian cited the report and then it's repeatedly cited by everyone in "climate change" arguments. It's a pretty clever move by the left.

Meanwhile, actual subsidies -- meaning, the government will actually pay hard cash-ola to "green" companies and to consumers to encourage them to buy "green" vehicles -- are compared to that.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

I think you have it backwards...

cutting edge will always mean reliability issues..
people are willing to have the newest, latest and greatest thing at the expense of reliability.

DriverOne

I don't disagree with that. But it's like you say, those people at the "cutting edge" of anything don't complain about reliability issues. That was my point. I was discussing the (ir)relevance of surveys. If you survey people who buy the latest technologies, including the perceived "cars of the future," are you getting a real and objective evaluation? No. Actually, even for people not buying "cars of the future," you're not. Like I said, surveys are meaningless and Consumer Reports is a survey company. I've run into infotainment problems once or twice in my ownership and I just go "it's no big deal." Other people seemingly will say their entire car is junk and garbage. So how are you going to get any information from that?

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

we get it; most of us werent born yesterday.

DriverOne

Well, last time I discussed the issue everyone didn't seem to get it. It was just "how dare you question JD Power?!" and so on.

russianDude

JDpowers says its "great" in all categories.

leomio85

But, surveys are pointless, didn't you read?

https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/...ower-2020.html

Acura comes in at #10 for worst initial quality. Guess who comes in at #1? Yea, the people who supposedly don't complain about the quality of their cars because they're maroons. Along with just about anyone who's not a shill for Tesla on YouTube that reviews cars has made comments about horrible build quality of Tesla. I tried to keep my mouth shut and not fall deeper into this asinine conversation, but it's just so goddamn unconscionable the bullshit that he spews.

russianDude

The #10 place does not mean its very bad car. If you look at the actual score numbers, the difference between #1 st and #10th place is 84 vs 75, thats not a huge difference. And yes, surveys are sketchy, always need to be skeptical when you look at them.

leomio85

I was more highlighting what #1 was. I'm not surprised that Acura is on there from my personal experience, but it's more than apparent that plenty of people aren't thrilled with the build quality of their Teslas. I've only heard negative things about their build quality ... eventually, when there's more competition in the segment, I'm sure they'll put more emphasis on quality control.

JB in AZ

Tesla was more interesting in build numbers to support the stock price than quality. It was all over the financial news last year...or was it the year before. All seems like a fog these days.

leomio85

I think this exemplifies Tesla's business model pretty well.

"Building cars and warrantying them, repairing them and selling them is a logistics business. They're operating [Tesla] like a tech company, where it runs on hype." Perfect quote right there. And plenty off offended soy boys offended by his comments that they downvoted the video.

acuraada

downvoted ? It has more up vote 46k vs down vote 5.5k
And this logistic comparison has been said before by the shorts. It’s getting a bit old now... and mostly proven untrue at this point. you might as well listen to Mark Field’s comment on Tesla, at least he ran a company

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/10/2...ess-model.html

hand-filer

Until Ford realized he wasn't quite up to the task.

acuraada

lol. Exactly.

leomio85

That's a pretty terrible ratio of likes:dislikes. It's on the level of a lot of Justin Bieber MVs. He's not talking out of his ass, in fact, he likes EVs (including Tesla), he's just calling Tesla out for their business model. And that clip is nearly a year old.

acuraada

Right, it’s outdated even a year ago.
He is citing an analogy first talked about when model 3 came out, lots of initial build quality issues when Tesla moved from niche to mass production. The logistic model would make sense for a dealership but Tesla doesn’t have a dealership model and doesn’t make money from servicing warranty claims. It operates logistically because its vertically integrated and owns its distribution.

so a year later he is proven wrong about the truck, it was built and working. Granted, Tesla is still making improvements so it can be street ready.

he is also wrong about the skate board. In fact, that’s the model that traditional manufacturers thrives after. Volvo is a prime example.

goes to show just because you love and blog about cars, don’t make you an industry expert.

Fields is actually partially right about the EV credits but he forgets the consumer must buy them to make EV credits count.

leomio85

I was seeing plenty of claims of poor build quality on the Model S's, even before the Model 3 was even a thought. But, most people forgave them due to the fact they were comparatively a small company and the main reason for getting a Tesla was for the EV experience.

I haven't heard anything about the CyberTruck, but my ear isn't exactly to the ground either. I'm not interested in EVs as of yet. Time will tell.

Wrong about the skateboard how? Every manufacturer does it to an extent, and it's not something invented by Tesla. In fact, any manufacturer getting into EVs will likely deploy a similar strategy. It's not financially viable to engineer a new platform for every single model you have. It's nothing to scoff at, it's a fact of the automotive industry. No, I don't think it's as easy as "slapping a different body" on it, but it's been coined a skateboard chassis by plenty of people outside Matt Farah, and none of them in a demeaning way. Unless I'm misunderstanding what a 'skateboard chassis' is. Heck, even the Hummer EV looks like a skateboard (albeit, massive) platform.

No, I don't think Tesla is going anywhere any time soon. What they've done in the automotive industry is remarkable. Tesla, and Elon, have basically changed the industry. I don't disagree that a lot of their fans are intolerable though, nor do a disagree that a lot of their business model is built around "hype." Right or wrong, love them or hate them, you can't argue with what Tesla has done to the industry.

That being said, have we proven surveys and customer experience have their place? Much like any review platform for any product out there?

russianDude

Does it mean I should only buy car that is #1 in consumer report? I buy car that I like

leomio85

Nobody even remotely stated that.

acuraada

Nothing wrong with skate model, it means efficiency in speed and cost. Just that no one has one skate board for all the models they built. Not even Tesla. In addition, Tesla is moving towards a structural model with integrated battery. That will take time however. Just saying Farah, although a definite car enthusiast is not an industry expert that he thinks he is.

If anyone wants an example of a hyped car maker, look no further than Nikola. That is if they even have a car.

As for the topic of this thread. All of these formats presents a different type of information. You can chose to believe one trusted friend or a survey from a commercial firm or some YouTuber. There is no right or wrong. We all choose to have our own opinion. What’s even worse is that none of us have hands on real statistics.

Have any of you even filled out a Consumer Report survey? Do you know how they have structure their questions? Are you a member?

The worse part is assumed knowledge and pawning it off like the ultimate truth.

leomio85

Nobody is pawning anything off as "ultimate knowledge", I'm addressing a known issue and being an outspoken asshole about it. I formulated opinions based on various experiences and outlets, much like you have to formulate that I'm mistaken in my conclusions. My discontent is founded with the numerous issues I've had with my own Acura ... A-pillar rattle x 2, cargo floor rattle x 2, creaking seat side bolster (not in TSB), crackling steering wheel, sunroof rattle (fixed), rear hatch pop (warranty), intermittent dash rattle, headliner buzzing/rattle directly above driver's seat ... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Along with surveys, and being inside and under more cars in a week than most people have in their lifetimes and hearing/seeing issues from every manufacturing brand from owners. When Honda's own CEO comes out in a statement less than a year ago and states he's aware of the build quality decline of the company over the years, but you have fanboys on here claiming build quality issues are exaggerated claims, who's more on the side of reality?

Which reminds me, we drive the same exact car, yet the wife doesn't hear any rattles. Even when we've driven together going out to the Hamptons, she said she heard nothing while it was like nails on a chalkboard to me. I pointed them out and then she hears them. Objectively, who's right? If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and nobody's around to hear it, do Honda's interiors still suck? Yes.



That being said, none of this will change my opinion of what I've experienced up to this point in my life. But, I'll concede and say I'll try to lighten up being such an outspoken negative dick about it.

acuraada

Wasn’t referring to you actually. Also, I am with you that the quality of Acura has gone south. You know, at least those Tesla fan boys admit that the build quality is to be desired but they still love the car. Further more the issue with RDX is actually worse than that of model Y or 3, which most of them suffer panel gaps and fitting issues. (Except for that one flying glass roof...)

Here? Hard press to get anyone to admit that Acura != Honda and it’s quality are not the same anymore. It’s like we are still in denial stage and Tesla forums has move to acceptance.... 😂

Madd Dog

CUs idea of a great two-seater to buy was an El Camino.