New Car

Hello, first I wanted to mention what a great site this is, I've learned a lot while lurking.

I would like to purchase a new TL next year.

Right now I am leasing a Passat, I like the car a lot but I would like to step up to a better performing and better luxury car, which the TL seems to fit nicely.

One concern I have is that this will be the first car that I purchase, all of my other cars have been 3 year leases, but I would like to buy a car and keep it for 8-10 years to save money.

So my first question is this: Do you think this car will hold up as long as you always hear about Honda? My friend beats the crap out of his Civic, changes the oil every 10K miles, etc. and it still runs fine 250K miles later. Would reliability like this be expected from the TL? Of course I would properly maintain it unlike him.

Another question is the seats, I've read a couple of you guys saying that they crack. Since the car is so new cracking seats is unecceptable to me, especially if I am going to keep it for another 10 years after they crack.
So is this a big problem? Do you feel they will fix it for 2005?
It might seem a little lame for me to be asking about something like this, but I enjoy maintaining my cars and keep them clean. If the seats were to crack in the first 2 months it would ruin it for me :p

Other then that, are there any other problems that I should consider? And if there is, do you feel they will be fixed by 2005 or 2006?

Thanks in advanced, and thanks for the great site!

Bitium

Good choice...the previous TL's are extremely reliable, except for the transmission. Most thing will be fixed for 2005, the same way a lot of things were fixed after the 99 TL on the 2000 TL. I would expect the new TL to be as reliable as any other honda. If you have long term plans for the car I would suggest buy the MT.