zlacker

Talk to car guys who are into ~2000s era or before cars. They usually have pretty solid recommendations.

>>lionko+(OP)
Most people need a recommendation for something more current, from people who work on these modern cars daily. The reputation of 25+ year old models can be misleading.

Another source of good recommendations could be insurance companies. Cars with low reliability or very expensive fixes probably need more expensive insurance. But I don't know if this data is public or if you can tell apart the reliability from the repair cost.

>>close0+P
If you're in Europe, you can consider Dacia. A lot of their stuff is old Renault parts that they've bought a license to use/manufacture. Get a pre-2023 model with the 1.6 non-turbo non-hybrid petrol engine - it's actually a Nissan HR16DE, which has been in use since 2004. Very reliable and low complexity.

>>close0+P
> Most people need a recommendation for something more current

Bless them, I would rather buy 10 shitboxes than one modern car (and that cost is about the same).

>>lionko+nc
I’d rather not die in a very survivable crash.

>>close0+P
At least over here where we have mandatory inspections you can find statistics on percentage of cars which fail the inspections, broken down by brand and model. Toyota seems to consistently place in the top.

>>semi-e+T7
And parts are ridiculously cheap and widely junkyard-available.

>>TylerE+Fh
Crash safety has become grossly exagerrated because the standards have been sharply rising last few years. Most 15yo cars will keep you safe just fine in a median crash.

>>kristj+ol
A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures - not a shitbox. Not unless it’s a shelll of rust held together by bondo. Then your crash standards or whatever year are meaningless as the chassis may have 25% or less of its design strength.

>>TylerE+Bl
Sorry for asking, are you in the USA? That might explain the 5 figures thing.

>>TylerE+Fh
Pretty much every major safety feature is an order of magnitude less meaningful than the last.

If you wear a seatbelt and eschew the most risky driving behaviors your chances of getting in a crash where the difference between 2005 and 2025 matters are very, very, very, small.

>>jabl+bi
Those sorts of comparisons are highly misleading because the overwhelming majority of failures for any inspection program are simple stuff that doesn't affect the operation of the vehicle in the base case. Light out, bald tires, brakes below replacement threshold, windshield crack, minor exhaust leak, etc. So what you wind up measuring by proxy is the owner behavior, since that's the dominant factor in how proactively those sorts of things get addressed.

And it ought to surprise nobody that trophy wives in 4runners show up with their vehicle in a statistically different state of repair than single moms in Altimas.

The big failures that you really want to avoid almost never show up on safety inspection data because they typically render the car much less drivable so they either get fixed promptly or the car stops coming around for it's inspection.

>>TylerE+Bl
> A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures

some are, sure - but most aren’t. Plenty of well maintained clean 2010 model cars on marketplace and Craigslist for well under 10k.

>>potato+YI
At the very least, modern cars are much heavier and ultimately mass wins. For example, a 2005 Honda CRV weights 3400 lbs while a 2025 is 3900 lbs.

Plus they have tons more auxiliary safety features like lane departure warning, forward collision warning, blind spot detection, better visibility, etc. And they are roomier, have more power, get better gas mileage, and have backup cameras and Apple CarPlay!

>>semi-e+T7
Is it using that Nissan/Renault CVT? That transmission is notorious junk.

I must say that I've been impressed with Dacia. Even the build quality is excellent - on par or beating VW. I've driven on Romanian roads so I can see why they would prioritize such high build quality.

>>jabl+bi
That's very interesting. I could argue that you are reading the signal wrong here. You want to go for the car that has the most failures in some cases, since it has survived long enough to fail in minor ways that leave it still able to drive.

If you have car brand A that has a reputation for having catastrophically expensive failures in major components, and car brand B which just keep chugging along for decades, you will probably see an elevated failure rate for brand B since it is still driving, while brand A will not be failing since it has already failed so badly it has been scrapped.

>>potato+YI
I wouldn't buy a car without ESC, that's just batshit crazy, esp. if you live where there's a chance of icy roads.

>>dotanc+se1
You can get them with a manual transmission, or a dual-clutch automatic, or CVT. AFAIK, the manuals are all decent, although the 6 speed manual on the 4WD models has quite low ratios (no transfer case) so it doesn't have great fuel economy at highway speeds.

>>semi-e+Vx2
Makes sense. In their home market, Romania, highway speed hardly ever exceeds 90 kph.

>>dzhiur+yp2
Heck, even vanilla ABS wasn't required in the US market until 2012.

>>dotanc+Oz2
Not true unless you equate a normal road (one or two lanes per direction, rarely separated from the other direction) with a highway, which is something else (comtrolled access, separated lanes, safety lane). Top highway speed is 130 kph, express road speed is 110 kph and normal roads it's 90 kph.

>>petre+rx4
At least the last time I was there, 2010, all the intercity highways look like they hadn't been maintained since Ceausescu fell. No matter what the legal limit was, there were very few places where one could drive 90 kph safely. Maybe this has changed - I certainly hope so

>>dotanc+jL4
Well, it's quite different now after being in the EU for nearly two decades. What you recall is regular roads, that cannot be called highways, but those got fixed as well. The highway infra is still not countinous, but it exists. And Romanian drivers do >90 kph on normal roads as well. Romania and Bulgaria have the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU.

>>petre+XN4

  > Romanian drivers do >90 kph on normal roads as well. Romania and Bulgaria have the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU.

It sounds like you are confirming my memories of the country. I did mention that exceeding 90 could not be done safely.

>>dotanc+505
It's not an infrastructure issue, but a cultural one that took off because of lacking infra. Those roads were designed for doing a maximum of 90 kph on them. Drivers were out of options, needlessly wasing time on thd road, so they started driving recklessly.