Oil Checking help please

francophile1947 · Post by **francophile1947** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:17 pm

bigdaddycain wrote:http://www.whatcar.co.uk/news-article.aspx?NA=229319

Middle to lower half of the page left hand side....

Not suprisingly, the italians are dotted all over the "bottom ten" table... They are even more unreliable than vauxhalls!

Joint equal to Vauxhall

and higher than the VW brands, Audi, Saab and Volvo

- thanks for proving my point that they are pretty good nowadays

BTW, what sort of survey doesn't even include Mazda??

bigdaddycain · Post by **bigdaddycain** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:37 pm

Huh?...Being equal to vauxhall isnt good john!

Rest assured your FORD is a comfortable 7th...which considering all the ultra reliable japanese manufacturers hugging all the top ten spots,isn't too bad at all

I'd have thought "what car" magazine survey to be pretty indicative of a real world car reliability scenario...

You have a point with the mazda thing though...

In all seriousness john, i'm sure that many thousands of fiat owners are more than happy with their cars,but there is a worrying percentage of the marque that seem to suffer from friday afternoonitus... it seems to be a pot luck thing to an extent. Have you seen the amount of alfas you can buy with really low mileages? Little do the prospective buyers know that's because they have spent half of their life up on a ramp,or on a diagnostics machine

Your fiat must be great,if it wasn't you'd have sold it... I just don't get how people can have a pop at the reliability of fords (Fix Or Repair Daily etc) I have a ford focus diesel that is pushing a quarter of a million miles now... It would be silly to throw good money after bad at it constantly repairing the thing,but as long as its driving sweetly,i'll keep it on the road,there must be another 100k left in her at least!

francophile1947 · Post by **francophile1947** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:05 pm

Hi BDC - good bit of light-hearted banter.
Fiat (Fix It Again Tony)have always had a bad reputation for reliability but, although it may have been true in the past, doesn't seem to have been for many years now. I wonder if it's a hangover from the dreadful rust problems when using the Russian steel. Alfa Romeo is a different matter - they are still unreliable and I can't see why that should be nowadays

To be honest, the only totally unreliable car I've ever had was an HC Viva. It was one of those cars that when somebody said they'd had a problem with their car, I could turn round and say "I had that with my Viva"

bigdaddycain · Post by **bigdaddycain** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:09 pm

viva e spanner eh?

I may have been getting it a bit twisted there...Have alfa not got affiliations with fiat? Or was that lancia?

francophile1947 · Post by **francophile1947** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:12 pm

Both I believe, which is why I am puzzled by how bad Alfas seem to be. I believe they have their own petrol engines but use Fiat diesels.