[V8] Mazda reliability

[Mike Arman]

> Dave Saad says:


> I sure get a different feeling from reading this -
> - 120K and the motor is dead
> - numerous half shafts wore out
> - muffler rotted out
> - nearly killed in an accident
> - 2 and a half brake jobs
> - loud, rough, crude
> 
> and she went back for another Mazda?
> The 626 doesn't sound much better either.


You have to understand how she treats cars . . . as long as it is still moving, it gets NOTHING, 
well it's running, isn't it? Sometimes I'll tell her I need the car to do an oil change and she'll 
say she has to go to so-and-so - does she want me to change the oil running alongside of the car at 
70 mph?

She BEATS her cars. I'm amazed the 323 made 120K, and while the motor wasn't dead (yet), it might 
have gone another 10K, but of course that's a guess.

On the half-shafts, the first ones were at about 80K, which is alright, but she insists on buying 
them by price, and she's getting cheap "rebuilts" from Poop Boyz which are lifetime warrantied, so 
when they go bad, Poop Boyz just puts in another one. Fixing it right doesn't seem to be of any 
interest, she just wants to get going again as quickly and cheaply as possible and takes the cheap 
way out, worrying about the future (impending and guaranteed) failures "later".

Muffler was at 90K, she lived a block from the ocean, and salt air here in Florida is notably 
hostile to exhaust systems. I had a Dodge Aires (now THERE'S a paragon of reliability!) on which the 
muffler rusted out every 11 months like clockwork, so I bought a one year guaranteed muffler from 
Autozone, and every 11 months, came back and got another one free. I used anti-seize on the 
connection, and got so I could change the muffler in five minutes in the parking lot, using only a 
1/2" wrench. In this case I *knew* the thing wasn't going to last a full year, with the half-shafts, 
she expects them to last forever, and they don't.

The accident was not her fault (even the insurance said so). The car did very well - *everything* 
forward of the windshield was compressed to no more than 12" in total length (!) and there was no 
penetration of the passenger compartment - the doors even opened, not easily, but they did. The 
crash engineering of this car saved her life. No one buys a car expecting to crash it, but one visit 
to a junkyard will easily show that a LOT of cars get smashed.

In my experience, front pads last some 50K or so and discs twice that, which makes 2 sets of pads 
and one set of discs in 120K pretty much normal maintenance. I've also got an Accord which came to 
me in an estate sale, and it needed front pads at 21K - I'm not sure why.

Loud, rough, crude, yes, yes, yes, but this was a CHEAP CAR and that's what you get.

The 626 is not quite as loud, not quite as rough, and not quite as crude, but the service history 
seems comparable. I don't enjoy driving it, riding in it or working on it - and fortunately, I have 
to do very little of each.

These are not "exceptional" cars, no one is ever going to love and revere them like a Ferrari or a 
Benz, or even an older Audi, but remember that the market is completely different! These cars are 
for people who want transportation appliances and nothing more, and the less they have to interact 
with the vehicle, the happier they are. Use 'em up, throw 'em away, these are essentially treated as 
disposable vehicles.

I can't speak on the reliability of American cars, I haven't owned one in at least a decade, but you 
are correct, it is the PERCEPTION of poor engineering and poor reliability that sells or un-sells 
cars, not the reality. Those of us who drive the I-5 type 44s know about this very well - the 
PERCEPTION is that these cars are unreliable, expensive pieces of crap - and thus we could buy them 
cheap and enjoy some pretty nice cars often for very short money. We did have to work on them rather 
a lot, though, but WE often enjoyed that, whereas the car-as-appliance crowd would never even 
consider it.

*SHE* considers her Mazdas as reliable, and that means she'll probably buy another one (ugh) when 
she finally beats the 626 to death.


Best Regards,

Mike Arman
90V8Q, and some BMW motorcycles