Zander Drives Cars

See, as an automotive “journalist”, I hold a certain responsibility to talk about certain things. I’ll talk about how the car looks, how its priced compared to other models, what’s inside of it, how it drives, the quality, and so on and so forth. There is a lot that goes into it, I promise. That being said, there is one thing I almost never talk about, and that is reliability.

I promise you there isn’t a malicious reason for it. The last thing I want is for someone to read my review of XYZ car, go and buy it, and then have it break down. In fairness, I have almost never directly advocated for my readers to go buy a certain car, my advice only goes so far, but I recognize my articles might have the potential to include someone into a specific choice or not. The last thing I want to do is jeopardize my integrity by providing information that could potentially be misleading.

The other reason I don’t talk about reliability is that it’s subjective. I mean, yes, I know if a car ranks low on Consumer Reports or JD Power, but when I drive a car, it is only for a couple of hours. I am not at liberty to discuss a car’s reliability if I haven’t had access to it for more than a full day, let alone the years it takes for these reports to come out.

Every single time I mention anything, whether it be on Instagram, Twitter, or here, about reliability, I am immediately told a trillion different stories that go against what I said. I went on Instagram a few months back to talk about the reliability of the Toyota Camry TRD I drove and was hit with many DM horror stories of their “moms friends aunt who had one and her transmission blew up after 15,000 miles!” and “the front wheel axel caught on fire” or something along those lines. Everyone has a story.

And that goes for the opposite as well. I remember posting about how shaky F-Type R reliability is on Instagram and then getting yelled at by people who have F-Types that have reached 150,000 miles with no problems. Every statistically “unreliable” car has thousands of people who would swear by its dependability for the rest of their lives. And who am I to tell them they’re wrong?

I mean, of course not everyone will have the same experience with a car, I know people who have hated their S60 even though I love mine, but when it comes to something so divisive as reliability, sometimes the easiest thing to do is to not talk about it. Giving a car a bad reputation it may not deserve can hurt a brand or an image, or sometimes worse, its owners.

So, TL;DR: I don’t talk about reliability because I can’t win.