[AneroidOcean]

(09-28-2015 03:44 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

I had an 06 Volkswagon TDI Diesel that was apart of the family stable before I graduated college that was apart of my maintenance regiment.

Compared to my Merc at the time, it was not only comparable but just as easy to maintain. Even my parts website (peachparts.com) had everything I needed after market and OE to keep the car going. Bugger is still going at 190,000 miles.

CR, i'm assuming you do your own work on your vehicles. If you're taking a car to a mechanic, well

All you've done here is point out one exception to his statement that VWs are not generally all that reliable or cheap to maintain. This doesn't disprove his statement.

Worse, you then try to shame him for having his car worked on by a mechanic. Having a car worked on by a mechanic has next to zero relevance as to that brand's reliability.

His statement seems to be backed up by at least this source as well as El Mech who is basically the forum mechanic and he actually sees a large volume of cars instead of one example.

Quote:

A History Of Questionable Reliability

For much of the past decade, Volkswagen has been plagued with powertrain reliability issues in the high-volume four- and five-cylinder engines that power Passat, Jettas, and other VW products, according to Consumer Reports.
In the past few years, the automaker has made significant strides in quality and recieved high marks from reviewers at the publication.

Still, there seems to be a stigma that lingers in the minds of mass-market shoppers who place a premium on reliability. This stigma is further enforced by publications like JD Power's 2014 initial quality and vehicle dependability surveys, where VW scored below industry average in both.

(09-28-2015 03:44 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

The "smog" problem in LA was in the early to mid 20th century was because of LA's industrial base. Los Angeles used to be a major manufacturing hub. Steel mills, car manufacturers, tool and dye, etc. now since everyone has migrated over to soft work and the factories were shipped abroad the problem went away.

It's a conveniently forgotten fact and everyone likes to blame the automobile for the smog problem. Let us also not forget that trash incinerators were legal up until the end of the 50s.

Beijing's ( the popular smog city du jeur) problem is caused by industrial pollution (ie factories), most notably cheap burning coal. Not it's millions of automobiles.

Cars barely scratch the surface when it comes to pollution. The real problem is caused by industrial output.

Do you have some statistics that show this to be the case? I would tend to agree.

Looking at this source, at the surface it appears that transportation makes up for 27% of emissions, but that includes ships and trucks. I'd love to see the breakdown for how much of that is passenger cars.

http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemi...urces.html

Either way, emissions standards for industry as well as passenger cars are a good thing. Problems arise when we implement policies that don't have a high bang for the buck or said another way, when we focus on stringent emissions where the least amount of output is (which may be the case here).