New Small Car Shopping... Avoid Ford 6-spd automatic and japanese CVT???

[ultrarunner]

As many of you know... Mom's pride and joy Corolla was stolen 2 weeks ago.

Insurance said we should be thinking about a replacement.

Looked at a ton of cars and she really does not care for the new Honda and Toyota small car offerings.

Cars she does like are the 2015 Ford Fiesta and Fusion...

Was getting close to pulling the trigger and then a trusted mechanic friend said his advice is to avoid the 6-spd Automatic.SelectShift at all cost from Ford and the many CVT offerings from companies like VW, Toyota, Honda, Subaru...

Also said the manuals are fine... it's just the "Automatics"

The Ford salesman said this morning that problem is behind them and the 2015 are rock solid 6-spd Automatics...

At this point... don't know what to think...

The last thing Mom needs is a car that's in the shop...

We sure have been spoiled by her 14 year trouble free Corolla that was built right here in California!!!

 

[reb]

Just replaced SWMBO's 5-speed Civic with a '14 CR-V. The '15s have the CVT, which I am not sure about. There have been complaints on a CR-V forum about vibrations in the '15 models. My major complaint is that the new models are getting so complex that simple component failures can disable the vehicle. According to the CR-V forum there is a relay which can fail that engages the brakes so the car cannot be driven. Sure wish there were a simple, new car available. Bells and whistles like TPMS, fancy audio systems, etc. are ok, but sometimes features like stability controls can create reliability problems.

 

[RollingsFarms]

I was given a 2014 Ford Fiesta as a rental car in NY by Enterprise for 5 days. Nice little car, interior was nice but man all the buttons gets confusing! The worst part of the car was the transmission was absolutely shot, i mean SHOT. Car only had 18,000 miles on it. I didn't find any indicator elsewhere on the car that suggested severe abuse for such low miles, no smoke odors or anything. I have no idea why the transmission was slipping and banging into gears so bad. I made this aware to Enterprise and they didn't even apologize.

 

[ultrarunner]

The Ford small car transmission has a horrible reputation... Ford has come out with a 100k blanket warranty... even then, what fun is it to have a questionable car or one with zero resale... too bad, because the same car with a stick is well rated.

In the past I have done Lemon Law arbitration cases on CVT transmission... like the Subaru Justy and they just did not hold up at all...

I imagine I am no different than most in that I don't want to be a guinea pig tester...

 

[Garandman]

As many of you know... Mom's pride and joy Corolla was stolen 2 weeks ago.

Insurance said we should be thinking about a replacement.

Looked at a ton of cars and she really does not care for the new Honda and Toyota small car offerings.

Cars she does like are the 2015 Ford Fiesta and Fusion...

Was getting close to pulling the trigger and then a trusted mechanic friend said his advice is to avoid the 6-spd Automatic.SelectShift at all cost from Ford and the many CVT offerings from companies like VW, Toyota, Honda, Subaru...

Also said the manuals are fine... it's just the "Automatics"

The Ford salesman said this morning that problem is behind them and the 2015 are rock solid 6-spd Automatics...

At this point... don't know what to think...

The last thing Mom needs is a car that's in the shop...

We sure have been spoiled by her 14 year trouble free Corolla that was built right here in California!!!

One old mechanic just removed 90% of the car market.

Lumping the Subaru CVT's in with the Fords and Nissans, might as well lump all 4 cylinder engines together too.

 

[s219]

The new Subaru CVTs have been rock solid from what I hear. I think they started using them again in 2009 or so (?).

 

[alchemysa]

Out of interest, does Hyundai and Kia sell over there? Kia have a 7 year warranty, Hyundai, 5 years. The i30 is very popular over here. Won small car of the year a few times. My daughter has an i30 wagon and loves it.

 

[ultrarunner]

Out of interest, does Hyundai and Kia sell over there? Kia have a 7 year warranty, Hyundai, 5 years. The i30 is very popular over here. Won small car of the year a few times. My daughter has an i30 wagon and loves it.

Yes... both are well represented in California as is Mazda too...

 

[ultrarunner]

One old mechanic just removed 90% of the car market.

Lumping the Subaru CVT's in with the Fords and Nissans, might as well lump all 4 cylinder engines together too.

The Subaru Justy CVT was a disaster... I have seen some total failures under 10k or even 5k... thing is this was some time ago... late 90's.

Toyota and Honda have hit some real milestones as for as reliability in the small car segment... just wondering how it will all play out... also my Dodge parts man friend said CVT are in Chryslers too plus many others... like Mini

Anyway... just doing an Internet CVT Class Action Lawsuit yields many results...

Here's the PowerShift link for Ford.

Ford Fiesta and Focus Transmission Lawsuit Filed After Complaints | CarComplaints.com

 

[mikehaugen]

I was given a 2014 Ford Fiesta as a rental car in NY by Enterprise for 5 days. Nice little car, interior was nice but man all the buttons gets confusing! The worst part of the car was the transmission was absolutely shot, i mean SHOT. Car only had 18,000 miles on it. I didn't find any indicator elsewhere on the car that suggested severe abuse for such low miles, no smoke odors or anything. I have no idea why the transmission was slipping and banging into gears so bad. I made this aware to Enterprise and they didn't even apologize.

What does smoke odor have to do with abusing a rental car transmission???

My friend has a '14 or '15 Ford Focus. Think he has around 20k on it. Just had it into dealer for about a 3 weeks or so for transmission issues. I don't remember if it was a recall or just a tsb for the issue and they tried reflashing tranny computer. Didn't work (in fact I think it got worse). Then they changed solenoids and it didn't fix it. Swapped computers and it didn't work, so they swapped them back. I think they then changed harness. I think ultimately they completely rebuilt the trans. I'm saying this from memory, so may not be 100% accurate. I will ask him next time I see him, but what I remember of the whole ordeal was they had the car for a long time and tried a lot of different things to finally fix it.

A little off the subject, but the worst part was that they gave him an f-150 as a rental from an Enterprise and they claimed they could not insure it. Said something about a law prohibiting the dealer from paying for the insurance. I think they were full of it, and I don't know why he didn't question it further, but he was out the money for the extra insurance and extra gas for 3 or 4 weeks as he has a decent commute.