Why do maintaining a luxury car costs more? Shouldn’t they be more reliable than the cheaper ones?
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Luxury cars aren’t sold on reliability. They’re sold on luxury, which typically means some combination of performance (goes fast) and aesthetic/comfort (feels and looks good while going fast).
Economy brands are sold on reliability and gas mileage because a price conscious consumer will gravitate towards something that’s cheaper to keep on the road in the long term, in terms of maintenance as well as gas and insurance.
The dealers know that you have the money – so they charge a premium. Theoretically they’re trying to hold themselves to a higher standard of knowledge and skills, but my personal experience is that’s just not true.
Maybe, if that was the goal when they were made. Often it isn’t…
1. Performance cars tend to have much tighter tolerances for parts. This means that everything fits together better and tends to work better when it’s new but it also means that the parts cost more, are harder to copy at the same standard and are usually less tolerant of wear or damage.
2. This lower tolerance to wear or damage means that when they fail, you can’t just keep going – they need to be fixed or other parts will also be damaged increasing the repair bill of you don’t get onto it quickly.
3. The development of all the nice parts with tight tolerances costs more money. To make it worse, they don’t make as many so you have to spread a higher development cost over less units.
4. All the cool features cost money to make. Once they’re in, that’s one more thing to maintain. Consider a car with AC and one without – if you want to keep the AC running, you need to look after it while the one without just has a fan and an air duct from the outside.
More power = more strain on the engine.
More options = more systems, more points of failure.
More electronics = more complexity, higher probability of failure.
Luxury is 100% pure marketing. Stop trying to apply real world logic to manufactured ideals.
Just to give an example:
A small cheap car with let’s say 75 hp only need small brakes.
While a expensive fast car with 200hp needs way bigger and stronger brakes.
But they will live as long the other one.
So if you need to change your brakes every X miles/kilometers it will be more expensive for the luxury car.
The same goes for many other parts or the car.
You’re mixing up the criteria. Nobody buys a luxury car because they’re more reliable than the competition. They buy them because they are more powerful, better looking, more comfortable, have more options, or (this is the big one) have a more prestigious name brand.
Many times, the cutting edge technology introduced in top-line vehicles actually makes them inherently less reliable. BMW’s 7 series had a reputation for years of being gimmicky shop queens.
Fixing luxury cars costs more because, at a certain basic level, it’s assumed you have more money to pay. Because you’re driving a luxury car. That’s literally it. It’s why the same part that goes on a Toyota will cost more when it goes on a Lexus (both are made by Toyota)-. It’s why the “Corvette tax” is so infamous- the same GM part will suddenly cost more on a Corvette.
It’s because the car is designed for performance, not reliability. High performance cars push their parts to the limit and cause more wear and tear.
A Lexus/Acura/Infinity?…yeah, more reliable, great used car too. A BMW/Audi/Porsche?…just leave the car and your credit card number, we will inform you of how much the repair cost when we are done…
In the 1960’s it was said that if you liked the way the iconic Jaguar E-series looked and rode, you need to buy two of them, because one of them will be at the mechanics most of the time.
Luxury is about scarcity, not quality. Sure most try to make the two go together in order to have a bad image, but you will usually find more quality and robustness in heavy duty utilitarian equipment, or with products designed and constructed specificaly with longevity, resiliance (and usually low cost) in mind.
A ferrari isn’t about how much puniahment the engine can take, it’s about how much power it can deliver while being the most lightweight possible, and also the very few numbers of them on the market.
If you were able to create a factory which would output as much ferrari (parts and all) that there is Corola output un the world, the ferrari would simply stop being a luxury item and the prices would drop drastically because of the supply.
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