Last week a 2014 Equinox 2.4 Ecotec came in on the flatbed for a no start. Walking out to the vehicle, first thought was the timing chain. Hit the key and,,,,,,,sure enough, sounded like all the plugs were out. Cam timing chain was so worn it jumped time, the chain guide was 4 pieces that fell out when I pulled the timing cover plus, the balance shaft/water pump chain was about to fall off it was so loose. That's a separate smaller chain behind the cam chain. High miles? Nope. The odometer showed 91,371. They got lucky and none of the pistons crashed into the valves. Now that's quality for you. To make it worse, this one has always used synthetic oil (as required by GM) and changed 4,000-5,000 miles and the engine was clean inside, not neglected as some are. As I've mentioned before, it sucks for the owners of the vehicles but it's job security for me.
I worked on Audi and VW from 2007-2012 and my experience is, VW quality is not that great. That "fine German engineering" thing is just hype it seems. Audi's have better quality but still have way more problems than you'd expect for the price and, those repairs are always expensive. We joke that Mercedes is over priced and over engineered to stay that way.
I still say car companies worry too much about all the doo-dad's, gadgets, "connectivity," crap to distract the driver, touch screens, wi-fi, sat-nav, blah, blah, blah, and don't spend any time, money or engineering on the parts that really matter and,,,,,,,,,the quality and reliability suffers. What good is a blue tooth, voice activated, hands free phone on a car that won't run, other than calling the tow truck?
How about when the morons mount electronic modules under the back of the vehicle in the water, salt and slop and then,,,,,,,the water and salt gets in the module and shorts it out (or the connector and corrodes/shorts the terminals), which takes down the entire CAN network, everything on the network goes down, the engine stalls, the dash goes nuts, the doors lock and unlock over and over, the lights go out................Well, you get the idea. OK, I'm done ranting now.
