If you brought a car from brand new say a Audi or bmw, how many years would you expect it to last

[Lardlizard]

If you serviced it every year, looked after it and knew it hadn’t been razzed about or in any accidents

Neither BMW nor Audi are particularly known for their reliability, so I’d say, maybe 4 or 5 years?

What?! Are you kidding? Audi are well known for being incredibly reliable. Not sure about BMWs though.

Given the age of the BMWs my DH seems to collect I would say 20 years minimum!

10 years at least

Mines going great 7 years and £10000 miles later.
Just “sailed” through its MOT ( Quote from BMW garage)

Buy a Korean car with a 7 year warranty

Cars usually develop expensive problems just after the warranty period - if the car has a 3 year warranty it's because the manufacturer expects some things to start to break shortly after that, on average.

FIL has a 14 year old Bmw he bought from brand new. Serviced religiously and maybe under average mileage slightly. Although I can't be sure if that. Still runs fine and he's not mentioned having to shell out £££ to keep it on the road.

Definitely a long time as you are paying for build quality. Easily 10 years or 150,000 miles.

Old BMWs were basically tractors in shiny skin - different rules apply to modern cars.

@hoppinggreen 10000 miles after 7 years?? Mine is just under 3 and have done 50000...

I think it also depends on how the car is driven - what type of driver you are
What type of car it is - automatic/manual petrol/diesel
Where it is driven

There must be a reason why service plans only last 4/5 years ...

Mine's 13 years old. Quite happy with it.

20 or more.

Cars have so many electronic components and electronic gadgetry - no chance that it will last

@magneticmumbles Admittedly I’m no car expert so happy to be corrected, but the 2018 dependability study has Audi rated 3rd from bottom

What do you mean by 'last'. Many things break that aren't part of the service schedule that would be quite expensive to repair but don't necessarily mean that the car isn't worth fixing (exhaust, clutch, electronic stuff, suspension parts etc).

Are you expecting no repairs, no major repairs, or something else?

Oh ages. We just got rid of our 10 year Audi and whilst looking a bit battered there has never been anything wrong with it function wise. We have a new one now and also planning to keep it 10 years or so.

I agree with Anothernother old BMWs were great. Anything after 2011 won't last very long before something expensive needs to be replaced. DB found this out the hard way.

Interesting that Seat and especially Skoda do so much better in that reliability survey than VW and Audi, when Seat and Skoda are more or less cheap versions of VW and Audi .

I've driven several Skodas over the last 20 years. My first one was a bit of a lemon, with 2 major repairs (turbo failure, twice!) luckily within the warranty period, it was a company car anyway, but then all the others have been trouble free while I've had them from new to age 3 or 4.

I bought a two year old Audi kept it for three years then part x for a smaller, more city suited car. I sold it with a full year MOT on it. I checked it's MOT the other day and it failed its next MOT and has not been back on the road since so presumably they didn't feel it worth making it roadworthy again - so six years it lasted, which I think is outrageous and I wouldn't buy an Audi again on the back of that.

Oh - my bog standard Hyundai hatchback lasted twenty years. So for the price - at least that.

I didn’t know Audi were thought to be unreliable.

Depends on how it's utilised. Also depends on what you mean by last. If you mean, last until it developed a fault that was so catastrophic, it would cost more than the vehicle was worth to repair, I would say 80,000 to 100,000 on the clock for heavy and inconsiderate usage. Maybe 140,000 for a lot of usage and time to pass for the vehicle to naturally devalue.

However, a vehicle is an imperfect machine, and can develop a fault at any time. In fact, brand new vehicles are even more likely to develop a fault than a vehicle mid-life.

I think the difficulty with relying on reliability ratings is that owners of premium brand vehicles likely have higher expectations of what reliability truly is... DH and I have an Audi A3 and a Ford Kuga respectively. I personally feel that they are as reliable as each other - but DH feels that some of the things that I just let fly (squeaking interior panels, wiper blades needing replacing relatively frequently, and a blown element on the heated windscreen that had to be replaced in warrantee) make the car less reliable which is frankly ridiculous.

When you say how long should it last, are you asking how long should it go before you need to undertake any work other than regular servicing? Because that will depend on the likely length of consumables like timing belts/chains, water pumps, fuel injector seals etc. I’ve run cars that have been 10+ years without issue and would expect that if any vehicle regardless of make.

If the hypothetical premium car had average mileage, had been run for a mixture of motorway and town driving by a reliable driver and serviced to schedule including consumables then I’d expect 10 years plus before I started getting edgy about breakdowns etc.

Depends what you mean by 'last'. Cars are complicated, full of tens of thousands of moving parts and electrical components. Things just do go wrong, sometimes. And sometimes they don't; luck of the draw. I had a (leased) Audi A4 for four years; all it cost me was the monthly payment plus tyres, servicing and an MOT. Friend of mine had a similarly new Q3 and it gave her no end of electrical trouble and she swore she'd not have another.

If you mean total mechanical failure, i.e. the sort where the car has to be disposed of, I'd expect over 20 years and/or 200,000 miles out of a well cared-for car of any make, regardless of whether that's an Audi or a Fiat or a Volvo. But there's never a 100% guarantee because cars are so complex and there's no such thing as perfect guaranteed reliability. And there's always going to be some maintenance cost (over and above servicing) because things wear out as you drive; suspension, for example.