For those who might not yet know me, I've been the warranty administrator at a Cadillac and Nissan dealership for just a spark over 10 years now. I handle the Mazda warranty admin for our auto group's Mazda dealer, too, so I suppose I could talk smack about them, too, but I'll save that for another time.
So last month The Wife and I purchased our second Honda -- a 2006 LX / SE. Of course some members of my dealership's Upper Management raised eyebrows at the choice (we don't have a Honda dealer in our auto group), but I take my money-spending seriously. If I'm gonna lay down $20k for a car, it's gonna be for a car I'm comfortable with.
Day in and day out, I work with Nissan and GM products. But I mostly drive Hondas, and have for ... oh, about ten years. Which, as you'll remember from above, is about the same time as I began to absorb the nuances of the auto-service business. This is not an accident.
It's not that I don't like Altimas and Maximas. Sure, a few years ago they looked rancid. Now, though, I think the latest iterations look absolutely fantastic. I dig the Altima's interior. They sure do scoot when you tap the pedal. And there's something about the exterior body lines that just makes me take second-looks every time.
But Nissan cannot build a decent window regulator. They just can't. They couldn't do it back in 1998; they couldn't do it in 2002; they can't do it now. In the grand scheme of things, an inop window regulator can be pretty annoying. Two of them on the same car? That's yucky. Lose all four -- and lots of them do, but not until they're well out-of-bounds of warranty -- and now you're talking ludicrous. And expensive.
And their CD players? Ack. Some of 'em are slapped together by Panasonic, some by Clarion, some by that guy who lives down the street from you whose Christmas lights are on year-round and whose dogs won't ever shut up, even at 2:12am, thanks to the 24 Hours Of Def Leppard always emanating from his garage. All these CD players break. Really. All of them. Repeatedly.
Conversely, I could count on one hand the number of Nissan engines we've replaced in my 10-year term. And starters. Transmissions, though, and fuel pumps ... not so uncommon. And Lord, how the recalls never end. Never.
But the thing that really bites me about Nissan? Their attitudes regarding customer assistance and dealer responsibility will just make you shake your head. It never ceases to amaze me -- the lengths they'll go to to wiggle out of goodwill-warranty (and sometimes even factory warranty) situations, even for customers who've owned the cars since Mile 4.
I drive a '95 Nissan truck that I purchased in '96, with 12k miles on it. I didn't know any better back then. I bought the truck because I was young and a new homeowner and I figured it'd be durable and dependable and cheap to maintain. It has been that ... mostly. No power, poor braking, mediocre mileage, tornadic road noise, but it makes up for all that with a horrible ride. At least the tailgates work well. When they haven't been stolen, that is. (Personal experience.)
After 10 years of handling Nissan warranty, the Nissan district sales rep was quite nonplussed to find out that I'd gone out and plunked down my cash for (gasp!) an Accord. Oh, the sacrilege. How could I do that? Why would I do that? Didn't I know the Altima beats the Pennzoil out of its competitors, value-wise, including the Accord? How could I possibly stray?
"Yeah, I know about the Altima's value," I told him. "It's what Nissan values that I'm worried about."
Then there's that thing with the Titan brake rotors . . ..
