Question Of The Day: What Automaker Will You Never Buy From Again?

I recently wrote a column about how there are those occasional times where you just have to recommend a boring car to someone. Whether it’s for financial reasons, or equipment reasons, or their own brand preconceptions, sometimes it’s just easier to recommend a boring car than to try and convince them that your point of view is correct.

But then, sometimes, there’s an entirely different reason why you can’t recommend certain vehicles: because there are people out there who are convinced that they will never buy from certain automakers ever again.

I’ll give you an example. I have a friend whose mother bought a Volvo 240 in approximately 1989. It may have been 1988, it may have been 1990; who the hell knows, at this point? She probably doesn’t even know anymore, despite the fact that she’s still harboring an intense grudge against Volvo because of this car.

And what’s the reason for the grudge? Apparently, a few years into the car’s life cycle, the engine blew. I’ve never heard any more details than that: the engine blew. Volvo refused to pay for it. The engine blew. What an awful company. The engine blew. These cars are so poorly built!

Now, I’m going to put aside the obvious issue with this — primarily the fact that the Volvo 240 is known for being one of the most robust, sturdy automobiles in human history, and the engine was so pathetically unstressed that it made something like 46 horsepower — and tell you what her reaction was: I AM NEVER GOING TO BUY ANOTHER VOLVO AGAIN.

And guess what? She hasn’t.

It’s been 25 years, and she still hasn’t touched another Volvo. She’s owned cars from various other luxury automakers, some of which are probably even worse than the Volvos of today. But she doesn’t even give Volvo a second glance. It is completely lost on her that Volvo of 2015 – which makes hybrid turbo-supercharged engines and a center stack with a huge opening behind it and blue dials and an automated parking system – could possibly be different than the Volvo of 1989, when the big new feature was those three-bar head rests. She swore off Volvo during the Reagan years, and by God, she ain’t goin’ back.

Of course, she isn’t the only one. Talk to just about any car person and you’ll see a wide range of automotive opinions, most of which place Honda and Toyota as the answer to every single question, regardless of the answer; Kia and Hyundai as “second class” automakers that haven’t really “earned their place” in the car industry; and Ford and Chevy as the kind of thing they rent when they’re on vacation. And then there’s always that one brand that they simply will never purchase again.

So today, I ask: what’s your brand? What automaker have you decided to swear off in its entirety? What car company could come out tomorrow with the cure for cancer, and leave you saying: No, thanks. I’ll wait until Subaru has it.

For me, no such brand exists. I mean, oh, sure, I’ve written a lot of negative things about Volkswagen over the years, but I’m not inherently biased against its cars. In fact, I happen to like every single good Volkswagen model, from the GTI 2-door to the GTI 4-door. And despite a series of bad experiences with Mercedes-Benz, I haven’t yet sworn off the luxurious Germans — at least, as long as they keep making the sublime CLA45 AMG.

I haven’t even given up on Land Rover, manufacturer of automobiles that last as long as Boston-area pothole repairs, because by God I just love driving mine. And plus, I love the wild and crazy selection of rental cars that I’m given whenever mine goes into the shop for an overly severe warning light.

But I’m sure that most car enthusiasts have at least one brand they’d never touch — either for reliability reasons, or safety concerns, or because you just don’t like their cars. So today I’m curious: which one is it? And why?