If You Have a Lemon, Is It You or the Car?

Years ago n Brazil, I had a client who had an Alfa Romeo 164. I questioned him as to whether the car was reliable. He said it was extremely reliable because he said he read the owners manual. By way of explanation, he told me that the owners manual states that you should never drive off until the temperature needle moved off "cold". Few drivers have the patience to do this, so the vehicle broke down, and owners blamed the car, when they should blame themselves.

I have no idea if he was being truthful, but I had a similar experience this week. I own a Land Rover, and the passenger side windshield wiper stopped working in the middle of a rain storm. Cursing the lack of reliability of European vehicles, I took the car into the dealership. the wiper was fixed with the flick of a cover and the turn of a bolt. It seems that this happens in winter sometimes because the wiper sticks with ice accumulation. Rather than break the motor, the wiper is designed to unscrew itself when it encounters too much resistance. It will often loosen over winter but the fix is simple - and free.

You see, we, as a nation, are notorious for not reading the owners manual of our vehicles. When a German buys a car, they read the manual cover to cover. The British are the same. We, on the other hand, just expect everything to be simple and straightforward and project the blame on the car if something unexpected happens. The Europeans make some pretty ingenious cars, often using a design which must be used around the world from Africa to China, Latin America to Alaska. That is a lot of design criteria and it often means that avoiding costly and complicated repairs in the Arctic Circle (as in the case of my Land Rover) is a priority, rather than conforming to rigid American norms and expectations. Sometimes reading the owners manual is pays off.