Elmo, there is no need for this abuse; the gentleman merely asked a
question. You are starting to sound like "He Hates..."



Smarsquid: If you were talking about a Chrysler product, your fears would
be highly understandable. I left Honda to buy a new 1995 Dodge Intrepid. I
had no problems until just after the 36,000 mile warranty expired. Between
36k and 40k miles I had the transmission die ($2,000), the A/C condenser
leak ($600) and an oxygen sensor fail ($300). Many things continued to fail
until I finally donated the car when the transmission failed the second time
at ~90,000 miles. (and NO, I didn't abuse the car, I pampered it - it still
LOOKED great when I gave it away).



The reason I went back to Honda was its reputation for reliability and the
very good reliability of my previous Accord. I'd say your probability of
having a significant problem with an Accord between 36k and 54k are pretty
slim (unless you cause the problem).



You might want to check out JD Power and Associates website for their latest
3 year reliability ranking. Honda is WAY below industry average for number
of problems in a 3-year period, and Dodge is WAY worse than industry average
(and its parent, Mercedes Benz is considerably worse than even Dodge).



Another thing to consider is customer service - I'd be willing to bet that
Honda would be much more likely to help out if a major failure occurred a
little after the warranty expired than Chrysler. Chrysler was absolutely no
help in any of my problems with the Intrepid.



I'm a reliability engineer (no, not for Honda) and let me give you a short
lesson. There is a thing called "infant mortality" (my boss hates that
term - he used to do safety engineering on toys). This means that on almost
every new product, it is much more likely to fail in it's first few months
than it is to fail later in life until parts start to wear out (these are
called wear-out failures). This means that most of the failures should
occur during the warranty period. Between infant mortality and wearout is
typically a long period of very low failure-rate. When graphed, it looks
like a cut-away of a bathtub, hence its name "bathtub curve".



Companies like Honda try to make their parts (and therefore their cars) as
reliable as economically feasible - their future sales depend on that. From
my sample size of 1 experience (not statistically significant) with Dodge,
it APPEARS that their only concern was getting the car past it's warranty
period and didn't have much concern about how long it lasted after that.
The JD Power report APPEARS to reflect that sentiment also.



By the way, I would never buy another Daimler-Chrysler product as long as I
live





"Elmo P. Shagnasty" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "SmarSquid" > wrote:
>
> > I am deeply concerned, though, about
> > putting miles on the car past the 36,000 bumper to bumper factory
warranty.
>
> Man, you are a sucker.
>
> If you're worried about that, go buy any car and keep it under factory
> warranty. It doesn't matter.
>