You're right. Chinese products do have questionable reputation.
> Not so much for the Germans or the Swiss.
Since the Germans are known for cars, let's talk cars.
I drive a W212 Mercedes-Benz E250 CDI which I bought new a few years ago. My impression of German products is forever tainted.
It's lovely to drive when everything works, but everything doesn't always work.
It's designed in a complicated way that things are prone to failure, and when it does fail you'll have to take apart the whole car to fix it thereby increasing the labour cost to work on it.
It's been a money pit.
The ride and handling is pretty good though if ignore the weird suspension noises.
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Now, I don't own VWs myself, but you should look into transmission problems with their DSG dual-clutch transmission. Just Google "DSG mechatronic failure".
It's a lovely gearbox, but it's guaranteed to fail at some point. And VW knows it. Yet they still continue to fit it in VW and Skoda cars (amongst others). The rest of the car is relatively fine though. Skoda especially makes superb products (pun intended) — too bad they don't sell in USA.
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I hope you still remember the whole dieselgate scam of European car manufacturers.
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You might want to rethink your perception of German engineering.
(Note that this is not a reflection of German people or anything. The few Germans that I personally know, and the many more that I've interacted with indirectly are wonderful people.)
All engineering has tradeoffs. There is still nothing I have driven that compares well to a high end German BMW in regards to how it feels on the road. Smooth, quiet, but powerful and stuck to the road. The 3 and 5 series are different cars. The 750+ series is where it's at. And like the Mercedes, things break often and are ridiculously expensive to fix. They have obviously prioritized other things. But if you want that premium, BMW feel that makes driving anything else feel and sound like a fun can on wheels, that high end German engineering with all it's flaws is about your only option.
BMWs tend to be more reliable than Mercedes, based on acquaintances who drive BMWs.
> But if you want that premium, BMW feel that makes driving anything else feel and sound like a fun can on wheels
You forget Porsche ;)
Anyway, before the end of this century computers will probably be doing the driving, and high-end handling likely won't be a priority for anybody anymore.
All large corporations are corrupt and should be considered amoral at best. This applies to VW and any other multinational megacorporation.
If they can milk you dry and get away with it, they will do so.
I'm pretty sure that the good sentiment for German engineering is rooted in smaller and more specialized goods, i.e high quality gardening tools at this point. The time when carmakers considered anything but short term profits is long gone
> Not so much for the Germans or the Swiss.
Since the Germans are known for cars, let's talk cars.
I drive a W212 Mercedes-Benz E250 CDI which I bought new a few years ago. My impression of German products is forever tainted.
It's lovely to drive when everything works, but everything doesn't always work.
It's designed in a complicated way that things are prone to failure, and when it does fail you'll have to take apart the whole car to fix it thereby increasing the labour cost to work on it.
It's been a money pit.
The ride and handling is pretty good though if ignore the weird suspension noises.
-----------
Now, I don't own VWs myself, but you should look into transmission problems with their DSG dual-clutch transmission. Just Google "DSG mechatronic failure".
It's a lovely gearbox, but it's guaranteed to fail at some point. And VW knows it. Yet they still continue to fit it in VW and Skoda cars (amongst others). The rest of the car is relatively fine though. Skoda especially makes superb products (pun intended) — too bad they don't sell in USA.
-----------
I hope you still remember the whole dieselgate scam of European car manufacturers.
-----------
You might want to rethink your perception of German engineering.
(Note that this is not a reflection of German people or anything. The few Germans that I personally know, and the many more that I've interacted with indirectly are wonderful people.)