Need Engine Failure Documentation

[mquillen]

One of the problems regarding low mileage vehicles is that latent defects may take many years to manifest themselves, long after the time limit of the warranty has run out (even though it's far below the mileage limit).

Sadly, when these known defects crop up, dealers and manufacturers usually forget their responsibility to their loyal customers and just say the car is 10 years old, what do you expect? Heaven forbid you weren't a regular service customer, then they just laugh in your face.

What's worse is that for these known defects they usually won't even offer any discounts on the repair (to their substandard design).

This has been my experience with numerous makes. I would really love to see a manufacturer that really cared about their customers--I think it would pay off in spades for their customer loyalty.

Consequently, sometimes, while we are taking care not to put to many miles on our garage queen, there is a looming repair bill that will never manifest itself until the vehicle is long out of warranty. So, are we really saving anything by keeping absurdly low miles on some of our cars? Obviously it's a case where hindsight is 20/20. I now try to put reasonable mileage on a car while it is under warranty just to weed out these issues.