Why do Skodas have such a bad name when FIAT Puntos have the electrics of the Titanic!?

Yes its true here in Ireland You always see broken down Fiats on the motorway!!!, yesterday I seen one broken down in clondalkin at newlands garden centre. one on the N81 one on the Belgard road outside Aldi and even one on the M50 at the tallaght exit!!. Yet Skoda has the bad name. We should remember Fix It Again Tommorow or tom!!

Why do Skodas have such a bad name when FIAT Puntos have the electrics of the Titanic!?
Before Skoda where bought be Volkswagen group they made really awful unreliable cars that rusted in front of you. Hence all the jokes about what do you call a Skoda with a sun roof? etc..Now VW own them you get a VW car for less money with more extras.





I have been a proud Skoda owner for 2 years, I paid 15000 GBP for my top of the range Octavia with leather seats, electric everything and a 130 bhp Tdi engine. It is identical in every way to the VW Bora except for the badge.Now the VW Bora of equivalent spec cost 20000 GBP. So would you pay an extra 5000 GBP just for a VW badge and the knowledge that its assembled in Germany instead of Eastern Europe (although to the same VW qualtiy standards)?





Some people will, because of the stigma attached to owning a Skoda, hence their advertising campaign with the slogan "Its a Skoda Honest". I think the joke is on the guy who paid 5k extra for the VW badge. The VRS sport model has an excellent reputation and is used by the UK Police as a traffic pursuit car.





As for FIATs I know of 3 people who owned FIATs and had nothing but trouble, one actually caught fire in a car park because the electics shorted out. Their prestige brand Alfa Romeo is no better, I see them broke down and the Sat Navs have a habbit of deciding to suddenly start giving directions in Italian without warning.
Reply:It depends how care you take on your car. I know many people that have Fiat Puntos (including me) that have not given trouble at all. Then there are those persons that don't do any maintenance on their car at all. And then there comes the trouble.





On the other hand the skoda are very reliable cars too. A friend of mine has a skoda of the 1987 and it is so heavy duty for him because he doesn't take care of it. He only do the services on his Skoda but he drives it very carelessly.





Remember this though, Fiat nowadays are the most selling cars and so there are many of them in the European streets and motorways. Don't forget also that when a thing is produced with mass production, there's always gonna be those producted which are faulty. For example the Mitsubishi says that every 100 Pajeros in production, 1 is faulty. So the ratio of the Pajero, which is a Japanese car and everybody knows how good the Japs are in cars, is 100:1. Maybe the Fiat (a European car) is 100:20. So the Fiats have 19 faulty ones more than the Pajero per 100 produced and you see more Fiats than Pajero and so there are more faulty Fiats than faulty Pajeros on the streets.





I'm not saying this because the Fiat is the best car but all I wanted to say is that the more cars you have on the streets the more faulty ones you will find. I know that there are cars much better than the Fiats but I know that the world's greatest brands such as BMW, Mercedes and VW are having guarantee problems and I know this because I work with the cars sector and we share our knowledge as well.
Reply:Skodas used to be awful in the 80s, then they were bought by VW/Audi. Nowadays they are made from most of the same parts as VWs/Seats/Audis. So modern Skodas are good, and Fiats are just poo.
Reply:Maybe in your case Skoda has a bad name, but in the rest of Europe it's a great car! And Fiat! Fiat makes the best race cars ever!
Reply:I've noticed since I've moved here to Nashville, Tennessee that there has been alot of FORD (Found On Road Dead) vehicles dead along-side the road. When I lived in New York (not the city - Upstate), there was NEVER a car on the side of the road dead.





I think mainly the difference is that when I lived in New York, we had to have our cars inspected every year by law. Thus in terms allowing us to determine any sort of problem with our vehicles and giving us time to get them fixed before we were allowed to drive them legally on the roads.





Unlike here in Nashville, the law doesn't require us to have our cars inspected. Which I feel contributes to the problem.





Maybe if the law required people to have their vehicles inspected, there would be A LOT less "dead" vehicles on the side of the road and giving us a longer run with our vehicles before dishing out another $30,000 for a brand new car, every 2-3 years.





Although, I can't speak first-hand about your situation, but I can definately speak first-hand about the same problem here in the US.