Our dirty diesel will kill your Touareg, Audi, Range Rover and Discovery

Hello,

First off let me start by saying I am not to sure my question is going to the intended recipient. Still, I seem to have stumbled upon a quagmire of a situation in picking the right luxury SUV for myself, and I’m split between a BMW X5, a Volkswagen Touareg and an Audi Q7, all having 3.0-litre diesel engines and manufactured in 2008.

1. Which of the above three is the best buy?

2. About the BMW X5, how frequently does it get the electronic bugs that people keep reporting? Is there a way to avoid the said electronic problems, and are there any other problems/bugs known in this beast?

3. About the Touareg, how frequently does it get the dreaded transmission mishaps? How often does this occur? Is it possible to avoid the said problem, and are there any other known problems/bugs regarding the same vehicle?

4. Other than the SUVs mentioned above, is there any other out there that you would advise one to consider? I have singled out the BMW and VW because those are the ones I am very keen on.

Thank you in advance,

Jude Musebe

Worry not, Sir, this has landed on J M Baraza’s desk, and this is he. On to your questions:

1. The X5 is the best of the three as it suffers from the least amount of complaints both as a vehicle and as a long-term investment. The other two cars have problems, the biggest one being how to run them here.

Our diesel fuel, I have said time and again, is not to standard, least of all prevailing European standards (Euro 4, Euro 5 etc). Bring those cars here and see how long they last swilling the muck that passes for derv in our forecourts. Watch your DPF (and subsequently the engine) fail as surely as the sun rises. Feel free to write me another email. I will express my sympathy... before signing off with a big I TOLD YOU SO!

The situation is so sticky that VW does not offer diesel engines for the Touareg via the local franchise. Should you insist on importing a diesel car through them, they will not offer a warranty; at least that is according to word from a fellow motor hack. The Q7, buddy, is essentially a Touareg in a different frock.

Strangely, BMW, whom you would expect to build a more “choosy” engine, say that their engines are a lot more accommodating to a range of fuel quality.

Want a diesel? Sure, have one. We will fix it for you when it goes on the fritz, not that you should expect that to happen. It gets even trickier now that you want a 2008 car, which means a second-hand import.

Again, allegations are that the local VW outlet won’t touch anything that they didn’t sell themselves, though I highly doubt this. I have had readers who say they took their imported cars to VW and one thing or the other happened there, but dismissal was not one of them.

Bavaria Motors, on the other hand, welcomes any vehicle that has any affiliation to BMW in any way. They have a direct link to BMW HQ in Germany where the engines can be fixed by proxy or phone or via the Internet or through whatever this link is made of, again not that you would expect this to happen on a regular basis.

As cars, both the Q7 and the Touareg have hard rides. The X5 is more comfortable. The Touareg has poor rear visibility, so you may one day reverse into your own child because you didn’t see him or her run behind the car as you tried to leave for work in the morning.

The gearbox for the automatic in the first generation Touareg was designed for trees, not humans. Its perception of time and urgency runs into “moments”, not milliseconds. And the Touareg is not exactly the prettiest SUV ever made, is it?

Even less pretty is the Q7. To the hard ride add hard seats and wallowy suspension to complete the poor ride quality trifecta. The car is huge; a stretched Touareg with extra weight. This poses problems: the handling is not ideal, a foible further exacerbated by the boat-like suspension action and the great weight. Understeer and body roll will be your new vocabulary words in conversations.

Also, the large mass of the vehicle puts the 3.0 diesel to task, which leads to further problems: the 3.0 diesel Q7 is slow and, to add to this, the engine struggles with the weight on its back. This in turn hurts fuel economy.

2. The X5’s bugs are few and far between. Not much has been reported on this car; neither here nor out there where I roam and forage for vehicles to drive/learn about. If the car has problems, then the owners are very cagey about letting them known.

The best way to avoid electronic issues starts with cleanliness. Keep the car clean, especially in areas of high electronic device concentration: sensors, harnesses, terminals etc.

3. The gremlins afflicting the Touareg are almost guaranteed to surface at one point or the other. Besides the DPF, turbo actuator failures are also fairly common with diesel Touaregs. Not a lot of good is said about this car, sadly.

Most of its issues lie around reliability with the diesel engine when run on low quality fuel and the build characteristics that went into it, which I have listed in 1 above and which you cannot change.

4. This answer depends on what you want an SUV for. Your list seems to imply a taste for status, in which case you could turn your eye towards a Mercedes Benz ML320 CDI.

Other options include a diesel Range Rover (L322 or first-generation Sport) or a Discovery 3, but these tend to present more problems than usual. If you want a proper, reliable, capable and painless-to-own sports utility that has no pretentiousness about it, Japan would like to see you now in its office.

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Hello Baraza,

A few weeks ago I hired a Toyota Corolla NZE for a safari to my home. I returned the car to the owner in good condition, but a few hours later he called to say the reverse gear was not working.

My question is, can an automatic gearbox just stop working suddenly or is this an ignored service problem that recurs and the owner is being cagey about it?

Thank you,

Mayday! SOS! Help!

Hello Mr/Mrs/Miss Mayday! SOS! Help!

For me to give a comprehensive answer, I will need a better description of the situation. Does the gear lever refuse to slide into reverse position? Does it slide into position but the car fails to move even with the throttle opened? Does it make any untowardly noises? Is there any kind of warning light on the dashboard?

The most important question here is: was the reverse gear working when you submitted the vehicle back to its providence?

Reverse gears don’t “just stop working suddenly”, at least that is not a common occurrence. The most likely causes would be: lack of lockup in the torque converter, or if the car uses an electronic clutch, then the clutch control mechanism gets befuddled once reverse is engaged. Also, the TCM (transmission control module) could be having a bad day and taking it out on the driver.

Gear linkages may be lacking in structural integrity; maybe the gears themselves are broken (this would be accompanied by tremendous amounts of unpleasant noises).... The reasons are as many as they are diverse.

Tread carefully. There is a third, unsavory element to your unfortunate circumstance here. Not everybody can be trusted nowadays. This looks like a situation where someone broke the gearbox and is looking for a scapegoat; in this case, you.

Car hire vehicles are usually inspected BEFORE and AFTER the lease, just to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be. Calling you a few hours later means a lot could have happened in those few hours, including the marring of a transmission by persons unknown.

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Dear Baraza,

This is a passionate appeal to the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA). Unfortunately, those who are supposed to enforce the law (the police) are unable to do so, do not want to do so or are condoning the breaking of the law, hence the reason the appeal is not directed to them.

Government of Kenya-registered vehicles, parastatal cars and now county government 4X4s are breaking nearly every traffic law that exists; from reckless driving, over-lapping in traffic jams, bullying their way on roads, driving in the wrong lanes, going against traffic and even behaving as if they are emergency vehicles.

The police are top on the list. How do law enforcers expect the rest to obey the law when they disregard it in the first place?

Buses carrying prisoners or suspects are also known to overlap as if they have right of way, and those with chase cars that in no way appear as police vehicles also join this clique.

My reading of the law is that it is only emergency vehicles (police, fire engines and ambulances) and the president’s escort that have a right of way. A common feature on these vehicles is sirens and strobe lights, so the issue of hazard lights or indicators acting as strobe lights should never arise. And why do hearses have strobe lights?

Going forward, I urge all motorists to stop condoning the breaking of the law as they are guilty as abettors, just as the actual perpetrators. Do not give way to vehicles that are not listed as having a right of way, whether or not they have strobe lights and a siren.

Police vehicles operating as emergency vehicles can be easily and clearly identified, hence ignore all those non-police chase cars. This is the only way to discipline these rogue drivers. And, trust me, they will not dare charge you for breaking a non-existent law while they are breaking the law.

To the Inspector General of police, we have a right to receive quality service from you and that is why you occupy that office. Let your officers enforce the law to the letter.

I end with a quote from a honourable judge:

“On a balance of probabilities and based on the above evidence, I would find that both drivers were to blame. Although the road had been cleared for the presidential motorcade and the appellant was a driver of the presidential escort vehicle, he ought to have looked out for other vehicles and I would thus apportion the blame equally between the two drivers. The driver of the lorry that belonged to the respondent similarly ought to have been on the look out of other road users and not to enter the road suddenly without due regard to other motorists”.

— Rose Koome, Judge in Civil Appeal No 51 of 2003, delivering a High Court verdict in Kericho against Felican Maina (appellant) vs Ajiwa Shamji (respondent).

Yours motorist,

Maina Roy.

Over to you, Cabinet Secretary of Transport and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA).

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