Barry

Accidents rarely occur due to mechanical failure. It's usually down to driver error, inexperience, driving too fast for the road/weather conditions, tiredness or plain old being distracted and not looking where you're going. The problem is you can have a crash even if you're driving perfectly. Sometimes it's not yourself you need to watch, it's everyone else! But anyway, back to mechanical failure leading to accidents, it's not something I think about when I drive. You need to have faith in your car, just keep it well maintained and serviced and the chances are it won't let you down. If you actually sat down and thought about all the thousands of parts on your car and which one could fail at any moment, it would blow your mind and you would probably never get within 100 metres of a car again.

Peugeot produced some fantastic cars in the late 80's and 90's, the 205 1.9 GTi, 405 Mi16, 306 GTi-6 etc. They acquired a bad reputation circa 2001-2006 due to poorly made cars and electrical problems. Now, they're back on their game again and producing quality cars but the problem is reputations stick and not as many people are willing to give them a chance. It's a bit like Volkswagen/Audi where it's the complete opposite. People think they're good cars because they were good in the 80's and had massive rallying success with the S1 and S2 Quattro but these days, it's a different story, they're overpriced and unreliable.

I've had a few Peugeots over the years, 106, 205, 206, 306, 406. Personally, I loved all of them. The smaller ones had fantastic handling and the 406 was soooo comfortable, it was like driving round in your living room. I've noticed you don't have Citroen here in UAE. You're missing out! Same mechanicals as the Peugeots but even quirkier French styling. I used to have a Citroen ZX 16V, very rare care, even in the UK. I loved it. 170 BHP in a small, light, FWD hatchback. It had a strange passive rear steering system on the back axle which made for interesting handling and huge lift-off oversteer slides on the mountain roads.

After working on cars professionally for 18 years in UK/Ireland and coming here in January I've noticed something. I haven't met anyone here yet who does their own repairs. Everyone seems to go to a garage for the smallest problems. In my country, there is a big culture of DIY and fixing your own cars, in fact, that's how I actually got started out in my job, I repaired my own cars when I was younger and it went from there. So does anyone on this forum work on/repair their own cars? I realise with Dubai being a city, some people don't have the space to do their own work. Are there community garages where you can hire a vehicle lift and tools for a few hours and have an expert for advice on hand so you can work on your own car?

I disagree with the whole German cars being reliable thing. Maybe 25-30 years ago, they got a reputation for being reliable and deservedly so but these days, not so much. The Volkswagen/Audi FSI/TSI are crap in terms of reliability for want of a better word, the DSGs are terrible for clutch and mechatronic system failures and horrendously expensive to repair when they go wrong. The Germans put so much focus on trying to cram their cars with new technology and gadgets that some of it is bound to fail at some stage. But to answer your original question, American or German? Japanese every time.

As said, signs of wear and tear generally point to high miles. Worn pedal rubbers, gearstick, steering wheel, drivers seat bolster. On a car with old style analogue odometer, make sure the numbers are all in a straight line, if one or more are slightly out of line, there is a chance it has been tampered with. Also check the screws on the dashboard above the steering wheel for marks caused by screwdrivers/torx or other tools. Also a good sign that someone has been in there tampering. On cars with digital odometer it's a bit more difficult to tell for sure without plugging it into a computer. Some cars log the correct mileage in the ECU whilst the display can show something completely different but the ECU will always have the correct miles. It's so easy to change the mileage on digital odometers too, all you need is a laptop, a lead and a piece of torrented software and you can change the mileage on many cars in a few minutes. On a side note, I once worked on a car in the UK and had to remove the dash clocks to fit a bulb and found a note stuck to the back saying 'Third time clocked LOL'. Some people have no shame.

Check that one of the balancing weights hasn't fallen off your wheel.

Why would you spend extra money changing 3 sensors when only one is possibly faulty? That's a very main dealerish attitude towards repair. The correct procedure would be to scan the fault code memory and see what it says. If a sensor has an intermittent fault, there will be a code logged towards it. If no codes are logged, the vehicle should be driven whilst plugged into the diagnostic tool and live data monitored and recorded so you can see exactly what's going on when the fault occurs. Even this doesn't mean a sensor is faulty. The wiring must be thoroughly inspected along the complete length from the transmission to the ECU. I have seen similar faults occur where 'mechanics' change and change various sensors but the fault still exists when the real issue was damaged sheathing causing the wires to the sensor to short circuit and send the vehicle into limp mode which was reset by turning the vehicle on and off again.