The Dog & Lemon Guide is an annual car buyer's guide originally based in Auckland, New Zealand,[1] sold throughout British commonwealth countries and beyond. It was one of the few widely available publications that rank the reliability of cars sold in Australia. It was founded by mechanic and writer, Clive Matthew-Wilson. At over 1000 pages, it is claimed to be the largest car buyer's guide on the planet.[citation needed] It was first published in 1996 and last published as a book in 2010.[2]
The guide lists common faults and safety ratings for several thousand different vehicles. The term dog and the term lemon are generic terms for bad cars in many countries. Unusually for a motoring publication, The Dog & Lemon Guide tends to avoid the petrolhead point of view and focuses instead on the motoring experiences of "ordinary" people. The Dog & Lemon Guide is also unusual in that it uses wit and sarcasm as a primary vehicle for communication. The guide refuses to accept car company advertising and is widely seen as a threat by both the motor industry and much of the mainstream motoring press.[citation needed]
The book has come under fire from many car enthusiasts in its home market of New Zealand, with many bringing into question the accuracy of the information provided in the book and Matthew-Wilson's bias towards Japanese makers for reliability claims – praising Toyota in particular – against Australian and European cars.[citation needed]
One may also suggest that using customer satisfaction surveys as a means of determining reliability is flawed. The results of customer satisfaction surveys are influenced by owner expectations and how well the manufacturer responds to a fault. However, The Dog & Lemon Guide claims to also make extensive use of surveys where only the reliability of the vehicle is looked at. For example, the low level of customer satisfaction for Peugeot cars is matched by the low levels of reliability for Peugeot cars.[3] Peugeot cars also have far higher levels of breakdowns than similar Japanese vehicles, and these breakdowns are logged by the mechanic who is sent out to rescue the stranded vehicle, not the owner, so they cannot be said to be subjective.[4][failed verification]
Other critics[who?] have questioned the way the guide tends to lump all European makes into one bad basket, pointing out that makes such as Skoda, Porsche, and Jaguar have far better reliability records than makes like Peugeot and Renault. European cars have values unseen in Japanese makes that go beyond mere reliability.
For readers used to the glossy magazine advertising of expensive cars, it is a very revealing publication in that it cans/questions the safety and reliability of some of the more famous car makers in the world. The introductory articles on some of the car makers and their companies read like summaries of good opera plots.
The Dog & Lemon Guide created controversy by publishing articles like Cars and other dysfunctional relationships[5] by feminist writer Germaine Greer, which included the line: "men abuse cars because they cannot separate the idea of abuse from the concept of love." In another controversial article: Cars & Nazis,[6] the guide alleged that the US car industry actively supported Hitler and knowingly gave the Germans the technology to launch World War II.
The Dog & Lemon Guide's website contains the only English language translation of the entire Japanese domestic car safety recalls database. This information is provided free of charge and is widely used to investigate possible safety faults on Japanese vehicles imported second-hand from Japan. This information is frequently used by buyers of grey market vehicles, who often have no other way of telling if their second-hand vehicles have been subject to unresolved recalls before export.
Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked among the 10 largest Japanese global brands in market value. Lexus is headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. Operational centers are located in Brussels, Belgium, and Plano, Texas, United States.
Grey import vehicles are new or used motor vehicles and motorcycles legally imported from another country through channels other than the maker's official distribution system or a third-party channel officially authorized by the manufacturer. The synonymous term parallel import is sometimes substituted.
RAC Limited is a British automotive services company headquartered in Walsall, West Midlands. Its principal services are roadside assistance and general insurance, and its subsidiaries include RAC Motoring Services Ltd, RAC Financial Services Ltd and RAC Insurance Limited. It was a private club owned by its members until sold in 1999, eventually acquired in 2014 and 2015 by GIC Private Limited and CVC Capital Partners.
The Lexus LS is a series of full-size luxury sedans that have served as the flagship model of Lexus, the luxury division of Toyota, since 1989. For the first four generations, all LS models featured V8 engines and were predominantly rear-wheel-drive. In the fourth generation, Lexus offered all-wheel-drive, hybrid, and long-wheelbase variants. The fifth generation changed to using a V6 engine with no V8 option, and only one length was offered.
An automotive navigation system is part of the automobile controls or a third party add-on used to find direction in an automobile. It typically uses a satellite navigation device to get its position data which is then correlated to a position on a road. When directions are needed routing can be calculated. On the fly traffic information can be used to adjust the route.
Lemon laws are laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. Although many types of products can be defective, the term "lemon" is mostly used to describe defective motor vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën, formerly Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile Co., Ltd. (DPCA) from 1992 to 2021, is an equally owned Chinese joint venture between the automobile manufacturers Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Stellantis. Based in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, it manufactures Peugeot and Citroën models for sale in China.
The PSA Group sells a variety of diesel automobile engines with the HDi designation. Earlier versions were exclusive to Peugeot and Citroën. In 1998, PSA entered into a joint venture with the Ford Motor Company to produce a range of new diesel engines. The joint venture makes identical engines which are fitted to a variety of vehicles from a range of car manufacturers. The engines are assembled in production plants in the cities of Trémery and Douvrin for PSA in France, at the Ford Dagenham plant in the UK, and Volvo Engine Plant in Skövde Sweden when Volvo was still under Ford ownership.
A used car, a pre-owned vehicle, or a secondhand car, is a vehicle that has previously had one or more retail owners. Used cars are sold through a variety of outlets, including franchise and independent car dealers, rental car companies, buy here pay here dealerships, leasing offices, auctions, and private party sales. Some car retailers offer "no-haggle" prices, "certified" used cars, and extended service plans or warranties.
In the United States automotive industry, the term Big Three is used for the country's three largest motor vehicle manufacturers, especially indicating companies that sell under multiple brand names.
Top Gear is a British motoring magazine programme created by the BBC that aired on BBC Two between 22 April 1977 and 17 December 2001. The programme focused on a range of motoring topics, the most common being car reviews, road safety and consumer advice. Originally presented by Angela Rippon and Tom Coyne, the show saw a range of different presenters and reporters front the programme's half-hourly slots, including Noel Edmonds, Jeremy Clarkson, Tiff Needell, William Woollard and Quentin Willson. The programme proved popular during the late 80s and early 90s, and launched a number of spin-offs, including its own magazine entitled Top Gear Magazine.
A hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is a type of hybrid vehicle that couples a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) with one or more electric engines into a combined propulsion system. The presence of the electric powertrain, which has inherently better energy conversion efficiency, is intended to achieve either better fuel economy or better acceleration performance than a conventional vehicle. There is a variety of HEV types and the degree to which each functions as an electric vehicle (EV) also varies. The most common form of HEV is hybrid electric passenger cars, although hybrid electric trucks, buses, motorboats, and aircraft also exist.
The B-segment is the second smallest of the European segments for passenger cars between the A-segment and C-segment, and commonly described as "small cars". The B-segment is the largest segment in Europe by volume, accounting for 20 percent of total car sales in 2020 according to JATO Dynamics. B-segment cars include hatchback, saloon, estate, coupe/convertible, MPV, and crossover/SUV body styles.
In Singapore, cars and other vehicles drive on the left side of the road, as in neighbouring Malaysia, due to its British colonial history. As a result, most vehicles are right-hand drive. However, exemptions have been made to allow foreign vehicles and construction machineries to utilise the road space of Singapore. As such, vehicles with left hand drive configurations are required to either be driven with a sign indicating "LEFT-HAND-DRIVE" or towed.
The A-segment is the first category in the passenger car classification system defined by the European Commission. It is used for city cars, the smallest category of passenger cars defined.
The Citroën C3 Picasso is a car produced by the French motor company Citroën from 2008 to 2017. It has a five-door mini MPV design and was first unveiled at the 2008 Paris Motor Show as a concept car named "Drooneel". The Picasso is the mini MPV version of the Citroën C3 and the successor of the Citroën Xsara Picasso, and was designed to compete with the Opel Meriva, Nissan Note, Renault Modus and Ford Fusion.
GAC Honda Automobile Co., Ltd. is a Chinese automobile manufacturing joint venture company based in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
The 2009–11 Toyota vehicle recalls involved three separate but related recalls of automobiles by the Japanese manufacturer Toyota Motor Corporation, which occurred at the end of 2009 and the start of 2010. Toyota initiated the recalls, the first two with the assistance of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), after reports that several vehicles experienced unintended acceleration. The first recall, on November 2, 2009, was to correct a possible incursion of an incorrect or out-of-place front driver's side floor mat into the foot pedal well, which can cause pedal entrapment. The second recall, on January 21, 2010, was begun after some crashes were shown not to have been caused by floor mat incursion. This latter defect was identified as a possible mechanical sticking of the accelerator pedal causing unintended acceleration, referred to as Sticking Accelerator Pedal by Toyota. The original action was initiated by Toyota in their Defect Information Report, dated October 5, 2009, amended January 27, 2010. Following the floor mat and accelerator pedal recalls, Toyota also issued a separate recall for hybrid anti-lock brake software in February 2010.
Amati was a proposed luxury brand announced by Mazda in August 1991 as part of Mazda's expansion plan with the launch of the Autozam, Eunos, and ɛ̃fini marques in hopes of becoming Japan's 3rd largest automaker. It was scheduled to launch in 1994 as a competitor to fellow Japanese luxury car marques Acura, Infiniti and Lexus as well as American and European luxury vehicles. However, when the Japanese economy collapsed in early 1992 Mazda faced a liquidity shortage and was unable to complete development of the brand. Mazda announced the cancellation of the Amati brand in October 1992 and the completed vehicles were sold under Mazda's existing brand names.
Hyundai Motor America, doing business as Hyundai Motor North America is the operating subsidiary that oversees all operations of Hyundai Motor Company in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Along with Hyundai's USA manufacturing plant in Montgomery, Alabama called Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, Hyundai has total of 19 manufacturing plants globally. Its operations include research and development, manufacturing, sales, marketing, after sales and corporate functions, which are controlled by HMA but sometimes executed by other subsidiaries and holding companies. The company is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California.
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