Back in the day adding a quart of engine oil to your car every so often was considered normal. Engine tolerances weren’t as tight as they are in today’s engines, so being down a quart every few thousand miles was acceptable.
But with modern engines, and their superior construction, topping off your oil is a thing of the past, right? This would be the case if all manufacturers made their cars the same way, but surprisingly enough, some new cars consistently need an extra quart of oil or more until the next scheduled oil change.
This is definitely not normal and Consumer Reports has called out the manufacturers whose cars are oil guzzlers. Find out which cars are on this list and what precautions you can take so safeguard your new car.
.Check Your OilThe dipstick that reaches into the engine gives a fairly accurate reading of how much oil there is. Because older engines, that are pushing the 100,000 mile mark, tend to burn off a little oil, it’s a good idea to check your oil levels periodically.
And even if your engine is fairly new, an oil check is cheap insurance to make sure your car isn’t leaking oil or is malfunctioning due to excessive oil consumption.
The CulpritsConsumer Reports received survey data from almost 500,000 owners of vehicles manufactured between the years of 2010 to 2014. The results indicated that 2% of the survey takers experienced the need to add extra oil to their engines before the regularly scheduled oil changes.
While 2% may not seem like a very huge amount, but over a 5-year span, this adds up to 1.5 million cars that are affected by this oil problem.
The Big SurpriseThe major culprits for cars that used excessively large amounts of oil were a surprise to many because these cars are considered highly engineered vehicles. But the biggest offenders were auto makers BMW, Audi, and Subaru.
The odd part about all of this is that Audi, BMW, and Subaru say that some of their cars, that burn up to a quart every 600 to 1000 miles, are “reasonable.”
However consumers do not agree with this assessment and Audi has been slapped with a class action lawsuit saying that this “reasonable” amount of oil usage is a defective engineering issue.
The suit relates to the 2.0-Liter turbocharged four-cylinder engines and is now close to having a settlement for the plaintives. The models affected by over consumption of oil are the 2009 A4 and A5, and the 2011 A4, A5, and Q5. Other Audi engines were not named in the lawsuit.
BMW still maintains that some of its cars, especially the M series performance models, can use up to 2.5 quarts of oil every 1,000 miles, while other models burn up to a quart every 750 miles. The company is now rolling out a service campaign to address these issues.
Subaru isn’t admitting any wrong doing and continues to hold the line that excessive oil consumption, on some of its models, is within normal parameters and says that its cars have improved since 2010 to the present models.
Source:
Yahoo Finance