May I suggest that the concept of lemon be extended out to endemic issues with older cars. We have a 10 year old ‘semi-automatic’ Ford Transit which has had 2x major failure of the dual clutch transmission. The first one was some 5 years ago, and the second this year. The earlier one was before I bought the vehicle, but I had the receipts.
When it broke down early this year, I took the vehicle a very large Ford dealership who claimed not to know about the problem. After discussing it with me, they the transmission off to a third party specialist who couldn’t diagnose what the issue was, and therefore was unsure on whether it could be fixed or not. The only other option was a new transmission. They made enquiries, and quoted… wait for it… $28,000 (yes, twenty eight thousand dollars) for a new transmission. (The vehicle was worth about $16,000 running properly.)
When I started Googling the problems, I discovered that this problem was very common, and reported in several models of vehicles here and overseas that had dual clutch system. I also found out that Australia Post and at least one Ambulance service had let contracts to replace these transmissions in their Ford Transits with full automatic transmissions from Holdens.
Eventually, this is what I too did. In total, this recent breakdown cost $9,000, money that we couldn’t really afford, but not running the vehicle was worthless.
It is wrong that Ford will not accept any responsibility for a problem on this scale.
So when thinking about lemons, please consider that some flaws only appear after some years, but are none-the-less flaws in design or construction.
