Having a warranty for your car can mean the difference between a slight inconvenience and a month-ruining four-figure repair bill. My disposition to constantly buy cheap, high-mileage hoopties from Facebook Marketplace usually puts me in the latter when my cars break, which happens often enough that I constantly think about giving it all up and leasing something new.
The beauty of a warranty is the freedom it gives you to drive your car without that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that it might suddenly, randomly, empty your bank account without warning. Even the most reliable cars sometimes break, and if there’s no warranty there to back you up, there’s only one person to cover the bill: You.
If you do have a warranty, it’s a different story. Sure, if your car leaves you stranded, that still sucks. But with a good warranty, you’re never hit with the second gutpunch of paying a tow truck to lug your car to the nearest shop, that third gutpunch of paying for a loaner car while yours is in said shop, or that fourth gutpunch of paying said shop for their parts and labor. Everything’s just… taken care of.
I’ve never personally gotten a warranty to pay for anything major, simply because I’ve only ever owned one new car—my Ford Fiesta ST—and it was perfectly reliable the entire time I owned it. But funnily enough, I was the cause of some necessary repair work on my mom’s old BMW 328d.
The story goes like this: About a decade ago, I had borrowed my mom’s turbodiesel-powered BMW 3-Series, which she was leasing new, to go for a day-long back road drive with a friend in his Porsche 944. While we weren’t doing anything crazy, I was certainly pushing the car pretty hard, with constant trips to its 5,500-rpm redline. At the end of the day, the car threw a check-engine light while we were cruising back home on the highway.
The car didn’t feel like it was broken or running poorly, so I just let my mom know the light came on and went about my day. She took it in for repair work a week later and told me it needed all of its injectors replaced—which happened fully under warranty, of course. Had it been out of warranty, it probably would’ve cost over $1,000, including parts. I definitely didn’t have that kind of money to cover that at the time, so I’m thankful the warranty was there to have my back.
Your turn:
What’s The Most Expensive Repair You’ve Gotten A Warranty To Pay For?
Top graphic images: DepositPhotos.com
This is kind of cheating, but you didn’t specify car related in the title so….
I used to be a field engineer for a O&G subsea drilling equipment manufacturer. I would have to disposition suspect equipment and parts and work with design engineering if something was warranty-able or not. The most ridiculous was something like $300k+ in parts per rig (well pressure containing fasteners, that’s it, literally high spec very large nuts and bolts) for about 6 or 7 rigs if I remember correctly. These fasteners were xylan coated and I was regularly seeing the coating fail in the field. Turns out, procurement didn’t follow engineering’s spec right and that “way cheaper supplier” was just because they were supplying a vastly inferior product. Que someone having to tell the client that their next end of well interval is going to be way way way way longer than originally expected.
We also had a rash of top drives (the big motor that actually turns the drill string and bit) failing because of bad unit conversions in the maintenance manual. I can’t remember specifics, but the main motor bearings were supposed to get something like 3kg of grease during a PM. The manual also stated the imperial value, but it was listed at like 3lbs. Someone forgot to actually due a conversion and if you just looked at imperial values, you were way under greasing the bearings. Those things were like $150k each.
Do recalls count?
I think no… because then thousands would have the same story and so it’s all a bit less interesting.
I have a recall-adjacent one. In college I had an ion with big GM ignition switch scandal. The parts to even do the repair were super backordered, and the car, which was very not new and definitely not new to me was having a host of other issues. When I described them to the service manager and asked if any of that might be resolved by doing the recall fix, he said no, but he also decided those issues probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the defect, so he was going to fix those things under warranty anyway. Except the way he said “I’ll just do that under warranty” sounded very like he did not at all believe it in any way related and was just doing me a solid for not being an asshole about the recall situation.
I took my mom’s cvt vue in for 2 transmissions on the 3rd I got it lemon lawed. That’s probably the most expensive the warrantied replaced 2 trans and then the whole car. I think each trans plus labor at the dealer was like $7500. Plus the whole buy back was more then was paid initially. Second was a Tuscan I got cheap didn’t think they would honor the engine thing but it was shortly after alot of bad press and they just did it and I got a invoice for $0.00.
Back when I had young children I bought a lightly used ’98 caravan. After a few months it started to throw transmission codes, Chrysler vans and transmission trouble – shocker. Each time I took it to the dealer and they did this that and the other thing then cleared the code. After the third time the code came back and the van was approaching 35k miles and the warranty was up at 36k, I filed lemon. They replaced the entire transmission during the final repair attempt and I also got another year of protection if the issue returned. Not sure how big the bill was as they never gave me one.
Not me, but my folks had a jeep patriot from the early 2010’s. At that time it was around 2 years old and drove it from western Mexico, near the pacific coast, all the way to Florida. While there the transmission crapped out, and the US dealer got Chrysler de Mexico, to honor the warranty in the US. So they got a new transmission in another country without paying for it.
New engine in my daughter’s 2005 Elantra. Covered under the 10 year powertrain warranty though the car had about 80,000 miles on it. Blew a head gasket and cooked the engine on her way home. No real warning. Since we purchased it new, we were covered.
Hyundai dealer took a few weeks to pop in the crate engine. Wanted to charge me $$$ for BS stuff. Finally settled on a token $150 labor charge for something like to replace intake – which they claimed wasn’t part of the powertrain. Total BS but we were ready to get the car back and figured $150 for a new engine wasn’t too bad a hit.
I started hearing a noise that I described as a “grunch” when shifting into second on my 09 Mazda 6. I thought I was not driving correctly. Turns out, the tolerances on the transaxle were too tight, and it had a TSB out. I got the it rebuilt under warranty.
Of course, a few years later — long after the warranty was done, of course — the transaxle grenaded while I was driving at a modest, steady rate of speed on a flat surface. I ended up having it replaced with a used one.
I dunno anymore what the total cost was, but the automatic transmission on my 2012 Mazda3 hatchback was replaced under warranty due to a faulty main bearing. Got three days of a loaner of a new Mazda6 too.
I had the AC evaporator coil on my 2022 BMW X5 replaced under warranty twice. That is about a $6k job at the dealer so I’m glad BMW stands behind their warranty. But I feel like I’m driving a ticking time bomb now and I need to offload this car before something else expensive breaks while not under warranty.
Mind me asking how many miles you had on it when it went out? I have a 2021 X5 and had to pay to get mine replaced last year and it was ~$7K. I fought hard to get it covered to no avail. This seems to be a pretty common defect as there was no supply in the US and they had to order the part directly from Germany. There’s actually a petition I found somewhere to have it covered as part of a recall.
It was around 21k miles or 3 years old the first time and 25k miles the second time. It failed the second time due to damage caused the BMW tech when they replaced it previously.
Thanks for the reply! Mine happened at 51K miles and they wouldn’t budge. The labor required to replace it is insane.
Funny you show a pathfinder. I got one used, loved the car, assumed it would be reliable, but had heard of the “strawberry milkshake of death”. Mine got that issue, I forget exactly but i think its because it has a transmission cooler inside the radiator. Which tends to crack, and the fluids mix. It was one of those things that’s easy to DIY prevent if you know about it. It went through at least THREE transmissions in six months. Since then, i always tell people that the carmax warranty is not a joke. They paid for well over 10k of repairs.
I got the rear hatch of my Fiesta ST painted twice because the trim would rub, and after the 2nd time they installed clear bra for protection, they also replaced the door pillar vinyl which wrinkled, and installed a new headunit because android auto would not connect, I think the total for everything was around $1500. We got a “refurbished” engine installed in my wife’s sonata under warranty, no idea the total savings but I would assume over $5k.
My 2005 R53 Mini Cooper S was shifting VERY hard from 1-2, so I did a bit of research to find a warranty with the shortest window before you could make the first claim. Found one for $3000 that would allow me to make a claim after 30 days. Showed up at the Mini dealership on day 31. They had the car for two months; $11k later, I had my new transmission.
Most recently, I took my 2020 F150 in that I bought used under Fords Gold Certified program. I took it in for an oil change and the dealership said the ‘front engine cover’ was leaking oil. On the 2.7 motor the entire front engine cover is 1 piece. It was 16hrs of labor plus parts. It would have been $3,600 out of warranty.
Continental TSIO 550 for a low hour Cirrus- $170k with labour –
Pffft. I worked for Gulfstream Aerospace about 25 years ago. I worked in the publications department where we wrote and illustrated all documentation. Parts catalogs, maintenance manuals, etc.
Well, one day, an edict came down that we had to go through all the illustrations where there would be a rig pin and make sure they explicitly showed the procedure for removing them when maintenance/repairs was done.
Why?
Well, down at one of the service centers, a maintenance tech forgot to remove a rig pin from the main landing gear on a brand spanking new G-V.
The pilot took off, tried to retract the gear. Gear won’t retract, throws a warning light. Since this is a brand new plane, pilot freaked out and immediately turned the plane around to land it.
What he SHOULD HAVE DONE was fly out over the ocean and dump a bunch of fuel to get the weight down. Because the maximum landing weight is considerably lower than the maximum take off weight.
But since he didn’t do that, he landed heavy and almost stuffed the main landing gear right through both wings. Buckled the fuselage at the nose gear, too.
There was a court case. Since the rig pins were left in at a Gulfstream facility, they were deemed liable.
$25,000,000 plane was a total write off, replaced under warranty.
Because I’m being lazy and don’t want to go down a rabbit hole looking it up myself, is a rig pin used to lock the landing gear in the down position when being serviced?
It had never crossed my mind that a plane would not be rated to land while full of fuel, thanks for teaching me something new.
Exactly right!
My nephew translates technical manuals for airbus, he would probably love this
Had our 2020 Audi A6 AllRoad in for a number of simultaneous claims. Over $8K in parts alone. Replaced alternator, leather dash pad, lock mechanisms, rear hatch motor. Don’t remember labor
I used to work with a guy who bought a 1968 Olds Cutlass new. After driving it a couple years, he took it to Sears and had new shocks and brakes put on it. He got the ones with the lifetime warranty.
LIFETIME.
Every couple years, he’d go back to Sears and make them put new ones on. He kept the paperwork, so they had to honor it.
Last time I saw him was in the early 90’s, still driving that brown ’68 Curlass. Sears HATED that guy. He had to have gotten at LEAST a couple grand out of them in warranty work.
He was a weird dude. Got splashed on his arm and… crotch area with liquid nitrogen. He didn’t want to go to the hospital because the splash was pretty small. Higher ups made him go.
When he saw the doctor, doc asked where he got splashed. He showed him his arm, and doc whipped out a scalpel and just dug it out. He didn’t really feel anything because the flesh was dead, but when doc asked him if he got hit anywhere else, he just said “Nope.”
Before my extended warranty ran out on my e46 M3 ran out my SA told me to bring it in so he could go over it. He ended up getting 5k out of the warranty company on various things, the car was right at 100k miles at the time.
That is a great idea
The only vehicle I’ve ever bought new was a 2003 Yamaha WR450F. It was the first year for electric starting, and the first moment I hit the button when I got it home, it ripped the flywheel off the crankshaft. So I took it back under warranty.
It did it again. And again. And again. Finally the three month warranty expired. The issue is, when the engine backfires, it sinks all the torque backwards into the starter motor.
The 2004 model came out with a slipper clutch on the starter drive.
I still have the bike and I still can’t use the electric start. It’s the last Yamaha I’ll ever own.
Kia paid for:
New Engine (spun rod bearings)
New transmission (service tech jacked it up pulling/putting engine)
New front bearing assemblies (service tech jacked it up pulling/putting transmission)
Thank you again to Kia for not giving me any grief over it.
I bought my second mk1 MR2 from a used car place opposite the local Toyota dealer. It came with a six month warranty. So I drove the car across the road, gave them the paperwork, and told them to check it out for anything that was covered.
The compression test wasn’t great, so I got a set of new valves, plus the labour to fit them. Maybe 50% of the cars value?
I loved that car, kept it until the replacement rear fenders I fitted rotted out again.
I loved my 87 MR2. I used to drive to Texas to buy up parts to replace the ones that rotted off. I had 3 in the drive and 4 motors in the garage at one point. The rust was awful, but running the 4AG on a set of carbs made the whole thing worth it.
An engine designer friend of mine has a 4AGE on a stand in his garage as engine porn. It’s a lovely thing.
I loved them. They responded so well to tuning once you stripped away the EFI and all the computers.
I was driving my 2001 S4 and the transmission dropped 2nd gear. I could drive in odd number gears, but evens were gone. It was still under factory warrantee so, even though I bought it used, the Audi dealer replaced the whole transmission. They also replaced the clutch at the same time at no cost. I even had a GTI loaner for the 3 weeks it was in the shop. It was one of those anniversary ones with the rabbit logo. The tech told me they had to get the trans sent from Germany. I have no idea what it cost, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap.
I owned a 2001 S4 for 14 years. Nothing is cheap on that car. If the part is cheap, it’s buried and takes hours to replace.
Don’t I know it. I still own that car. Its getting the world slowest engine rebuild at the moment. I put 280k miles on it before breaking the timing belt. I remember that 20 years ago the belt service was near 2k in parts and labor. When I replaced the clutch the whole drivetrain had to come out to back the trans away from the engine. Dealer probably spend 5-6k on fixing it. They paid for my early 20’s stupidity showing off to a girl and botching the down shift.
I had to pull the motor and trans 5 times. It started to feel like regular maintenance on the car.
Freightliner truck I drove at work- Frame rail cracked, Daimler paid 40+ hours labor plus at least a couple thousand $$$$ in parts to replace it.
Mam and dad’s ’76 (I think) Honda wagon (purchased new) got a lot of work done under warranty. The dealer had been a motorcycle dealer, then stepped in cars, so were eager for customers.My brother drove through a too-deep puddle too fast and the engine sucked water into the cylinders and managed to bend some connecting rods. The dealer rebuilt the engine under a head gasket recall/warranty from Honda. The engine was rebuilt another time under warranty as well for some other simple stupid thing we kids did. Another time the brakes were a little wonky, and the dealer rebuilt all of the brakes as well. We loved that dealer!
Single highest warranty claim was my wife’s 2016 Escape. Had to have the catalytic converter replaced under emissions warranty. $988 to Ford.
Overall was my 1998 Grand Am V6. Had that vehicle almost three years to the day (Jan 2002-Feb 2005) and it had racked up $3600 in claims over that time. Paid $1450 for it for 4 years of coverage. Thanks dad!
I was a warranty admin at a Mercedes-Benz dealer for a while, and I wanted to share two stories from “the other side” as one may put it.
First car lost power on the freeway, had to be towed in. Transmission was borked and the valve body was freaking out six ways to Sunday. We get it on the lift, and the case is shattered and its puking ATF out the top. We drop the car and as we’re watching it go down, we notice a strange hole in the PR door. A bullet hole. Somehow, this GLE took a bullet, which went through the door, through the transmission tunnel, and still had enough energy to crack the cast aluminum case by the tailhousing. This went from a possible warranty transmission failure to a comprehensive insurance claim pretty quickly.
Second one came about after the advent of the M133 motor. This 4-pot had a TON of teething issues and we warrantied basically one a month until around 2018 when they finally got good and then got replaced by the M139. Anywho, a W205 C-class rolled in on a flatbed with a locked up motor. Wouldn’t crank, nothing. Scoped it and found a blown up #3 piston. We filed a warranty case and it gets approved for (drumroll please) R&R the piston. The entire engine it trashed, the bore is scraped to bits and the piston got mashed into the combustion chamber, the valves got sent to meet their dear and fluffy lord, and whatever remained was in the oil pan.
The lesson here is that incompetence starts at the top.
Oh, and that car’s don’t like bullets.