Do new cars burn too much oil

How much oil should a well-functioning auto engine consume? And how much trouble should the owner of a new vehicle just have to accept?


Those are two of the questions raised by the story of Dave Prelle and his wife, Donna Sarli-Prelle, of Clementon, N.J., who are unhappy owners of a 2010 Chevy Equinox.

The Prelles bought the Equinox, which General Motors describes as a "fuel-efficient crossover SUV," for about $29,000 in August 2009. Dave Prelle, an equipment operator at International Paper, planned to keep it for a long time. "I was going to pass it on to my son when they say I can't drive anymore," says Prelle, 57.

The odds seemed good enough. GM's reliability was on the upswing, and Consumer Reports gave the Equinox very good ratings. But in a letter, Donna Prelle reported "nothing but trouble" with the car, and offered a timeline and service records to prove it.

The records indeed show a history of engine complaints, starting with trouble codes that repeatedly triggered the check-engine light, and reports that the SUV idled roughly and sometimes stalled. They also show repeated efforts to address the problem by their dealer, Marlton's Elkins Chevrolet.

But one thing in particular stood out to the Prelles and also to Robert Silverman, a lawyer who specializes in lemon-law cases and who reviewed the documents at my request.

That was the Equinox's high level of oil consumption - and GM's insistence that it wasn't part of whatever problems they faced.

Not that service reps didn't mention the oil. The Prelles say the dealer recommended that they use high-quality synthetic oil and that they change it every 3,000 miles - even though the Equinox is equipped with a computerized indicator that's supposed to show more precisely when an oil change is required.

But it was the oil consumption that seemed like a red flag to the Prelles. So they were especially disturbed when the dealer offered a GM document defining "excessive oil consumption" as the use of one quart or more within 2,000 miles.

"If we knew that," Donna Prelle says, "we would have never, ever bought the Equinox."

But were the Prelles simply not noticing the vanishing evidence on the dipstick? That's not likely, since their records showed the vehicle down more than a quart in mid-May at 22,113 miles - fewer than 1,200 miles after the Equinox had last been serviced by the dealer.

Perhaps it was that visit, or maybe Donna Prelle's increasingly frustrated letters, but something finally got GM's attention. Last week, a regional representative called to say that the automaker was willing to replace the Equinox's engine to address the problem.

I'd like to tell you what GM has to say, but repeated efforts last week failed to elicit a comment on the Prelles' case, or on the broader question of how much oil consumption is excessive oil consumption.

But according to Silverman, the lemon-law specialist, GM and other automakers are doing what, in another context, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called "defining deviancy down" - redefining outlier behavior as normal.

Source :  Do new cars burn too much oil?