Goodbye Versa or How good cars go bad

[OriginalWheelman]

Well the Versa I bought ended up being a POS. I have to put most of the blame on whoever the previous owner was, but some of it has to fall on Nissan. It was an '09, with 68k miles on it. I realize owners have a lot to do but it should be pretty hard to screw a car up this bad in that amount of time. On the test drive, it had a weak start, but this is common for a car that has been sitting on a lot so it didn't bother me. When we took it out, I immediately noticed it suffered from 'the Versa clunk' but I knew this was a common issue and I wasn't that worried. So it drive well enough and we decided to buy it, despite the interior being in sub-par shape. This was June 8th.

So I drove it home, and we parked it for the day and went to bed. When I got to driving it the next day i started to have some hesitation. It didn't want to rev past 4k rpms, and it was really hard to get it past 40 mph. It started spitting and sputtering and not running right. I figured maybe I had some bad gas, or water int he tank, so I went to Autozone up the street, picked up some Iso-heet, Lucas fuel injector cleaner, and some MAF cleaner. So I cleaned the MAF, put the treatments in the tank and topped it off with 93 octane. She ran great for a little while, then began to act up again. As it went on, it got progressively worse. The culmination was when I let it sit running in a friend's driveway for about 10 minutes. I came back out and got in the car and it would not rev up past 2k rpm. I could barely get the car to 10mph. At this point the CEL came on so I took it to the O'Riley's down the street. They scanned it and came up with the converter. This made sense. So I let the car cool off for about 15 mins and it started up and ran ok. I drove it for about 3 mins and had the same issue. I repeated like this until I got home. This was June 10th.

First thing in the morning on June 11th I took the Versa to Dobbs Nissan to have it looked at. I had heard bad things about Dobbs but with the way the Versa was acting, and the fact that they are only 4 miles away, I opted to go there. So I took it in and a few hours later they tell me it needs a converter, no surprise there, and they put me in a rental Versa for a day and tell me the cat will be covered by the factory 80k mile emissions warranty. So They get it done on the 12th and I go in to pick it up, they tell me that it is fixed, so I pick it up turn in the rental and go on my way. I get almost the 4 miles home, and when I got off the expressway and accelled off a light to head home, it starts to bog down and sputter again. So I called Dobbs, told them that it did not fix the problem, and they told me to bring it right back. So I struggled to get it up to speed on the highway and cruised down to the Nissan dealership. I figured this was my best bet as it cruised ok, but accel was hard. So I drop it back off to Dobbs to have it looked at. This was June 12th.

June 14th I get a call from Dobbs. It took them a while to duplicate the problem, despite me explaining to them exactly how to cause it. They tell me it is having intermittent fuel pump failure. And it would take at least a week to get a fuel pump in. The warranty company would only pay for 3 days of the rental car, but would cover everything else except my $200 deductible. I had to travel back to Buffalo for my wife's grandmother's funeral. At this point Dobbs had told me that it would be Tuesday, June 25th before the fuel pump was in. So I stayed in the rental until Thursday, June 20th. We couldn't take the rental from the dealership out of state and I didn't want to deal with getting another and trying to get it sorted out so we drove the Honda. I would loved to have made the trip in the Versa as there was a lot of stuff we wanted to bring back. As we were planning on selling the Honda anyways, we decided to sell it while we were in NY, as no one in Memphis wanted to buy it w/o AC. We rented a new Pathfinder for the trip home and brought all our stuff back with us anyways.

We returned to Memphis Tuesday, June 25th and unloaded the Pathfinder. I still had not heard from Dobbs but I was exhausted form the road trip. For some reason, I expected Dobbs would have the car ready when they had stated. So Wednesday I called Dobbs and asked about the Versa. The part had come in, but for some reason they had not started work on it. So Friday, June 28th rolls around, and I had to go out of town again, this time for work. About 3pm on Friday while I was on the road in another rental car I get a call from Dobbs saying the Versa is finally ready, but they would not release the car until the warranty company had paid on it. I told them I would be out of town until Monday anyways, so they had time to get it sorted. Again, I would not have needed to rent a car if Dobbs had my car ready on schedule.

Monday, July 1st I return to Memphis. I call Dobbs about noon and ask about the Versa. They person I spoke to told me it wasn't ready. At this point, I had very little patience left. I asked them what was taking so long as I had been told the car was ready Friday but waiting on paperwork. So I had to wait for 2 hours until they called me back. At this point they admitted to me that they had the car ready, but they had done the paperwork for the warranty company wrong, and it needed to be resubmitted. So they could not figure out how to submit the paperwork properly, and they had to call in my original service writer to fix it. A service writer they had LAID OFF. So i get a call from him about 5pm that the Versa was finally ready to be picked up. I picked it up and it finally ran right, but it still had issues. At this point, I had to make my 1st payment on the loan, on a car I had owned for almost a month, and had in my possession for 3 days. When I picked it up it had been noted that the battery was tested and failed as part of Nissan's inspection.

On Tuesday, July 2nd I took the car to City Auto where I had purchased it, and explained it to them that it still needed a battery, and I was having a weak start issue. I was referred to the dealer who owned the car, and given his number to speak to him as he was not in the dealership. So I called him and got his voice mail. I waited a day without him calling back and I decided rather than getting stuck somewhere, I would just get the battery replaced and send them the bill. I went to a local service center, Mathis Auto, as they had a good reputation. The people there were nice, and explained everything clearly, not that I needed it, but it was nice as I could tell they weren't giving me any BS. So I waited while they changed the battery, and they came back and told me that the battery didn't fix the weak start. They showed me the test for the battery, and it was indeed bad, but the starter was also bad and was the cause of the weak start. So I asked them to write me and estimate for the starter and it came to $350. Now keep in mind this is a 2009 Versa, with 68,000 miles on it. So far I've had to do a cat, a fuel pump, and a battery to it, and it still needed a starter, and whatever was causing the clunk in the front end to be fixed. Friday, July 5th rolled around and I had still not heard from the dealer who owned the car about the battery, so I went over his head to the owner and sales manager.

I explained to them everything that had gone on and how I was really frustrated at this point. So they listened and told me they would call me back. About an hour and a half later I spoke with the sales manager, and he offered to pay my first months payment, pay for the repairs and the excess I had to pay for the fuel pump. He asked me if that would be acceptable and I told him while it was a fair offer, I would prefer to work out a deal where I could return the car. We had purchased it to be my wife's commuter. She needs a dependable car to get to work in. We can not pay the bills without her income, so she NEEDS to get to work every day dependably. It became obvious that this Versa was not going to be that car, that's why we purchased the Mazda2. So they reluctantly agreed to purchase the car back, and refunded me what I had paid on the loan, all the repairs I had done to it, and the down payment, and paid the loan off. I thank City Auto for working with me on this but given my luck with used cars I decided not to buy another. We're happy with the M2.

TL;DR : Dobbs Nissan sucks. City Auto sold me the 1 bad Versa in existence, and did right by me and bought it back.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Damn man, City Auto has hooked you up TWICE now hah. They must hate you.

[Bubba1]

Damn man, City Auto has hooked you up TWICE now hah. They must hate you.

I'm wondering if the used Versa you purchased was a flood damaged car? There are tens of thousands of them out there being sold by dealers. That might help explain some of the gremlins, aside from Dobbs' incompetence.

[OriginalWheelman]

There was nothing on the carfax. I ran it myself. I mean it is still possible. It spent it's whole life in Birmingham, AL according to the carfax. I was just blaming it on the 3 at the beginning of the VIN.

[nissangirl74]

The only thing that shows up on the Carfax is what's reported. Doesn't mean someone wasn't dishonest. That's a lot to go wrong on a car with such low mileage.