That's BS Volvo mythology.  Volvo absolutely failed their crash test using adaptive cruise control.  Vulva has been up and down over the past couple decades compared to the competition.  Mercedes is the only company who has consistently led and innovated in safety above all others.  Subaru has consistently been solid as have most Scandinavian car companies.

Let's see how that $4M in recalls if they actually get penalized in the Billions like Toyota did for what was essentially user error.  Oh, and the timing of appointing a new female CEO right as this comes to light.  Yeah...

Mercedes were just the idiots who tried to demo their ACC system indoors where it wouldn't work, left it turned off, and instead instructed the driver to brake when he drove over a piece of wood that he didn't feel and just crashed straight into the car in front.

The 2014 C-class also basically failed the small overlap test. M-B's pants are down there. The ML OTOH did well. CR has also found issues with the GL's handling, or rather total lack thereof. It basically can't do an emergency lane change, so I guess you just are supposed to hope that sort of situation doesn't happen to you.

It took Subaru a few years to get with the program in terms of side impact protection, but in recent years they've done very very well, no question. If you're looking at say a 2002 Volvo or 2002 Subaru though, I know which one I would want to be in, and it wouldn't be the Subaru.

I would imagine what happened with that particular SL has as much to do with luck as anything else. No car is invincible in a crash - see Michael Hastings.

The Swedish company Autoliv AB was granted a patent on side impact airbags, and they were first offered as an option in 1994 on the 1995 model year Volvo 850, and as standard equipment on all Volvo cars made after 1995. The Germans caught up with Volvo in a couple of years, and they all began deploying head curtains around the same time, 1997-8. Detroit and the mainstream Japanese brands, including Subaru, would wait almost a decade before standardizing side airbags and head curtains around 2005-7.

Same sort of deal with active head restraints and whiplash protection. Europe got on that pretty fast, Detroit and Japan didn't seem to care much until only a few years ago.

Toyota is recalling millions of cars worldwide. What happened to the famous total quality management?

Steering wheels fall off at high speeds? I mean really 

That's all from the pre Akio era when the massively oversized board was trying to pass GM by focusing on volume.  Plus the recall threshold has dropped incredibly so expect everyone's recalls to increase dramatically.  It's a new bright line standard.

Note too, that most if not all the vehicles on the recall were made in the USA.  That's why I only buy Japanese built Toyotas.  The Matrix was made in the same plant in Fremont they shared with GM and GM did a lot to sabotage Toyota's stuff there including fucking with the paint on their pickups.  That same plant is now where Tesla makes their cars.  That model year Corolla is one of the biggest PoS cars I've ever sat in too.  As a Corolla aficionado, that car broke my heart.

I'm not seeing this steering wheel falling off thing anywhere, got a link?

Believe me, for a car that's reliable with a low cost of ownership I still would pick Toyota over any other brand.  Just pick the right Toyota made in the right place by the right people.

Believe me, for a car that's reliable with a low cost of ownership I still would pick Toyota over any other brand.  Just pick the right Toyota made in the right place by the right people.

Toyota and Honda definitely still dominate things like the JD LDS studies. Both companies have made mistakes here and there (Toyota's 3.0L V6 engine sludge, Honda's self immolating early 5-speed autobox, etc) but on the whole, one of those two is the strongest bet you can make. It's also not just a "made in Japan" thing either, plenty of Japanese built Nissans are crap, and Japanese built Mazdas have frequently rusted to pieces. A few years back, Japanese built Subarus would eat piston rings and burn oil like it was going out of style.

All that being said, it is still very possible to get screwed. My SC300 munched on O2 sensors every few months, every piece of interior trim cracked, split, or broke, and eventually it just became a complete basket case that would barely start. My Audi was actually a fair bit more reliable than the Lexus it replaced, right up until its melt down.

These days, unless your looking at a 7+ year ownership, reliability is just not that critical, at which point Toyotas and Hondas start to become less attractive. The vast majority of new cars are just unlikely to have any sort of catastrophic failure. It's things like MyFordTouch problems that are causing most of the headaches for people now.

I get too attached to my automotive choices to flip them.  They tend to be very deliberate long term choices with very specific roles.  The last car I got rid of I had for almost 20 years.  It actually bothers me that the shorter term of ownership these days means manufacturers can build cars to just die at 100-150,000 miles and nobody cares.  I miss the days when cars could go 300-400K miles.  The economics of the world has changed.  I really don't care about the end of life mileage but that the quality of such a car usually means you can beat the sh1t out of it and it'll keep ticking.

So what did you end up getting?

I'm not sure that the average car easily hitting 300-400K miles was ever really a thing, short of perhaps the 1st generation LS400 and Acura Legend from the golden age of Japanese build quality, and maybe a few pickup trucks. I think making it to 200K on your first transmission and without major engine work is still pretty good.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention that. I was looking at 320xis, but I actually ended up with a Volvo, maybe that's why I've been defending them lately lol. List price wise they aren't that far apart, but what the dealers are actually offering is a different story. Volvo dealers are still trying to get rid of their '13 S60s, and they are discounting quite a bit. I ended up getting a '13 S60 T6 AWD Sport for about $9K off, not too bad. Volvo's maintenance program definitely isn't as comprehensive as BMWs, but it's good enough. The 3 series also isn't the 4 door sports car that it once was, and the interior isn't all that spectacular either, not enough to make it worth spending quite a bit more a month.

The new C-class still seems very impressive, but I'm fine with what I've got for now, and that will give M-B time to work out whatever inevitable bugs there are with the new design before I'm in the market again.