european car electricals, really bad?

i've been looking for a car to modify (a lot) and i've assumed for the longest time that european cars [bmw, mercedes, audi, volkswagen, mini, jaguar, land rover, fiat, porsche, smart, volvo, saab] have completely bonkers electricals that are awful to modify.

but i realized i don't really have any way to KNOW that aside from a few things i know
1) it's impossible to put a remote starter on a saab for some reason
2) mercedes remote starts are super expensive, even on a newer one with a compustar module
3) some car electrical guy once told me that european cars all have very sophisticated anti-theft systems since car theft in europe is very high.

is it simply a truth of all luxury car brands that the electricals are a nightmare, even american luxury like cadillacs or japanese luxury like acuras?

got any horror stories? share them

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impossible is nothing; use a breakout board.

oh and the reason i ask is because there are lots of great cars out there and the cheap end of the spectrum but a lot of them are european, which limits my options

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impossible is nothing; use a breakout board.

The only reason why most people are afraid of the European vehicles is because they either dont install into very many of them or they had a bad experience with one and they base their opinion on that. Once you start working on more of them, they are actually easy to work on but they are more sophisticated than domestic or imports IMO. No real horror stories from these vehicles but heed warnings when given to you with certain vehicles but don't be afraid of them because one person says its " impossible ".

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Jeff
Velocity Custom Home Theater
Mobile Audio/Video Specialist
Morden, Manitoba CANADA

Velocity Motors wrote:

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The only reason why most people are afraid of the European vehicles is because they either dont install into very many of them or they had a bad experience with one and they base their opinion on that. Once you start working on more of them, they are actually easy to work on but they are more sophisticated than domestic or imports IMO. No real horror stories from these vehicles but heed warnings when given to you with certain vehicles but don't be afraid of them because one person says its " impossible ".

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yeah, i actually just called a local install shop, they quoted me $450 (it's normally $300) to install a remote starter+keyless entry into a 2002 saab 9-5, much less than i was expecting.
as he said; you only get quoted high numbers or told "no" by electricians who've never touched a saab or volvo or whatever, the trick is to find an installer who knows specializes in those vehicles and has done it multiple times.

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impossible is nothing; use a breakout board.

although actually he DID state that remote start in a manual saab was impossible due to the saab's security feature of needing to be in reverse to take the key out.

on the flip side, it's extremely easy to modify the shifter to NOT do that, you just remove a piece of medal from the shift assembly, it's a 20 minute procedure.....except it makes your key removable at any time.

in any case it's totally doable, which is great!

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impossible is nothing; use a breakout board.

Also bad electricals and high labor are quite different things. IE - the SAAB may cost more because of the work taken to get to the relevant places and concealment etc while its electrics may be first class.

Also what some people call "good" electricals because it's open and easy to get to, I might call bad from the security or exposure POV.


I view bad electricals primarily as being problem prone ie unreliable. Then comes the ease of diagnosis and repair (color coding; connectors; layout) and elegant electrical design (no superfluous components or poor logic).

In my experience, the Japs top all the above for "quality". I've seen some bad Jap designs (read IMO stupid) but far less than from others. And their wiring practices tend to lead others.


And what Jeff said above - unfamiliarity counts for a lot. The number of people that prefer the bad because of the unfamiliarity of alternatives, or aren't used to the practices of the less frequent vehicle. (Dare I mention my experiences with Bosch (esp alternators!) and Renault?)