About to lease a 4.6, but....

[glickrick]

Have real concerns on the following:
Winter conditions: RWD, wiper is unable to lift up, NO REMOTE STARTER available yet.
Service: Dealer has made many errors and I am worried about being on their learning curve
Lease: with third party lessor, not the same as Infiniti etc.

On the other hand....I love the car!

Any comments?

 

[musher51]

In my opinion, most of your concerns are things you'll have to decide on for yourself. While many people shy away from RWD for winter driving, I've driven RWD cars exclusively for 20+ years, and as long as you have good snow tires and good traction control electronics, you shouldn't be at a disadvantage compared to FWD or even AWD. I'm disappointed that the wipers don't lift up, too, but that's not even close to being a deal-breaker for me (as in "won't buy this car 'cause of that"). Ditto for remote start capability (although it seems likely that option will be available before too long).

As for dealer and lease concerns, there have been numerous threads on this site about both of those topics, so you might want to look 'em up and see if any previous discussions are useful to you, but all in all, I'd say that you'll have to wrestle with these issues in terms of how important they are to you (versus the appeal of everything in the "positive" column). Good luck!

 

[bozzaj]

Have real concerns on the following:
Winter conditions: RWD, wiper is unable to lift up, NO REMOTE STARTER available yet.

Can someone elaborate on the wiper issue? Does it not have a hinge? How does one replace the wiper blade if you can't lift it up?

 

[musher51]

Can someone elaborate on the wiper issue? Does it not have a hinge? How does one replace the wiper blade if you can't lift it up?

You can lift the blades up a few inches (enough to replace the blades, I'm sure), but they can't be lifted away from the windshield at nearly 90 degrees like some makes allow, which is a real boon for people clearing many inches of snow off their car.

 

[bozzaj]

You can lift the blades up a few inches (enough to replace the blades, I'm sure), but they can't be lifted away from the windshield at nearly 90 degrees like some makes allow, which is a real boon for people clearing many inches of snow off their car.

That's interesting... My VW Phaeton was a bit different in that you can't lift the wipers when they're down because they hit against the hood of the car. You actually have to go into a Settings Menu in the Infotainment unit (VW's term) to turn on a "Wiper change setting", which moves the wipers up so you can lift them. It's still a hinge though.

I haven't paid much attention to the wipers since I usually just assume they're there. Are the wipers the old style (metal bracket) or the newer (curved rubber bracket) that you're seeing more and more?

 

[EdVoylesHyundai]

You can lift the blades up a few inches (enough to replace the blades, I'm sure), but they can't be lifted away from the windshield at nearly 90 degrees like some makes allow, which is a real boon for people clearing many inches of snow off their car.

To lift the wipers away from the car for changing blades or clearing the windshield, turn the car on, then off. After you shut it down, hold the wiper switch up in the Mist position for a few seconds and the wipers will go up to the top of their swing and stop. Then you can lift them up like normal wipers. Same process for the Veracruz b/c those wipers are hidden by the hood when down, also.

 

[musher51]

To lift the wipers away from the car for changing blades or clearing the windshield, turn the car on, then off. After you shut it down, hold the wiper switch up in the Mist position for a few seconds and the wipers will go up to the top of their swing and stop. Then you can lift them up like normal wipers. Same process for the Veracruz b/c those wipers are hidden by the hood when down, also.

Yet another instance where I'm apparently guilty of not reading the owner's manual, I guess! Thanks for the tip...I'll give it a try. In cases where there's a major snowfall, one would have to clear most of the snow off the windshield before invoking this procedure, as the wipers will struggle to move at all if there's a lot (5+") of the white stuff.

 

[bozzaj]

To lift the wipers away from the car for changing blades or clearing the windshield, turn the car on, then off. After you shut it down, hold the wiper switch up in the Mist position for a few seconds and the wipers will go up to the top of their swing and stop. Then you can lift them up like normal wipers. Same process for the Veracruz b/c those wipers are hidden by the hood when down, also.

Ok - So the issue is with positioning when down (hidden by hood) and not with the lack of a hinge. Same thing with the VW Phaeton, except that there was an actual maintenance option on the display instead of using the wiper switch.

Back to my waiting.

 

[oldsnwbrdr]

musher, with any of your cars, did you decide to leave all-season tires on your car and just use those instead of snow tires?

My RX-8 was the only car I've ever owned where I really needed snowtires. All of my other cars were FWD with all-seasons and I've always gotten around fine.

 

[musher51]

musher, with any of your cars, did you decide to leave all-season tires on your car and just use those instead of snow tires?

My RX-8 was the only car I've ever owned where I really needed snowtires. All of my other cars were FWD with all-seasons and I've always gotten around fine.

For the last ten years or so, I've driven RWD BMWs with sport pkgs and high-performance tires, and I learned in a hurry that high-perf tires need to spend the winter in a garage (zero traction...a truly frightening lack of control). Unless I chose to use some sort of happy-medium all-season M/S tires all year (NOT too damn likely with such sporty cars), I had no choice but to get snow tires.

But for my wife's various FWD vehicles over the years, we use all-season tires all year long with no problem.

Since HMC selected all-season Dunlops for Genesis, I initially gave some thought to running 'em all year, but the reviews of their winter performance on tirerack.com is notably negative, so as with my Bimmers, I'm inclined to bear the expense of having two sets of wheels/tires that are optimized for each driving season (although I intend to wear out the stock Dunlops over the next couple of summers based on the first 4000 miles I've put on them).

As posted elsewhere on this site tonight, tirerack.com has apparently run fitment tests on a Genesis and identified aftermarket wheels -- finally! -- so I'm just a few minutes away from doin' some shopping for winter wheels and tires. I'll let you know how it goes.

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