I totally get selling a car because its problems just wear you down. In fact, I've done it four times over the years.
1. 2004 Mercedes SL55 AMG: Brake-by-wire system failed twice, once also losing manual braking and causing me to roll out of a garage onto a 3-lane street in downtown Chicago. I finally stopped the car by steering it into a curb. (Mercedes quietly discontinued the feature the next model year.) Alternator failed, and its replacement also failed as soon as they hooked it up. The next one had to come from Germany, which kept the car in the shop almost a month. Gear shift linkage broke. Trunk seals leaked. Seat heaters burned out. I finally took the car down to our vacation home in Florida to use there, but after finding all I did on each visit was take it to the dealer to leave there for repair, I just dumped it.
2. 2003 Audi S6: Battery kept going dead when parked overnight. Audi said it was a problem between the car's electronics and the GM On*Star system that premiered that year in some Audis. They were never able to resolve the problem, and after almost a year of carrying around jump cables, I finally dumped the car.
3. 1998 Corvette C5: Removable hardtop panel leaked like a sieve. I carried a roll of paper towels in the car to stuff into the top of the driver-side window during a rain or at a carwash. Multiple service visits never resulted in a good seal. Brake discs repeatedly warped and had to be replaced three times. Tie rod fell off while driving slowly over a railroad crossing. Car kept going into limp mode (8 mph). Multiple service visits did not resolve. When it happened when I was on the inside lane of I-95 in Connecticut next to a concrete divider where I couldn't pull off the road, I finally managed to get across three other lanes of high-speed traffic onto a shoulder. I walked down a nearby exit to a service station, called a tow truck, and never got in the car again.
4. 2000 Jaguar S-Type: Dashboard completely blacked out several times and finally had to be replaced. Then, three months after purchasing it, the transmission failed. Head gasket developed a leak. Several other issues I no longer remember clearly. Car was lemon-lawed.
Even the two Honda Odysseys we had were not problem-free. We dealt with windshield distortion, a bad gear shifting algorithm which it took Honda over a year to fix with a software rewrite, a right-rear sliding rear door that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, a USB port that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, and a seat position memory that for 8 years constantly defaulted to the secondary setting.
We have three Lucids. None are flawless, and the software drives me absolutely nuts. But none are the worst cars I've had in terms of reliability or frequency of repair . . . and all have the best balance of driving dynamics, space, luxury, and structural solidity in their category.
but for that I have a 3RS
