Coming from someone who drives both.

European cars tend to have stiffer chassis and better judged damping and spring rates which gives better ride and handling. They also have more sound proofing and damping materials, so NVH are usually better. The engines usually turbocharged , which gives ample torque for overtaking. Their weakness is of course reliability and their R&D is more focus on performance and less focus on "what could go wrong and how do we make sure that it doesn't happen".
For example, they could have implemented some form of active cooling for the DSG gearbox to improve reliability but they didn't. A simple design say heatsink and fan that cost say usd150 to implement might have reduced the failure rate by half.

The only Japanese that drives like a European car is Mazda. Mazda drives more European like but the NVH is below Japanese. I think if Mazda had a turbo option, improve their NVH, we might have a Japanese that exceed European in all aspects.

Noise, Vibration, Harshness.

That is his perception, there is no right or wrong.

In fact even the new honda civic, I'm willing to bet that honda purposely lowered the torque rating so that the CVT gearbox will last longer. Take VW for eg, 250nm rated torque for the 7 speed dsg gearbox, and guess what is the engine rated at, Yes exactly 250nm. No allowances, no buffer at all for manufacturing variances.

I think if you take toyota engineers to work on the DSG gearbox and improve it. I'm pretty sure they'll make it reliable in 1 generation.


This post has been edited by Drian: Nov 5 2016, 10:10 PM