Difference between 'be breaking down', 'be broken down' and 'be broken'

Question

Is there any difference between 'My car is always breaking down', 'My car is always broken down' and 'My car is always broken'?

Answer 1

always is an exaggeration here. It actually means "very frequently, too frequently". The speaker is complaining about the unreliable car and resorting to exaggeration to drive home the point that the car is especially unreliable.

My car is always breaking down.

My car very frequently has something or other stop working so that it needs to be repaired. The -ing tense suggests recurrence, repetition, ongoing condition. The car breaks down often.

My car is always broken down.

My car needs repair so frequently that I might as well say it is never working. It is never roadworthy! It is always at the repair shop.

My car is always broken.

Same as the exaggeration above. It is "never" roadworthy.

The past participle suggests state.

Answer 2

First of all:

My car is always broken down.

is a slightly unusual formulation, though it is grammatically correct. Native speakers might more readily recognize,

My car is always broken.

which is the standard way of conveying the same idea.

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Now on to the difference between 'My car is always breaking down' and 'My car is always broken'.

The former, is in the Present Continuous Tense which is used (amongst other purposes) to indicate an action that is repeating. The use of that tense in this phrase implies that the car repeatedly breaks down. It also implies that there are times between the car breaking down where the car is not broken. So if for instance, you kept paying to have your car fixed at a garage and yet it kept breaking afterward you could very well say "my car is always breaking down."

On the other hand,

My car is always broken

is written in the Simple Present Tense, in the passive voice, which is used here to indicate a general truth. In this case the general truth that is being stated is that the car never works properly.

Answer 3

The first two have a semantic difference...

My car is always breaking down

...and every time I fix it, it breaks down again, some time later.

My car is always broken down

It broke months ago & I never got round to fixing it properly, or it spends more time broken down than working, the time between fixing it & it breaking again is significantly short.

The third one is grammatically correct, but doesn't really convey the same meaning as the 2nd version.
"Broken down" is idiomatic. It fully describes the situation where something has gone wrong with your car in such a way as to make it undriveable... without that being that you crashed it.

Answer 4

The phrasal verb in English for large machines and cars with motors: break down. And it is used as a stative verb in the form: to be broken down.

A car is said to be running or to be broken down

• I had a break down on the highway. [noun]
• My car is always breaking down. [continuous]
• My car seems to break down every week. [general statement, simple present]
• My car was broken down last week, but I had it fixed. [simple past]
• My car is not broken down today, it's running fine.

However, broken is not usually used for cars as it refers to an entire object being broken or to a small appliance:

- The glass is broken.

- My coffee maker is broken. [not working properly]

- My hair dryer is broken. [not working properly]

- My son's plastic car is broken.

Broken is for small things that are in pieces or small objects that use electricity and that are not working properly or at all. If a small appliance is broken, sometimes, it can be fixed and sometimes it cannot be fixed.

Personally, I never say "My car is broken." My car is broken down or is not running or is not working properly/ right or is out of commission.

broken is also used figuratively as in the expressions: broken dreams and broken promises.