And I’m inclined to agree. Hyundai had some of the best sales numbers of 2008, and they rolled out some killer products like the Genesis and Kia Soul. Too bad Forbes based their whole article off of the JD Power Initial Quality Survey.
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GM’s North American VP for quality, Rick Spina, latches on to the latest JD Power IQS with a blog post at Fastlane titled “What Quality Gap?” and a webchat inviting every pissed-off GM owner to bitch about their quality problems.
For all the naysayers out there … get this … in the J.D. Power & Associates 2009 Initial Quality Study, Cadillac, our flagship brand, improved by 19 percent since last year’s study and comes in third, just behind Lexus and Porsche. That’s pretty darn good considering brands typically improve around 5 percent a year. And Chevy, our volume leader, eliminates the quality gap to join company with very competitive import brands like Honda and Toyota. Simply put, the quality gap is history.
Oh really?
Thanks to Michael Karesh at TrueDelta.com, we tend to take everything J.D. Powers’ mob puts out with a HUMMER-sized pinch of salt. Even so, anyone who thinks that New, Fiat-controlled Chrysler is going to reverse the zombie automaker’s rep for producing adulterated crap should consider taking a hit of today’s J.D. The company’s 2009 UK Vehicle Owners Satisfaction Study rates Fiat dead last. Below Chrysler. Talk about the blind leading the lame . . . .
“Drivers who own [defective, shoddy and/or downright dangerous] Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles will retain their Lemon Law rights to compensation for defects under a deal between U.S. states and Chrysler LLC’s new owners, [Florida] Attorney General Bill McCollum said Wednesday.” And so the AP reassures ChryCo’s remaining half dozen or so prospective retail customers that they can once again buy with confidence from the bankrupt, federally-sponsored zombie automaker. More specifically, Fiat Group SpA has agreed to stand behind ChryCo crap. Not that all Chrysler’s products are crap, obviously. Well, perhaps not that obviously . . .
TrueDelta has once again updated the results of its Car Reliability Survey. Based on over 10,000 responses for the first time, the new results cover owner experiences through March 31, 2009. Elsewhere, results continue to be based on an April 2008 survey. Thanks to these prompt quarterly updates, TrueDelta can provide reliability stats on new or redesigned models sooner, and then closely track cars as they age. Among the highlights: the 2009 Audi A4 has required 37 repair trips per 100 cars per year—similar to the benchmark Honda Accord. The implication: most of these cars will not require any repairs in their first year.
Consumer Reports drops a sly wink at the irony-free Daimler-Chrysler tagline while revealing that (surprise!) Fiat’s reliability is little better than Chrysler’s. Of course, pre-retreat American Fiat records speak for themselves. Usually in acronym form (Play It Again, Sam, as the old folks say). But even 21st-century Fiat ranked only three places higher than Chrysler in Britain’s 2008 Which? Car reliability survey. Did we mention Chrysler took last place? Honda and Toyota in first, etc. But CR plays it cool. Real cool. “By the limited indication we have, it looks like reliability may be a challenge,” is the money shot. Way to represent the data!
On the day that The General announces involuntary gastric bypass surgery at the hands of Dr. O and while Crash Cart Chrysler waltzes with the Grim Reaper, not all is well with Toyota. The nosy newsmen at Boston’s ABC affiliate exposed a nasty little secret hiding under Toyota’s hospital gown. Yesterday, Team 5 divulged “more than two dozen complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Administration” regarding 2001 and 2002 model year Tundra frames that are rusting and blowing away. Today Toyota implied responsibility when they offered to buy back the rust buckets at full retail value. Keep in mind that this issue is limited to certain areas of the USA and Canada where salt is used as the predominant ice melting material.
Consumer Reports has released its annual auto issue and scorecard, and the results are hardly shocking. CR loves them some Toyota, Honda and Subaru, singling out the big H as building the most reliable lineup of vehicles (Element excepted). Toyota came in second, with the Prius winning top spot in CR’s new “value” ranking. Only Toyota’s Yaris and FJ Cruiser were unable to earn a “recommend” grade from the report. Mercedes has improved its reliability, reckons CR, but European brands are still lagging. On the American front, Ford is singled out as the high point among the American automakers, as “some Ford models now rival their competitors” from Japan. Too bad they’re the F150 and Flex, which compete for a shrinking market segments. Unfortunately, that’s as good as the news gets for Detroit.
I admit, I have a strange fascination with watching cars crash. And though large, heavy cars can cause some of the most dangerous accidents, there’s something particularly satisfying about watching a small car hit the wall (or get hit by a large, heavy car). As an American I feel hard-wired to expect smaller cars to explode into a million pieces of tin foil and socialized medicine every time I see one making a slow-mo impact in a crash test. But the glory days of “hoo boy!” moments in compact crash tests seem to be coming to a close. Toyota’s tiny iQ just logged a five-star rating from Europe’s NCAP crash testers, and as this video shows, the drama just never shows up. A cocoon of airbags, some brilliant crumpling and surprising side-impact resilience take a lot of the “sucks to be that dummy” entertainment value from the iQ test video. Oh well. I guess it’s time to move on to watching Chinese car crash tests. Schadenfreude doesn’t feed itself.
Automotive News [sub] reports that Ford has reduced its global warranty costs by a not inconsequential $1.2b during the past two years. My initial thought: fewer sales, fewer warranties to honor. But the per-vehicle warranty repair rate has dropped by 50 percent for U.S. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles since 2004. “Ford’s biggest quality gains have been on newly launched vehicles compared with the vehicles they replaced,” pronounceth Curt Yun, Ford’s director of global warranty. “The last 24 months have revealed some of our best quality results.” Yes, BUT while the results may have been revealed in the last two years, the headline numbers don’t strictly apply to cars built in the last two years. Ford made its largest reliability gains in the 2005 and (especially) the 2006 model years. Recently the rate of improvement has slowed: savings in 2008 only account for $100m of the $1.2b total. Why didn’t FoMoCo save more in ’08? This suggests that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Of course, the factory warranty is only three years on Fords and four on Lincolns. How will these new models hold up after the warranty expires, as has recently been the case for the 2005s?
[To view Ford’s performance in TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey, click here]
Popular Mechanics reckons “GM’s current precarious situation didn’t come about overnight.” Ya think? “Over the past few decades,” writes PM scribe John Pearly Huffman, “GM put some truly terrible products out on the market. Unreliable, uninteresting and flat ugly, these were cars that simply destroyed GM’s reputation.” The usual suspects get their due as PM hands it to the Vegas, X-Cars and Azteks that we all know and hate. But there’s a touch of controversy too. The EV1 was certainly no runaway success, but was it a “car that destroyed GM’s reputation”? I’m not so sure. And then there’s the 1991-1995 Saturns, again not without its flaws, but probably not a permanent stain on GM’s character. Where’s the last-gen Malibu, a car that cemented the mental association between GM and rental fleet mediocrity? Or the Volt, which proved conclusively that GM is no longer a reality-based automaker? I guess everyone has their favorites…
Are you aware of the appalling rate of Boxster engine failures, which I’m only now becoming aware of through participation in some Boxster forums? Some estimates (Bruce Anderson, for one) are that 20 percent of Boxster engines don’t make it past 100,000 miles witout a catastrophic failure. The standard failure is what the cognoscenti universally refer to as the IMS–the intermediate shaft. It’s apparently bolted together, and the bolts fail, then everything internal claps hands and you’re looking at a replacement crate engine. I’m hoping the fact that Susan never revs past maybe 4,000 will spare us, but I’d be careful if I were you. There was a recent Porsche Club event that 11 Boxsters participated in. One had an IMS failure during the event and two of the other Boxsters participating had previously had their engines replaced due to IMS failures. Three out of 11 equals 27 percent. It’s a quiet secret within the Porsche community, and there are reasonably knowledgeable people who claim these engines were built as cheapies to get through the warranty period unscathed–which the apparently often don’t–and that PAG hasn’t the faintest interest in second, third and fourth owners. And they used to say the entry-level Porsche was a used Porsche.
Dear Colleagues,
Yesterday, Consumer Reports announced results from its 2008 Annual Auto Reliability Survey. Subscribers to Consumer Reports are surveyed each year about the vehicles in their households. Predicted reliability for new models is based on the previous three model years for the same model.
This year Chrysler LLC vehicles trailed the industry average and dropped in ranking when compared with last year’s study. The decline in our ratings is based on the results for 2008 model year vehicles that were built about one year ago.
Based on our aggressive focus on warranty claim rate reduction, we know that the cars we are building today have a much higher standard of overall quality. Having said that, due to the three-year window, Consumer Reports ratings are slow to change.
The results tell us a few important things about our approach to quality over the last few years:
* Our overall reliability is below industry average.
* We do have some vehicles that scored above average for reliability.
* We have a corporate-wide commitment to quality that is well on its way and essential to get Chrysler back on the path to sustainability and profitability.
Summary of Results
Predicted reliability is Consumer Reports’ forecast of how well models currently on sale are likely to perform. The Chrysler brand is ranked 32 out of 34 brands and dropped 13 positions compared with the 2007 rankings. Dodge ranked 30 out of 34 and dropped five positions. Jeep ranked 28 out of 34, which is the same as last year.
There were a couple of highlights in the Chrysler results. The Dodge Caliber and Jeep Patriot were ranked above industry average and were considered the best models of the company’s brands.
Clearly, we are not satisfied with our overall results and continue to work aggressively in new ways to improve every aspect of customer satisfaction as we are committed to deliver products that meet consumers’ needs. Since the vehicles in this survey were built, a tremendous amount has been accomplished. We have formed 18 new, cross-functional teams to correct quality problems by vehicle system. Our Customer Satisfaction Teams (CST) are comprised of more than 250 people who have helped reduce quality issues since January. We are continuously measuring our progress and improving the way we work to accelerate our improvement.
In addition to the CSTs, the development processes and testing procedures put into place nearly five years ago have helped with the high-quality launch of the 2009 Dodge Ram. For example, before the 2009 Dodge Ram went on sale, nearly 6.5 million customer-equivalent miles were logged by Dodge truck engineers. The 2009 Ram went through more than 200 hours of wind noise and aerodynamic evaluations, and engineers conducted approximately 40,000 hours of full-scale vehicle and system testing for durability and reliability of the vehicle.
While we expect our company-wide quality initiatives to be successful, we will continue our focus on the needs of our current customers and the priorities of those consumers who are considering future vehicle purchases. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to quality improvement. With all of us having the same focus of “Customer First” and “Quality … Period,” we will continue to accelerate our commitment to quality and strive to meet the needs of our customers.
Sincerely,
Doug Betts
Vice President and Chief Customer Officer
[thanks to you know who you are]
After David Champion, head of Consumer Reports‘ auto testing, presented this year’s reliability results, I asked two simple questions. 1. What month were most surveys returned (i.e. how old are the data)? 2. What problem rates do the dots represent? Or, to keep it as simple as possible, what was the average problem rate for a 2008 car? Unfortunately, Mr. Champion did not know the answer to either question. He could only respond that the surveys went out in “the springtime,” and that the dots are relative. As if the actual problem rates they represent were of no consequence. In fact, both things matter. The truth about CR, as we’ve noted here: before: 1. The data are already about five months old, and will be 17 months old before they are updated again. 2. The differences between the dots for a 2008 model are about one problem for every thirty cars. But, since even the head of CR’s auto research doesn’t know these facts, it should come as no surprise that their millions of subscribers haven’t a clue. And then things got ugly…
What’s with Ford and these quality studies? Not for the the first time, Ford has commissioned its own study on relative vehicle quality– you know, initial vehicle quality– and come out on top. Ish. You know; a “statistical dead heat.” Or, to be more or less precise, “With a combined average of 1,284 things-gone-wrong (TGW) per 1,000 vehicles during the first three months of ownership, Ford’s domestic brands improved 8 percent versus last year. This performance is statistically equivalent to the 1,250 TGW level of Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus/Scion.” Of course, you have to read all the way to the end, and Google a bit, to see that this PR exercise is Ford-subsidized. “The 2008 model-year GQRS survey, conducted for Ford by RDA Group of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., solicits feedback on vehicle trouble and customer satisfaction from owners of all major makes and models after three months in service.” [JD Powers’ Initial Quality Survey results here.] Anyway, it’s all for one, and One Ford for all: “This is One Ford at its best,” claims Bennie Fowler, Ford group vice president, Global Quality. “It’s taken thousands of people continuously working together with laser-like focus every day to boost vehicle quality for our customers to [just about] the top of the pack.”
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