In another thread, comparing the Mini and the Solstace, the debate went seriously off topic about whether or not Detroit products really suck or not.

Well, I've looked for some information on quality, and found some decent, if not absolute information....

http://auto-loan.interest.com/conten...24&ID=interest

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...o_quality.html

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...UGU2DGUQ11.DTL

2004 JD Powers Initial Quality Survey Results: http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=7086

2005 JD Powers Dependability Survey (problems three years after purchase) http://www.jdpower.com/news/releases...asp?ID=2005089

2005 JD Powers Initial Quality Survey (problems reported close to purchase) http://www.jdpower.com/news/releases...asp?ID=2005089


I'll post more links in this post as I find them...

Matt

 

Remeber, this is problems reported close to purchase....

Matt

 

I don't think I would classify it as a absolute explanation, a good indicator maybe, but certainly not absolute.

Here is my opinion as to why:

First,
I work in the market research field and have seen a lot of the surveys that fly across consumer's desks. Many of the "problems" which they are given opportunity to report on are very subjective to two things: knowledge and opinion.

I've seen first hand some of the questions which deal with things such as the dashboard lights being too dim, or the steering wheel hard to turn. If a grandma is taking a survey, then those things are subjective to her strength and her eye sight.

Also, these surveys go to your average Joe who doesn't know what a differential, clutch, or camshaft are, and wouldn't know if it was problematic unless it punched him in the face (i.e. broke or fell off). What could potentially be a problem with a more complicated piece of the car could easily go unnoticed or ignored by most people. That's why there are so many recalls (19 million cars in 2002 - Consumer Reports)

The second link also affirms what I am saying about subjectivity by using the words, quote: "Owners were asked about their emotional response to vehicles ..." end quote. In my opinion, I don't think emotional response has anything to do with quality of a car.

Second,
I do not think there is a very strong correlation between Problems and Quality. Take for instance this analogy:

You walk into McDonalds, buy a burger, eat it. Did you have any problems with it? (besides bad gas) No. Does that mean it is quality? I don't think so.
Flip side - you walk into a fine dining establishment, order a 9oz filet, and a 12oz lobster tail. The filet was cooked medium rare... you ordered medium. Did you have any problems with it? Yes. Does that mean it is no longer quality? Again, I don't think so.

What I'm trying to say is that just because the amount of problems are decreasing doesn't necessarily mean that the quality of automobiles is increasing. A Neon is still a McDonalds burger whether or not you had problems with it. But I certainly, imho, cannot consider a Neon a "quality" vehicle.

Third,
This is an issue that I can only throw out there to just ponder. How was sampling done? What was the demographic of those who were asked? How many were asked? I can honestly tell you that statistics and market research are two COMPLETELY different trades and many times results are very skewed either through back end data manipulation or through sampling biases.

With that, I should mention I'm not trying to ruffle anyone's feathers, especially yours Matt, cause I respect your opinion. But Lord knows I wouldn't be me if I didn't through my little $0.03 out there. I hope this grows into a bigger discussion... I'm curious to see other's viewpoints.

Anyone else?

 

but there is little data to go on. The JD Powers stuff is based on consumer respones. The Consumers Report seems to take a bit more into account (crash ratings) for example.

There is a third JD powers catagory that has more to do with perceptions as well....

That said, there are problems with the sampling techniques in all these that may introduce some biases, but the biases don't seem to be targeted, or intended to skew. But there is certainly a possibility of some sort of systematic error.

Matt

 

The issue is not reliability the issue is DESIRABLITY ....as owners of MINI's most of us are acutely aware of this distinction

Who would want a solstice when you can buy a miata and have better car in every way. furthermore they are 15 years late to the market If you wanted a car like this before today you already own a mazda
http://www.edmunds.com/apps/nvc/edmu...leid=100563875
Who would want a HHR when you could have bought a PT anythime over the last 7 years and even now they come in priced higher with less horsepower
http://www.edmunds.com/apps/nvc/edmu...3&tab=features

But lets talk reliability.
The PERCEPTION of Reliablity is NOT defined by how many times you need repair. Consumer reports and surveys ask people with brand new cars how much warranty service they get (this is why the MINI takes a hit) However it is not a collection of longterm major mechanical failure rates

See...It is how many cars are still on the road after 200k miles. There are plenty of Japenese cars that run forever meanwhile if you get an american car over 150k you are pushing the limits you are lucky to see 200k

 

Isn't percieved quality part of the desirability? And if you take the arguement that the new cars won't sell because everyone would already own a PT or a Miata, why are they making more of them? Some are repeat buyers, but some are new to the segment as well....

In the first post I made in this thread, there are both initial quality and dependability numbers. It's interesting that cars like Porsche have poor initial quality and good long term dependibility...

And desirability? While I don't like them, I'm starting to see a bunch of HHRs around. And I don't think it's because the buyers were just waiting for a "better" PT.

I'm sure that a lot of Solsaces will sell. They got that massive plug from the Aprentice. (Wonder what that cost?) And in that segment, style counts for a lot. I'm sure that there are those that would consider a Solstice or a Sky, who would never have thought about a Miata, and vice versa.

Heck, if it had better trunk room, my wife would like one!

And on different notes, the JD Powers dependability index is for cars three years old. And a lot of the american cars on that list aren't available anymore.....

One of the links that made an interesting point was consumer reports "quality platue" theory.... That we're at about as good as cars can be, for the complexity that is involved with them.

And another different note, one of the things I'd always disliked about the American offerings were the interior fit and finish. And the materials they used. I hope it's getting better (I haven't bought a new car since the 02 Mini). When I was looking at new mid-sized SUVs, I was hoping to replace my 92 Explorer Sport with a 01 Explorer 4-door. But after driving the MDX, my wife got that funny look on her face, and it was over. FWIW, it was a new 1st year model, and no problems at all, other than an EGR valve recall....

So, do you think there is a perception that Detroit makes junk when it's really that they just don't make desireable cars?

Matt

 

Its not that the market does not exist it is the fact that it is already dominated by the products that created the niche in the first place.

No american car company has CREATED a niche since the muscle car era....meanwhile cars like the MINI, Miata, PT carves a whole new segment for itself, they create intrest and excitement......Thats why I say GM's motto is "We strive for mediocrity" the Solstice and HHR was the best cards they had to play and its like playin 2, 7 off suit and the Miata is holding a pair of face cards. GM has a buisness model like that of a 100yr old company and it shows in thier products

Thats what I have said all along. I dont think that if you buy a GM that it will break down all the time. But it wont last nearly as long as your MDX (long term) and when you sell your MDX you will get twice as much out of it than you would have a tahoe because it will last longer and the styling is more apealing.

 

PT Cruiser is AMERICAN MADE!!! Sort of blows your argument out of the water, no?

 

Well, for the sake of argument here I'd have to point out that the SUV phenom was (sadly) an American started niche/new status symbol. The boom really came into being with the Explorer as I recall, then the luxo niche took off with the Escalade, then Hummer. Yes, there were/are other types of SUVs but the niche, as you put it, was really created by American car companies.

And isn't the PT Cruiser American or am I tripping? As you said, it really did carve a new/retro segment of vehicles.

I'm not up to jumping into the whole quality thing at the moment, but I do think the numbers are fraught with problems and other issues with status/lux cars, perception, who/what they are gleaning info from is a mixed bag. Real numbers would solve this but manufacturers are not about to give that up, and besides I would not trust that information anyway having seen issues entered into the system, well, "creatively".

 

I bought an 89 V6 5-speed Camaro in 1996. It had 130K miles when I bought it.

I drove it until it had 218K miles.

Here is what I fixed/replaced:
Dist Cap
Plugs
Plug Wires
EGR Valve
Brake Pads and Shoes
Water Pump
Alternator
Clutch/Pressure Plate (at 198K miles)

90 K miles of driving over 5 years with the car starting out with 130K miles in the beginning....not bad at all.

That is a pretty good service record all things considered.

Rawhyde

 

but who knows what went wrong before you bought it! J/K!

My family had good results with some american iron.

I've got a 41 year old ford! (Lots changed on it though...)

My 94 Explorer sport had great reliability. Only thing that ever went out was an ambient pressure sensor. $41 to fix. Got lots of free tires for it too (Firestone recalls. But I never did the low pressure reccomended for the tires, and got great lifetimes out of them!) But the interior could best be described as functional.

I had an 84 S-10 Pick-up, great ride as well. (Traded it straight up for the Mustang!) But I only owned it 3-4 years. Not that wonderful an interior either! Very dependable cheap looking plastic.

We had a 74 Dodge Dart 4 door, 318 V-8 and auto that we bought from a Hertz lot, and it drove and drove. Only things that broke on it were from some teenager (me) doing things with it that it was never designed for! It was mustard yellow.... Interior to match. Yuck!

So, I guess the conclusion is that there's durable, crappy interiors, with boring exteriors (for the most part) from Detroit!

Some other things that screws the domestics. The Ford Thunderbird could have been a smash hit with the affluent boulevard cruisers, but when it first came out, huge markups! It also was near the top of one of the dependability surveys..... One of the posts in the Solstace thread mentioned a $10k markup! On a $20k car!!!!! Good way to loose customers.

Sad thing is same thing is happening to the Ford Shelby Mustang GT-500. If it wasn't, I'd have a deposite down..... (wife keeps telling me to buy one, and who am I to argue?)

Matt

 

the rental i got this week in florida was a newer pontiac. (grandam?)

i preferred the sonata

 

Hard to be completely subjective in an emotion charged subject like this-I own a percentage of a large collision repair facility (notice how I P-C'd that old bodyshop term?!!!) where we repair 800-1000 vehicles a year. One of the functions I provide there for my meager paycheck and the priveledge to call myself part owner is quality checking after the repairs-which means road testing. In my job, I get to drive a lot of different cars-and I am a life long enthusiast of all things vehicular. Peter Egan calls it, approiately for most of us, the "lifelong transportation illness". paying absolutely no attention to factors cited in the above links, I find "quality" in surprising places-and I also abhor bad design. I am NOWHERE CLOSE to being an engineer, but when common sense tells you that door panel/armrest/opening handle works for no one of any size at any seating position, some engineer or designer really blew it. In no particular order, my continual automotive lust has been tickled over the past few years by: c5 or c6 corvette-what a car! new (now defunct)GTO. new mustang. MINI coopers of all colors and flavors (when I spoke with my wallet, an 05 MCS filled the bill for me); Mazda 6 AND 3 (if you havent driven one, dont knock them) chevrolet cobalt ss-surprising build quality from a company that lost touch with its customer base in 1980 or earlier, really fast and well screwed together in general. I was stunned at how much I liked this particular car, which survived being in a ditch upside down at freeway speed-and wasnt close to a total even being a relatively cheap car. lincoln town cars-not much of speed or handling, but they seat 5 pretty nice and are a lot of car for the money-excellent fit and finish-ford should do so well with thier other products. BMW m5,7s, 3s and z cars-all very well built and enjoyable to drive. same for boxsters and 911s-we work on a bunch of these 2 brands and they always impress. power and feel of the new 300 series chyslers from the drivers seat-too butt ugly to own and I hope no one I know saw me in one. otoh, magnum wagon with a hemi-style and big speed, same interior comfort and quality-the mercedes side of DCH is definitely showing through. anything korean-what a pos! anything toyota-slightly uncomfortable, noisy powertrains, will likely run forever on no maintenance. same for nissan, with the exception of the 350z, G35 coupes and sedans and fx-35 and 45 suvs. honda-good feel, nice materials, excellent fit and finish-couldnt be more boring. ok ok Ill get to the point-having the opportunity to drive everything out there in the 10k to 100k segments-and some 25 to 50 miles at a stretch (with the customers written permission, of course) the overall quality of anything built today or in the past 5 years just cannot be determined by all the various survey methods used-they are all, imho, skewed to get the end results they get. I could have spent more than I spent on my mcs-a g35 coupe in red with chrome wheels was really callling to me-but the car I bought has made me grin every time I go out to the garage and see it-for 7 months in a row and 15000 miles now-and it hasnt returned to the dealer for one thing. I do my own maintenance, oil and filters just aren't expensive enough to let the dealer personnel touch my car, and NOTHING has failed. Im certain a honda/toyota/nissan/what have you could have returned the same reliability-but not the driving pleasure the MINI provides. the mazdas and cobalt cited above were realllly nice cars with very good fit/finish/driving dynamics-and i was prepared to hate all 3 of them ---not that many bad cars being built in this period in our lives.
AUTOMOTIVE WISE, THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS! most of these surveys suck at giving really useful information.

 

Just a non-mechanically inclined gals point of view (who has been to the Mini dealership 4 times for trouble repairs in just over a year )

I think all new cars are destined to have more problems & the days of owning a car for 10 or 20 years are over. Why??? because so much is controlled by a computer. There is no longer such a thing as a "minor" repair. I know all the nifty tricks cars now perform are nice but I wish all car makers would get back to the basics. If there were a basic, minimally electronic Mini Cooper for sale I would be all over it. I have a 1980 (quite ugly) Ford F100 pick up truck for yardwork & hauling. When you open the hood it is freaky looking compared to todays cars. There is this big open space with just an engine in it (me & another person could crawl in there under the hood there is so much room). Anybody can work on it & that truck will probably still be running long after I am gone

 

Not that it has much to do with "quality" per se, but I totally agree with you on the easability of self maintenence.

Before my MINI I was the proud owner of a 1985 Cadillac Seville. It was nice to be able to open the enormous hood and be able to point out where everything was. And the only tools you needed was a screwdriver and a 1/2in. wrench.

 

Yeah, Sort of huh .....I guess in my mind I had already concidered it a foreign operation since the merger with diamler, and I am really only thinking of the two FAILING american companies when I think american cars....But yes the PT did come out before then....With that said Chrysler had to start over in the early eighties. They are a whole new company only 25 years old and it shows.

The Big 2 did start the SUV thing....Thats true and the forgein companies have been a little slow to catch up there. I mean, come on that Honda ridgeline was about 5 years late to market....BUT...at least it was better than the avalanche when it go here.

Maybe I have been a bit too critical of GM and Ford...But I grew up in a GM home, Drove old firebirds and camaros, I always wanted a new Cammaro but they let that horse die without giving it a drink....Every camaro rattles so much it makes our MINI's seem quiet! Those F-bodies were crap and that was thier flagship. I am still ticked off at them for such poor brand management.

Furthermore I work for a huge, 75yr old, 100,000+ employee company and have seen the inability of a large company to respond quickly to a rapidly changing world. They simply can not keep up. I see the writing on the wall, Without major govt bailouts these old lumbering giants will fail. (As chrysler did) They just can't adapt fast egnough, and I think its wrong for govt. to bailout bad buisness models.

 

Its just technology changing man. In those old cars you are talking about you had to grow up tinkering and fixing broken down crap all the time. You only knew how to diagnose and troubleshoot by lots of personal experiance which means your cars broke down a hell of a lot more than they do today. You had to spend hours and hours maintaing your "minimal electronic wonders" Yeah give me a computer and EFI any day over a 650 holley because I know it will start on a 0 degree winter morning. with computers, diagnostic tools and sensors I can replace parts quickly and not spend an afternoon under a shade tree with a couple of guys scratching are heads trying to figure out the problem.

 

I am a woman & have no desire to work on my own car. In my opinion the cost of keeping a car for 10 years will be prohibitive due to the high cost of repairs & replacement parts (which we see when a 5 year old car has a relatively minor wreck & is totalled due to the extremely high cost of repairs) . I don't think we will see many of todays cars on the road in 20 years becuase of that (& it's a shame).

I have had my 1980 Ford Truck for 4 years. When I 1st bought it I had a new carburetor put on for $100. Since then nada, no work & no money spent on it. It just drives .

 

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/10/Auto...ex.htm?cnn=yes

 

Gives a whole new meaning to "getting tailgated"

 

O-YEAH, Well I own all of my large collision repair facility...........well except for the part my wife owns.
You are correct, there aren't many bad cars being produced these days. Except for some of the products from Hundai, Kia. But when you factor in the cost of these vehicles they start to look really good.
Vehicles are lasting longer than in the past. We used to never see 100,000. miles on a car in our shop. Now 150,000. is common and 200,000. is not all that uncommon.
There is a car out there for everyone. A car that I may not personaly like or feel is a quality car is perfect for someone else.
That is one reason why surveys are not all that acurate, everybody has a different oppinion of what a quality vehicle is.

 

That 1980 probably has some technology that seemed newfangled and prone to failure to someone still changing points on thier 55 bel-aire. I remember how people shock thier heads at the first computer controlled fuel injected cars. (mid eighties) and now we think those are simple, we live in a technological world day to day reliability as well as long term durability are VASTLY better than 25 years ago. I guarantee that you will see more 2005 models in 2030 than you see 1980 model in 2005

And take a look at your repair bill...Its not the parts that kill you ...It's the labor! at $100hr labor rate at dealerships and $60-$80 in private shops you are paying for the training of the techs...(who by the way are lucky to see $20hr) It is common to see more money spen for labor than the parts.

 

Yeah the labor is a big part of it & the labor is higher because the technicians must be more technically trained. I am not saying the technology is good or bad but hec just having the airbags deploy in a car now can total or send a perfectly good running car to the junkpile based on replacement cost. It happened to me on a faulty airbag deployment in an 1996 car that only had a resale value of $3500 or so. The car ran perfectly & was paid for but who in their right mind would pay more than the worth of the car for a repair. That is my point. As your car ages, replacement technology (even older technology) will eventually cost more than the value of the car. Thus my whole point.

Also I am not talking so much of things like fuel injectors as I am talking about everything in a car being controlled by a computer from the headlights to the windshield wipers.

I doubt you will see more 2005 models in 2030 than you see 1980 models now because at a certain point the cost of repair makes you go give up & buy a new car. I dare you to try to fix or buy parts even for your 2005 Mini in 2006 (much less 2030 ) for the price I can fix my 1980 Ford right now.

 

It will always be CHEAPER to fix than to by new. Because most every car will lose that much value in depreciation the second you drive it home. And I have yet to see a car that actually takes several hundreds of dollars in repairs a month....lol.....shoot ....most people pay more money on the intrest on that 25k auto than they would in repairing (even expensive computer controlled cars) But we just like New and exciting things, we buy new cars cuz we want them not really because the math adds up! Before I bought my MINI I never drove a car that was less than 10yrs old and had more than 100k miles. There will always be a large base of people who just cant afford new cars and the math will force them to drive 2005's in 2030 even if you and I dont

 

....more on topic

FWIW....When I got married, my wife owned a 2002 Chevy Malibu....I will be letting you guys know which needs more repair. So far neither has needed anything but regular maintence