Hey, come on! You are hurting the feelings of my GM car family fleet. And here I thought these cars couldn’t be any more reliable than they are!
Thanks, I’ll stay away from ancient Vegas and see if I can find out where the nearest Nissan dealer is located. I think there’s one just 120 miles from here.
Oh, and speaking of anecdotal stories… My brother-in-law tried a Nissan Pathfinder. It was nothing but trouble. He is not buying a Nissan any time soon.
Facts speak louder to me than anecdotes and myths. CSA
Agreed. This conversation seems to sway back and forth between discussion of new car reliability and reliability of cars made more than 20 years ago. It’s definitely a comparison of apples and oranges; really old rotten apples and fresh ripe oranges.
Nobody has disputed that there are still manufacturers whose cars are more reliable or less reliable than their competitors, the argument being made is that the difference between top quality manufacturers and less reliable manufacturers is a shrinking margin of manufacturing quality.
There will always be less reliable vehicles and more reliable vehicles, but the difference between them is likely to continue to shrink.
OH - Agree with shrinking. But there’s still a difference for me not to buy certain brands…especially since we keep our vehicles well beyond the norm. Most of these surveys don’t even track vehicles past 200k miles let alone 300k miles. So those differences could get even wider on higher mileage vehicles.
I agree with you, Mike! I never get rid of any vehicle with fewer than 250,000 miles. Here’s more anecdotal evidence… Our oldest car in the family fleet is an Impala with well over 300,000 miles on it. It has never had a wrench on the 3800 engine (other than oil changes and spark plugs) or transmission. That’s why I’ve keep buying GM.
Again, there’s not a hill of beans of difference in reliability from one brand to another. I’m sure the biggest difference is from one vehicle to another identical vehicle within a particular brand. CSA
I suspect that was tongue in cheek. FWIW- I have gotten more manufacturer’s recalls, service alerts and warranty extension notifications from Honda for my 2012 Odyssey than all of my other cars combined over my driving lifetime! While I certainly appreciate their standing behind the product, it’s certainly had its share of warts.
I said this years ago- wait until they get big. Then you’ll see them plagued by many of the same issues as other very large corporations churning out larger production volumes. The gap is shrinking for sure. But it’s doing it by movement from both sides of the equation. The less reliable are certainly improving and the previously high end of reliability is dropping as well.
Quality is done though best practices. Companies either apply best practices or don’t. They don’t have one vehicle designed/built with best practices and another not. Many vehicles within a brand share many components (engine, transmission just to name a couple). Quality has always come from Top Down. Especially in large manufacturing companies. Process is too complicate and too large not to.
There is a third option you seemed to have missed. Some companies apply “best practices” without regard for context, missing out on what made them successful for another organization, but not for them.
I see this a lot in the public sector, but it happens in the private sector too. One organization institutes a policy that works for them. Another company sees the successful adoption of that policy, so they adopt it themselves, only to discover they don’t get the same result.
Organizations like car companies interact with their policy environments in ways that are sometimes difficult to anticipate. Sometimes these interactions between the organization and its environment are easy to anticipate, but nobody bothers to consider them when implementing the policy.
This is why “best practices” is no longer a chic buzzword. In fact, saying “best practices” among policy implementation experts will elicit a loud groan.
I’m appalled.
Let me explain what I meant. As I stated, I read Technical Service Bulletins just about every day (online access) for just about all manufacturers. They all have them. They address common or recurring problems that don’t always have a simple to diagnose or obvious cause or solution. Frequently, revised parts are advised.
Although the problems can be common to some/few/many vehicles, not all the vehicles will develop any symptoms, regardless of…
Even within reliable vehicle makes/models, some are more reliable than others and I believe the differences can be greater than differences in reliability between makes/models. Almost every car company has customers who feel they’ve bought a “lemon” and it is possible that they did. CSA
Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
In my youth GM was the largest and richest automobile manufacturer in the history of the world. If they’re so doggoned good, why did we need to bail them out? And why aren’t theirs any longer among the highest selling models?
Face it. People buy more of certain makes and models because they’ve learned that they’re better quality. And they move away from others because they’ve learned that they offer lesser quality. Or deny it if you choose. Me? I’ll stick with the data. And with my experience.
It isn’t a question of year or era. My Vega and my first Corolla were of the same vintage, and direct competitors. The Corolla was simply far better quality. I had my '89 Toyota pickup long before my (then) wife bought the '95 Saturn… and long after the Saturn’s engine died and the car deteriorated into, as my kids told me, a “piece of junk”. A “rattletrap”. So I’m comparing vehicles of the same vintage. Your argument is moot.
GM needed a bailout because they didn’t prepare for the recession as well as Ford did. It was a matter of economic forecasting and planning, not vehicle quality. The same issues that plagued GM in terms of its reputation for quality at that time also affected Ford, but Ford didn’t need a bailout because they saw the recession coming and cut back on manufacturing ahead of time, reducing their inventory before the recession hit.
There are many reasons someone chooses one car over another, and vehicle quality is often not a factor, especially when the margin of quality is small between manufacturers. The psychological calculus put into choosing one vehicle make over another often includes many factors other than predicted reliability, and often, the decision includes superficial factors, such as color and body style.
There’s learning from history and there’s stubborn refusal to accept new data in one’s decision making process. I’d like to think we’re all wise enough not to rely too heavily on one or the other exclusively.
For me and most of my family and friends quality/durability has been #1. Yes other factors come into ply, like gas mileage, comfort, looks and price. But given that criteria I can usually come up with a list of vehicles to choose from. What that list mainly does is eliminate a bunch of vehicles. Quality/Durability eliminates the most.
As it has for me and for most of my friends and acquaintances. And clearly millions of others.
GM was in trouble before the recession. And they’ve now had a multi-multi billion dollar bailout that should have put them at the top of the industry again. That “recession” excuse ain’t cuttin’ it. The reality is that they got badly beaten in their own industry, and it started in the '70s as a result of their own failures. Unfortunately, they just went with “business as usual”.
I’d like to treat your article as a definitive source on the issue, but I see a few flaws with it.
One flaw is that what someone says is a reason for buying a vehicle might not be the actual reason. In marketing, there is a lot of influence exerted on the unconscious/subconscious mind. Sometimes we know why we buy something, and sometimes we don’t. Often, we’re not aware of the effects advertising and marketing have on us. Getting into the real factors of purchasing decisions requires an in-depth exploration of an individual’s psyche, not a mere multiple-choice survey.
I’d rather ask a psychologist who specializes in marketing why a particular person bought a particular item than ask J.D. Power based on a multiple-choice survey that we can’t even review to see how well the questionnaire was designed. A psychologist has the expertise to answer this question better than a marketing professional.
Another flaw is one the article’s author cops to (emphasis added):
“Putting on my professional opinion hat, I’d bet that people know and accept how much money they have to spend on a car, and simply shop within that price window, ultimately choosing a vehicle based on other attributes such as those listed below.”
In other words, the article is dripping with assumptions and speculation, mixed with a dose of anecdote.
Lastly, I question J.D. Power and Associates’ objectivity. They’re in the business of collecting information from consumers that they can sell to companies. They don’t conduct pure research isolated from conflict of interest. Their process for selecting people to survey is far from random. Auto manufacturers pay J.D. Power and Associates a licensing fee to use J.D. Power awards in their advertising campaigns.
This lack of objectivity is why I don’t trust Consumer Reports as much as I used to when they didn’t sell advertising. CR built its reputation on maintaining its objectivity by refusing to sell advertising. J.D. Power and Associates never even bothered trying to appear impartial, at least not during my lifetime. Maybe they were back when they were founded in the 1950s, but they’re not now.
That doesn’t even pass the smell test. If what you assume is true, then manufacturers would be putting quality as their #1 criteria…yet you say it’s NOT.
It’s also funny how their list matches mine and almost everyone I know.
That’s some fine cherry-picking, and you have a lovely straw man there.
I don’t see how you go from my questioning of J.D. Power and Associates’ objectivity and pull from it an assumption related to marketing strategy. I did not recommend or comment on any marketing strategy; I merely dissected the article you cited as a source, and laid out a few of its flaws. I could go back and find more flaws, but what’s the point? You haven’t countered or disproved any point that I made today.
What I did say (and am willing to repeat) is that marketing research should be conducted objectively and thoroughly, removed from conflict of interest. I most definitely did not delve into marketing strategy, with good reason; it’s not one of my areas of expertise. Market research happens to be an area in which I am well educated.
Beware of confirmation bias, and beware simple answers to complex questions. The opinions expressed inside your personal bubble are not exhaustive or random enough to make broad sweeping generalizations.
Lastly, writing an article that fits your narrative is good marketing. It will keep you coming back. It seems to have worked well on you.
The point which you missed…you say QUALITY isn’t a selection criteria…yet you also say the article is used by the industry for marketing…gee…if that’s the case then QUALITY shouldn’t be on the list. And t he list should match YOUR CRITERIA.
