JD Power: Initial Quality Study 2008

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I think Ford overall is deserving of some kudos. Their brands seem to be doing better!

 

[Horsepower]

This seems to be true in the field as well. Two of my previous Lexus RX customers switched to the Edge. But then there's also price.

 

[BlackTigers]

Nice to see some American makers getting up there.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Originally posted by: BlackTigers91
Nice to see some American makers getting up there.

They've been up there for a few years now, and yes, it's good to see.

 

[Arkaign]

I'm a happy Ford owner, but I'm gonna trot out my usual 'JD Power' = garbage opinion. I really don't have any respect for them, at all. Their studies pretty much only reflect a very short period of time, and are pretty arbitrary in scoring. At the end of it, you're left with Acura tying with Kia as slightly below average, and such nonsense as Scion being near the worst, and Toyota the best, when the cars actually ARE Toyotas, selling as Toyota in Japan and Europe. (Scion = 'Avensis', XB = 'Corolla Rumion', and XD = 'Ist'.)

ARGH.

Wake me up when there's a survey/quality assessment that's not full of marketing bullshite and impossible contradiction.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I'm a happy Ford owner, but I'm gonna trot out my usual 'JD Power' = garbage opinion. I really don't have any respect for them, at all. Their studies pretty much only reflect a very short period of time, and are pretty arbitrary in scoring. At the end of it, you're left with Acura tying with Kia as slightly below average, and such nonsense as Scion being near the worst, and Toyota the best, when the cars actually ARE Toyotas, selling as Toyota in Japan and Europe. (Scion = 'Avensis', XB = 'Corolla Rumion', and XD = 'Ist'.)

ARGH.

Wake me up when there's a survey/quality assessment that's not full of marketing bullshite and impossible contradiction.

If you actually looked into you might get a clue. JD powers does a scientific survey of owners. They take that and put it in chart form.

Sorry you can;t see that most cars are very close. So take a step back and see that its not that any one car line is THAT great, but most are very close to being the same. A lto of problems are not because of the car line, but the owner.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I'm a happy Ford owner, but I'm gonna trot out my usual 'JD Power' = garbage opinion. I really don't have any respect for them, at all. Their studies pretty much only reflect a very short period of time, and are pretty arbitrary in scoring. At the end of it, you're left with Acura tying with Kia as slightly below average, and such nonsense as Scion being near the worst, and Toyota the best, when the cars actually ARE Toyotas, selling as Toyota in Japan and Europe. (Scion = 'Avensis', XB = 'Corolla Rumion', and XD = 'Ist'.)

ARGH.

Wake me up when there's a survey/quality assessment that's not full of marketing bullshite and impossible contradiction.

If you actually looked into you might get a clue. JD powers does a scientific survey of owners. They take that and put it in chart form.

Sorry you can;t see that most cars are very close. So take a step back and see that its not that any one car line is THAT great, but most are very close to being the same. A lto of problems are not because of the car line, but the owner.

I still maintain that using JD Powers to assess the relative quality/reliability of a car is nearly useless in practical form. It is only a marketing game. Believe me, I've looked into it at length, and there's nothing that ever convinced me that it was worthwhile.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I'm a happy Ford owner, but I'm gonna trot out my usual 'JD Power' = garbage opinion. I really don't have any respect for them, at all. Their studies pretty much only reflect a very short period of time, and are pretty arbitrary in scoring. At the end of it, you're left with Acura tying with Kia as slightly below average, and such nonsense as Scion being near the worst, and Toyota the best, when the cars actually ARE Toyotas, selling as Toyota in Japan and Europe. (Scion = 'Avensis', XB = 'Corolla Rumion', and XD = 'Ist'.)

ARGH.

Wake me up when there's a survey/quality assessment that's not full of marketing bullshite and impossible contradiction.

If you actually looked into you might get a clue. JD powers does a scientific survey of owners. They take that and put it in chart form.

Sorry you can;t see that most cars are very close. So take a step back and see that its not that any one car line is THAT great, but most are very close to being the same. A lto of problems are not because of the car line, but the owner.

I still maintain that using JD Powers to assess the relative quality/reliability of a car is nearly useless in practical form. It is only a marketing game. Believe me, I've looked into it at length, and there's nothing that ever convinced me that it was worthwhile.

So asking a large random group of people that own "product A" if it is good and what if any problems went wrong with it is not a good way to judge "product A"?

 

[Arkaign]

No, not really. People themselves are pretty unreliable witnesses. And the weighting of perceived problem areas is pretty uneven.

Much better is to look at the long-term test mules of decent magazine staff, to see specifics that people ran into. But there's really no perfect or even near-perfect study that I know of.

 

[Ktulu]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
No, not really. People themselves are pretty unreliable witnesses. And the weighting of perceived problem areas is pretty uneven.

Much better is to look at the long-term test mules of decent magazine staff, to see specifics that people ran into. But there's really no perfect or even near-perfect study that I know of.

I've gotta disagree with you here. What if the Mag got a dud or lemon does would that mean all cars of the model will perform the same? Of course not. True the common consumer is probably unreliable, but it's far better to take your results from a large sample than from one single test subject IMHO.

Anyways, how does CR do their testing? Is it any more scientific?

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Arkaign
No, not really. People themselves are pretty unreliable witnesses. And the weighting of perceived problem areas is pretty uneven.

Much better is to look at the long-term test mules of decent magazine staff, to see specifics that people ran into. But there's really no perfect or even near-perfect study that I know of.

I've gotta disagree with you here. What if the Mag got a dud or lemon does would that mean all cars of the model will perform the same? Of course not. True the common consumer is probably unreliable, but it's far better to take your results from a large sample than from one single test subject IMHO.

Anyways, how does CR do their testing? Is it any more scientific?

yep JD Powers survey is wide and random and as such meets the term of a scientific survey. As such it will get some that are very good on bad cars abnd some bad on good ones. But it will even out and give results that should fit the norm for the majority.

CR is NOT a scientific survey. They ONLY survey people that sign up for their magizines/site. As such their sample is already slim and flawed before they start.

 

[Arkaign]

This explains a little more :

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/0...-jd-power-methodology/

http://www.truedelta.com/

No, I'm not saying that any Magazine, or CR in particular, is a perfect place to get info. But looking at any particular model, you'll at least get a decent idea of what it's like to drive one for a set number of miles, with a detailed report on the exact problems that they ran into (if any). With JD Power, you get a pretty arbitrary score, which doesn't even make sense when you look at how brands with shared production lines / assembly / drivetrain get vastly different scores. As I said, it seems to be more advertiser-driven and marketing-oriented than useful in choosing a car.

For example, it's pretty obvious (look at the Top Gear auto survey, for example, though they do have more diesels over there), where Mercedes is pretty well known to be unreliable and problematic. That may not matter to most rich people who buy them only to dump them in 12-24 months, but it's sad that Mercedes is listed as one of the top most trouble-free in this survey, and almost at the bottom of the Top Gear survey. And Subaru has more problems than VW? REALLY?

 

[vi edit]

Keep in mind it's an initial quality rating. Not long term reliability. Basically if it rolls off the assembly line with all parts working, panels neatly alligned, ect then it gets higher marks.

That doesn't mean that after it hits 50k miles it's not going to be a money pit.

I still contend that quality and reliability are two different things when it comes to cars.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: vi edit
Keep in mind it's an initial quality rating. Not long term reliability. Basically if it rolls off the assembly line with all parts working, panels neatly alligned, ect then it gets higher marks.

That doesn't mean that after it hits 50k miles it's not going to be a money pit.

I still contend that quality and reliability are two different things when it comes to cars.

I agree that quality and reliability aren't always aligned, particularly in the first couple years of a car's lifespan.

But explain this :

According to JD Power, Kia ties with Acura? What? My sister-in-law just bought a new Kia Rio. Went to the dealer, and just looking through the cars, there are tons of flaws. Bad stitching, shift boot snap thing broken on one, panels not lining up, steering wheel off center, just loads of little problems. Her car is decent, it starts and runs every time. But we had to take off the original hubcaps, they were causing a rattling noise. My brother has owned several Acuras, and aside from a transmission failure (paid for in full by Honda after the factory warranty had expired!), hasn't had any flaws or defects to report.

 

[Pariah]

The experience of one is never sufficient evidence to discredit the experience of many in a research project of this type. Regardless of how reliable JD Power is, I didn't see anything all that surprising in their results except that Mercedes was so high. But then again, it's Mercedes, so who cares? They could be dead last and people would still buy them.

 

[Riverhound777]

Didn't know Mazda and Subaru were so low. Oh well my Mazda is going just fine.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Didn't know Mazda and Subaru were so low. Oh well my Mazda is going just fine.

Yeah, the day I believe that Kia is much better 'quality' than Mazda, I'll feel free to check myself into the asylum.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Didn't know Mazda and Subaru were so low. Oh well my Mazda is going just fine.

Yeah, the day I believe that Kia is much better 'quality' than Mazda, I'll feel free to check myself into the asylum.

What's with your Kia obsession? How many 2008 Kia's have you purchased?

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Didn't know Mazda and Subaru were so low. Oh well my Mazda is going just fine.

Yeah, the day I believe that Kia is much better 'quality' than Mazda, I'll feel free to check myself into the asylum.

What's with your Kia obsession? How many 2008 Kia's have you purchased?

Personally, none. But as I said, my sister-in-law just picked up a new Rio. It's not a bad deal for the $$, but I looked at lots of Rios and Spectras, and they were pretty rough on the details. Hers is just a few weeks old and the passenger window crank is broken, for example

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

I agree that quality and reliability aren't always aligned, particularly in the first couple years of a car's lifespan.

But explain this :

According to JD Power, Kia ties with Acura? What? My sister-in-law just bought a new Kia Rio. Went to the dealer, and just looking through the cars, there are tons of flaws. Bad stitching, shift boot snap thing broken on one, panels not lining up, steering wheel off center, just loads of little problems. Her car is decent, it starts and runs every time. But we had to take off the original hubcaps, they were causing a rattling noise. My brother has owned several Acuras, and aside from a transmission failure (paid for in full by Honda after the factory warranty had expired!), hasn't had any flaws or defects to report.

part of it is customer expectation. acura owners are probably going to be more picky than kia owners. so they'll see more things as 'problems.'

and i'd say a transmission failure is worse than the center of the steering wheel not matching the center of the seat (which a lot of people probably wouldn't notice).


as for why the dependability survey is only 3 years rather than the old 5: with all the leasing going on there are fewer and fewer original owners after 5 years than there were.


i'd also like to see a better breakdown as to what the responses were. a car with larger than expected panel gaps is something that i can live with a bit more than a car whose transmission falls out after 10,000 miles.



edit: and toyota took quality out of scion. sure, it may be the same platform as toyotas elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the standards for components are the same. not to say that scion is awful or to be avoided, but it is definitely built to a (low) price.

 

[lurk3r]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I'm a happy Ford owner, but I'm gonna trot out my usual 'JD Power' = garbage opinion. I really don't have any respect for them, at all. Their studies pretty much only reflect a very short period of time, and are pretty arbitrary in scoring. At the end of it, you're left with Acura tying with Kia as slightly below average, and such nonsense as Scion being near the worst, and Toyota the best, when the cars actually ARE Toyotas, selling as Toyota in Japan and Europe. (Scion = 'Avensis', XB = 'Corolla Rumion', and XD = 'Ist'.)

ARGH.

Wake me up when there's a survey/quality assessment that's not full of marketing bullshite and impossible contradiction.

If you actually looked into you might get a clue. JD powers does a scientific survey of owners. They take that and put it in chart form.

Sorry you can;t see that most cars are very close. So take a step back and see that its not that any one car line is THAT great, but most are very close to being the same. A lto of problems are not because of the car line, but the owner.

I still maintain that using JD Powers to assess the relative quality/reliability of a car is nearly useless in practical form. It is only a marketing game. Believe me, I've looked into it at length, and there's nothing that ever convinced me that it was worthwhile.

I agree JD is full of crap, but its not marketing, or their fault, they use consumer surveys, for their results, so all you really get is an overview of how bitchy/whiny the relative care owner's are.

Up farther someone mentioned Scoin scores low, that just means that the ppl returning their surveys were less happy with their $13K corollas with the blinged out rims that the people that actually bought the corolla.

 

[lurk3r]

Originally posted by: Ktulu

Originally posted by: Arkaign
No, not really. People themselves are pretty unreliable witnesses. And the weighting of perceived problem areas is pretty uneven.

Much better is to look at the long-term test mules of decent magazine staff, to see specifics that people ran into. But there's really no perfect or even near-perfect study that I know of.

I've gotta disagree with you here. What if the Mag got a dud or lemon does would that mean all cars of the model will perform the same? Of course not. True the common consumer is probably unreliable, but it's far better to take your results from a large sample than from one single test subject IMHO.

Anyways, how does CR do their testing? Is it any more scientific?

And flip it the other way, what if the manufacturer guarantees it delivers a perfect car for testing, and their QC is crap.

 

[lurk3r]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: Arkaign

I agree that quality and reliability aren't always aligned, particularly in the first couple years of a car's lifespan.

But explain this :

According to JD Power, Kia ties with Acura? What? My sister-in-law just bought a new Kia Rio. Went to the dealer, and just looking through the cars, there are tons of flaws. Bad stitching, shift boot snap thing broken on one, panels not lining up, steering wheel off center, just loads of little problems. Her car is decent, it starts and runs every time. But we had to take off the original hubcaps, they were causing a rattling noise. My brother has owned several Acuras, and aside from a transmission failure (paid for in full by Honda after the factory warranty had expired!), hasn't had any flaws or defects to report.

part of it is customer expectation. acura owners are probably going to be more picky than kia owners. so they'll see more things as 'problems.'

and i'd say a transmission failure is worse than the center of the steering wheel not matching the center of the seat (which a lot of people probably wouldn't notice).


as for why the dependability survey is only 3 years rather than the old 5: with all the leasing going on there are fewer and fewer original owners after 5 years than there were.


i'd also like to see a better breakdown as to what the responses were. a car with larger than expected panel gaps is something that i can live with a bit more than a car whose transmission falls out after 10,000 miles.



edit: and toyota took quality out of scion. sure, it may be the same platform as toyotas elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the standards for components are the same. not to say that scion is awful or to be avoided, but it is definitely built to a (low) price.

The trans didn't fail after 10,000 miles, he stated clearly it was after the warranty, and they still covered it.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: lurk3r

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: Arkaign

I agree that quality and reliability aren't always aligned, particularly in the first couple years of a car's lifespan.

But explain this :

According to JD Power, Kia ties with Acura? What? My sister-in-law just bought a new Kia Rio. Went to the dealer, and just looking through the cars, there are tons of flaws. Bad stitching, shift boot snap thing broken on one, panels not lining up, steering wheel off center, just loads of little problems. Her car is decent, it starts and runs every time. But we had to take off the original hubcaps, they were causing a rattling noise. My brother has owned several Acuras, and aside from a transmission failure (paid for in full by Honda after the factory warranty had expired!), hasn't had any flaws or defects to report.

part of it is customer expectation. acura owners are probably going to be more picky than kia owners. so they'll see more things as 'problems.'

and i'd say a transmission failure is worse than the center of the steering wheel not matching the center of the seat (which a lot of people probably wouldn't notice).


as for why the dependability survey is only 3 years rather than the old 5: with all the leasing going on there are fewer and fewer original owners after 5 years than there were.


i'd also like to see a better breakdown as to what the responses were. a car with larger than expected panel gaps is something that i can live with a bit more than a car whose transmission falls out after 10,000 miles.



edit: and toyota took quality out of scion. sure, it may be the same platform as toyotas elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the standards for components are the same. not to say that scion is awful or to be avoided, but it is definitely built to a (low) price.

The trans didn't fail after 10,000 miles, he stated clearly it was after the warranty, and they still covered it.

Yeah it was an '01 TL-S, and they fixed it in late '04/early '05, with something like 115k on the clock (yeah my brother drives a lot for his job).

Really impressed me that the dealer / Honda motor company stepped up on that.

But yeah, JD Power wouldn't have noticed trans failure on my brother, because it failed long after their 'initial quality' study was long over.

Speaking of the 3-year "long-term" (LOL) studies, they do reflect what amounts to a common behavior in this country, that is the compulsion to always own a new or nearly-new vehicle. It's a lot easier on the wallet and the environment if more people would ride a car out to 5-7 years, and/or 120k miles or so.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Has anyone here been a part of a JD Power study?

I've purchased a few new cars over the last 8 years and I've never once been asked to participate in those studies.