Posted on 01/26/2006 11:13:00 AM PST by Dan Nunn
With all the bad news coming out of Detroit these days, many have a disarmingly simple suggestion: Ford and General Motors should simply build better cars.
"I read that Ford plans to cut about 30 000 jobs in North America alone," one CNNMoney.com reader wrote. "How about building better cars instead?'
How about that?
A perception of poor quality certainly isn't the only reason Ford and GM cars can have trouble in today's market. But it's a factor.
We looked at J.D. Power and Associates Long-term Dependability Surveys to get a sense of where American cars rank in terms of reliability and how much they've improved. That survey measures the number of problems vehicle owners have after 3 years of ownership.
We also checked with Consumer Reports to see what they thought about GM and Ford's performance in terms of reliability.
The answer is that, overall, GM and Ford cars are not that bad. In fact, depending on which survey you believe, they may even have become pretty good.
The problem is that "pretty good" has become "not quite good enough" in a world where quality standards have been raised so high and which many consumers still have bad memories of General Motors and Ford cars that have failed them in the past.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
That bad, over priced, greedy salesmen...take your pic. At least the UAW workers are well off.
OTOH, most of the foreign makes I've owned have been problem children.
But nothing's ever been as good as my old Plymouth Satellite.
LOL.
Domestic iron doesn't have to be awful to be passed over for really good to great imports.
Clearly, it's relative, and the American cars come up short compared to Japanese products. It's simple, really.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what's in it for CNN to prop up US carmakers...?
Oh, wait. Now I know.
LOL
You're right. A lot of the problem isn't the quality of the cars; it's the perception of quality. It's a lot easier to fix quality than it is to change perceptions.
That said, anyone still using the old line that 'American cars suck' is smoking crack.
Detroit still makes a lot of models that Americans don't want, but they sure as hell make some models that people really do.
If I had the gumption, I'd love to buy one of the new Shelby Cobra Mustangs or an '06 Z06 Corvette.
This is as stupid as the Chicago Tribune story "Does Patriotism Sell Cars?".
For the last 30 years, the media fawns over Toyota and Honda while ignoring their recalls and defects. The media does not investigate their tactic of "silent recalls" to avoid reporting dangerous defects.
Of course, if an American made car has a defective volume control on the radio, it is reported as if thousands will die as a result of their incompetence.
Finally, the media then starts asking people if American cars are all that bad. They are shocked that the PERCEPTION of quality is poor, even though the truth is that there is little difference between American and Japanese quality.
After owning several non-American cars the last few years, BMW, Nissan, Isuzu, we bought a 2005 Buick LeSabre in 2004 and have been very happy with it. It performs as advertised, the service is great (customer and maintenance) and best of all my wife loves it. The OnStar and XM radio are a huge plus.
Yes.
one they offer a comparable 100k mile standard warranty , I might be convinced.
Wait for the new Dodge Challenger with the hemi. Amazing.
Achrysler Transmission plant here, I believe is around $27/hr. with benefits, the cost to the manufacturer is over $57/hr.
It's all relative. Toyota and Honda make better, more reliable cars for less money.
And, yes, it does take a very long time to live down a bad reputation. For years, Detroit spent more money on advertising and imagery than they did on substance. You can get away with that for a long time, but when a PR empire collapses, it's not easy to rebuild.
I remember when anyone who was successful in life bought a Cadillac, because that was THE luxury car to own. Then Mercedes and others entered the market, and Cadillac got the reputation of being a pimpmobile. So, now they're fighting bad PR instead of riding the wave of good PR.
*gulp*
If you don't want to buy Japanese, that's your business. But nobody is going to bully me about how I spend twenty-five thousand of my hard-earned dollars.
When my wife and I were recently faced with the new car buying decision, it wasn't too hard to decide at all. Being the first time we were in a position to buy new, we were exhaustive in our field research, driving many cars both foreign and domestic. Detroit quality may be pretty good, but in that class of autos it is nowhere close to the Japanese. For that matter, interstingly enough, neither were the German products. We both thought that American cars were superior to the Audi's and VW's we looked at.
I had a Jeep Cherokee that lasted 232,000 miles and 10 years.
Still, most Fords I have rented and/or GMs I have ridden in were rattletraps.
I have a Toyota now and have to stifle a grin everytime I fire it up.
I agree it's a question of perception more than reality. Every time one of those union thugs starts bloviating on television about workers rights someone goes out and buys a new Japanese car. Detroit can't clean up its act until the unions clean up theirs. The unions will never go away, thus, US automakers are locked in a death tryst with the unions. Unions are dying and will take down the automakers with them. A classic case of the parasite killing its own host.
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