My 02 RAM has 80,000 miles and not single mechanical problem. I've bought new tires and that's it.
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 ...
Detroit's cars aren't horrible. But compared side-by-side to the competing Toyota, Honda, etc. they often seem "cheap" in appearance.
Ford actually has a reputation for building extremely safe vehicles. I read somewhere (and it wasn't a Ford advertisement) that the 2006 fleet of Fords ranks at or near the top of the safety rankings in almost every vehicle class.
Yeah, that jibes with what NPR reported the other day about the Ford restructuring.
I think he said $27/hr; he gave the impression that's pretty standard. Factor in bennies and it's more like $60/hr.
Car & Driver Magazine rated four mid-sized sedans in one of their recent issues (the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata, and Ford Fusion). The Fusion came out at #2, close behind the Accord.
That's not bad money for a workforce comprized of high school graduates or less.
It's not that difficult. Detroit's problems are easy to list, much harder to fix, and lots of blame to go around:
UAW - Squeezing until they killed their own business. Putting unfair pressure on companies for unreasonable demands.
Government - Tax, tax, tax. Hostile business regulations.
Management - Uninspired designs. Not being ahead of the curve in product offerings, instead, lagging the market. Agreeing to unreasonable labor demands. And finally, although quality is better, it's not as good as Honda/Toyota/Nissan. In general, if you buy an American car, you'll have it back to "shake it out". There are annoyance problems. My Bonneville is pretty good, but there were more than a few problems. In general, the Japanese cars are buy and drive. I'm older and cranky. When I buy a new car, I don't want to shake it out. I want to buy and drive.
So the Toyota and Honda resale value being much better than GM and Ford is about perception?
That's exactly what the head of VW said when Morgan Stanley evaluated percieved v. actual quality. VW was percieved as having very high quality, when in fact it was very low. He said he'd rather have his problems than Mercury's (the most under-appreciated brand) because its easier to fix quality than it is the perception of quality.
"It's all relative. Toyota and Honda make better, more reliable cars for less money."
Why are so many Toyotas and Hondas priced thousands over the comparable Ford (see Camry v. Fusion or Accord v. Fusion) then?
After 21 years of owning only Japanese cars, I purchased my first American (actually made in Canada) car in 2003. I like it overall, but the build quality is a definite step beneath the cars I owned previously, which were in a lower price category. My experience with the dealer has been somewhat less pleasant/reassuring as well.
I am not sure its a straight across pay for each union local, so it varies.
The problem is like a bad marriage. Management is the put-upon husband; the unions the gold-digging wife; the workers the spoiled kids.
Consumer Reports: "Sure, our sample group for our rankings is all of Brown University's associate professors in the
humanities colleges. So they like Volvos and Hondas, so what?"
Perception is reality. The Japanese brands didn't build their reputation for refined, high-quality cars overnight, nor did the big 3 make their reputation for building crap overnight. Perceptions influence resale values in a big way, so that when I bought a new Accord in 2004 I knew that it would hold its resale value better than just about anything else I could buy.
For me, when I think about it, everytime someone I know has a car that has major, expensive to fix mechanical problems, it's usually an American car. Nobody I know with a Japanese car has had to have an engine or transmission replaced. Honda had a big problem with auto trannies a couple of years ago, though, I know that. The difference is in how they handled the problem. They revised the design to eliminate the problem in the future, instead of continuing to crank a defective design out. For cars that had transmission problems, they fixed them whether in or out of warranty. And they instituted a program to inspect the problem trannies on the rest of the cars that had them, to do replacements or install a retrofit part to prevent the problem, before their customers had problems. This is not representative of how the US car makers have handled similar problems in the past.
And it's not just about reliability. Some people like knowing that they have a cutting-edge engine under the hood, even if it doesn't provide any real benefit from the driver's perspective. Fit and finish, inside and out, count too. Material selection - some materials just look and feel cheap. And then there's human factors - is the dash nicely designed, easy to read? Are the controls laid out in a non-confusing way, and easy to use? How do they feel when you use them. GM had the same left-side turn signal/wiper control/cruise control/headlight stalk for years and year. It was huge and ugly, difficult to use since too many controls were on one stalk, and it felt like you were breaking chicken bones every time you used it.
Maybe all of the above have been addressed, at least on some models. Some of it is obvious and can be seen and felt when you're sitting in the car. But the general distrust of the long-term reliability and durability (which aren't quite the same thing) of American (Ford and GM, and to a lesser extent D-C) cars will take time to overcome. I considered an American car when I bought my last one, but I feared, perhaps without cause, that I might get a lemon. But it's not as if Japanese cars are completely without problems. If the American car makers want to overcome this, and if they have the time and resources to do it, they will have to concentrate on matching the Japanese in quality, durability and innovation (or even beating them - you won't get ahead with a goal of matching your opponent) and keep it up for probably another decade. But this sort of long-term approach to business seems antithetical to US car company management.
That's the problem. With a relative already working there, kids could hire in at 18 and make more than their classmates start out after 4 years of college.
Throw in a spouse who worked a Delco and you have uneducated couples making $100,000 a year, but spending $120K. Everytime there is a slowdown, lay-off, or strike, literally hundreds of people are filing for bankruptcy the first week their pay is interrupted.
They tend to spend what they make when overtime is high, and can't make it when they have to live on 40 hours a week.
My 1996 Saturn cost me many times more in repairs - bad brakes in the first year (under warranty), leaky radiator, leaky sun roof, more brake repairs, bad engine mount, bad ignition switch, a few transmission repairs, broken power window coupling, bad alternator and probably a lot more that I don't remember.
Was the 96 Saturn better than some of the 70s crapmobiles? Yes. But it still wasn't as well put together as a Japanese car from almost 10 years earlier.
If you want me to take American cars seriously, then put a five or more year warranty on it. If the cars are built right, it won't cost the company much in covered repairs. That's how Hyundai started to get over their earlier quality reputation. Build better cars and stand behind them.
Actually, going back to the mid-late 90s, Ford had more 5-star crash ratings than all other manufacturers combined.
I know someone who split a highway guardrail at an estimated 85 mph in their Taurus and ended up in a field(the car was totalled, of course). All three (him, his wife, and their infant) were unscratched. They bought another Taurus the next day.
I've taken 4 different Ford F-250 4X4's over 250,000 miles.
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