GM is missing the point again

Rising Sun · 2007-06-08T20:24:17+00:00

The Autobeat ..General Motors and Chrysler tumbled down the list in J.D. Power and Associates? annual Initial Quality Study. The study measures problems found in the first 90 days of ownership after interviewing 97,000 consumers.GM did poorly and a company spokesman argued that the survey doesn?t matter. All of GM?s brands finished below the industry average, which is 125 problems per 100 vehicles...The reason it doesn?t matter, says the spokesman, is that the difference between top performers and the middle of the pack is statistically irrelevant. Toyota, which tied Jaguar for sixth with 112 problems per 100 vehicles, beat Chevy by just 17 problems per 100 cars. He makes a point. Few consumers will notice 17 problems per 100 vehicles. The Power study, he told me, is becoming less and less relevant because quality is reaching parity.There's some truth to that. But the argument naively misses a huge point. While some brands like Mercedes moved way up the charts this year and others, like Chrysler, tumbled way down, hot names like Honda and Toyota are in the top 10 every year. Every year!Consumers love and trust those brands. And those companies have been dining on Motown?s market share for decades now. Sure, Detroit is close, by the numbers anyway. But consumers won?t believe that Detroit is as good as Honda and Toyota until they beat them and beat them consistently in J.D. Power surveys, Consumer Reports studies, word-of-mouth recommendations and just general buzz. I?m sorry, why should a guy who?s on his third Toyota or Honda buy a Chevy? Because the initial quality is almost as good and the disparity is statistically minuscule? There?s a great sales pitch...==========Rising Sun:

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DH 19 years ago

You're saying GM doesn't have a 100K mile powertrain warranty?

I'd agree with you there. It's just a carefully calculated publicity stunt. It's a 5-year/100K mile powertrain warranty, most people don't put that many miles on their cars in 5 years, so it's not really any better than a 5/60 or

5/75 for most people but still gives GM something to talk about in their ads.

Besides, GM's relying on their dealer network to stonewall people and ultimately avoid paying for any repairs at all. Of course, now that they don't own GMAC any more, GM's going to find it harder to take those people with "warranteed" but half-dead GM cars, which have suffered calamitous depreciation in the first two years, on which the customers are thoroughly upside down and roll the whole steaming pile into a 7-year loan to get the marks into a shiny new GM Turdmobile. It's more and more likely that those GM victims will drag the car to an independent, get the cheapest possible repair done and move into a Toyota or Honda as soon as they possibly can (or even move into a Kia or a Hyundai - which turn out to be fairly decent cars).

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Mike Hunter 19 years ago

I think you are making things up as you go along. LOL

mike

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coachrose13 19 years ago

I'm really not trying to start a fight here, or even try to be smart. I've owned 14 GM products over the past 30 years and have been satisfied with all of them;of course, some more than others. Some vehicles I have kept for many many years, others, I sold or traded after a couple of years. One thing has been constant in ALL of the GM cars I have owned is this: I have NEVER owned a GM car that I have had to get rid of because it was mechanically unsound or unreliable. And if I had to replace a starter, water pump,AND timing belt after only

138000 miles, I would probably not continuing to own GM products!

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coachrose13 19 years ago

If God have intended for JD Powers or Consumer Reports to think for you, he wouldn't have given you a brain. All cars built today are pretty much equal, and have been for a long time. Continue to buy your Japanese products, I'll buy my American, which for some reason, does not break down nor get recalled at nearly the rate as these "perfect" Toyotas do. (BTW, is it my opinion, or does EVERY NEW GENERATION Camary look more ugly than the one before it?)

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Hachiroku 19 years ago

It's just that some are more equal than others...

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DH 19 years ago

If that timing belt has lasted "only 138000 miles," it's probably a timing CHAIN.

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Gordon McGrew 19 years ago

Neither JD Power not CR constitute thought. They are information, data if you will. Thought is the brain's process for interpreting data.

Just as you shouldn't confuse data with thought, you shouldn't confuse unsupported assertions with data. CR data shows that there are big differences in reliability among the cars on the market.

Unfortunately, CR changed their reporting a couple years ago and it is now harder to determine exactly what the failure rates are. One assumes they are not much different from what they were before the change. Some domestic and German 5-7 year-old cars have 5 or 6 problem areas where failure rates exceed 10% or even 15% per year, not to mention less than stellar rates in the other areas. There are some domestics with reliability records which are not terrible and some are equal to the second tier Japanese manufacturers. 5-7 year-old Toyotas and Hondas seldom have any area with worse than 5% failure rate. and many areas have less than 2% failures. With 14 different systems, and a few years of ownership, this difference really adds up.

Yeah, I continually buy one every eleven or twelve years.

This is what is known as the straw man argument. No one claims that Toyotas or Hondas are perfect.

Yes, it is your opinion. A fact would be that every generation sells better than the one before it.

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Joe LaVigne 19 years ago

Hmmm. Recall rate... I have an 06 Si. No recalls yet, and not a single service visit. I've never had an American car with that kind of reliabilty. A few oil changes in 20,000 miles, and a tire rotation.

Yep, that damned Japanese reliability just sucks...

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noobiedoobie 19 years ago

On Jun 10, 9:16 pm, ACAR wrote:

I think it is enlightening to realize that the Big Three designed their cars to need repair frequently from the very beginning, while the Japanese had the exact opposite approach and designed their cars for durabililty from the very beginning. Hence the vast difference in quality between the two. In recent years, this gap has indeed dwindled for two reasons: the Americans have been forced by economics of sale to improve quality, and the Japanese have taken on some of the American way of thinking and have begun designing some of their components to fail after a predetermined length of time or duration of use. This allows future revenue in repairs and service. One example: Honda designed their Odyssey with a condensor without any protection from chips or stones from the road and has gotten back a huge windfall with the repairs, but the rest of the vehicle is absolutely top-notch. Another example: GM changed their horrible minivan and small truck vehicle platform to a new one as seen in the Envoy and Canyon etc... which is of top-notch quality and durability but it took them so many years because they were reaping huge windfalls from the downstream repairs of the old units. So, in a nutshell, Mike is partly right and partly wrong. I buy Hondas because I like the chassis designs and of course the engine reliability is legendary. But so are the Toyotas, but I don't buy them because I think they are plain ugly, the whole line of them from the Corolla to the Tundra.

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