Sort of OT: JD Power vs. Consumer Reports

Not if expressed in those terms. What does that have to do with 139 failures per hundred, reported by those that returned a survey? Even if it was of 100% of the owners? According to your way figuring, the failure 'rate' would be over 100%. Retake mathematics 101, WBMA ;)

I.E. Brand 'X' 95 (.095)

Lexus 139 (1.39%) Porsche 149 Lincoln 151 Buick 163 Cadillac 175 (1.75%) Infiniti 178 Toyota 194 Mercury 195 Honda 201 Acura 203 (2.03%)

mike hunt

Ernie Sty wrote:

My intent was to answer the question asked, not begin a debate. . What I said was from what we see, of the brands on the market, every manufacture is building good dependable vehicles today and the only real difference is style and price.

One has just a good a change of getting one of the bad ones from any brand. However the odds are that the ONE you get will be one of the eight out of ten that are good ones. It's your money spend it where you wish, I could not care less.

If one is worried about repair costs they would do better looking at the COST of parts, needed for the repairs among brands when repairs become necessary, because they all will need to be repaired at some point. A power steering pump for a Cadillac, for instance, is around $500. A power steering pump for a Lexus is around $1,500. The odds are they will both need one within 200K if one is a long term owner.

mike hunt

When did you last own a Chevy? I am not much of a Chevy guy, or even a GM guy (although I do own a Saturn), but I know lots of people who own Chevy's and none of them have any problems making 10 years with minimal problems. And from personal experiences and observations of my co-workers, I'd say in general the Chevy buyers are a lot better off than the typical Toyota buyer. Toyota are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, little, if any, more reliable than the cheapest cars on the market, and cost a small fortune to repair. Plus, if you buy a Camry instead of say an Impala, you get to shoe horn yourself into a smaller car, with a less powerful engine, and pay more besides. I have no idea why all the drones out there buy the myth that Toyota are some sort of super special wonder car. They are not. The only thing that makes less sense than over-paying for a Toyotas is way over paying for a Lexus. I suppose the rich don't mind throwing money down a rat hole, but it is almost criminal the way people are suckered into paying thousand too much for some of the most boring cars on the planet.

Ed White

But your only source of information is the Consumer Reports or JD Powers surveys. Neither is not particularly scientific. I suppose JD Powers is a little better, but in many ways, the surveys are more a reflection of the effectiveness of advertising than reality. Why else do Buick score better than Chevy's or Mercury's better than Fords? And even if you believe the JD Power surveys are accurate, the differences reported are minimal between Toyotas and most American brands. In fact, I think Buick scored better on the long term reliability study than Toyotas. I guess Buick has better advertising than Pontiac.

Ed

You sure you're in the right group? We ADORE Toyotas, right, guys (and gals)?! There IS NO better car on Earth than a Toyota!

I had a Nova Back In The Day. Yeah, it was a nice car. I traded my first car for it when the Corolla was in the shop and they gave me the Nova for a loaner. It SAID "SS", but it had no guages and a column shifter. I ran the car for 3 months; then the price of gas went up $0.25 a gallon. Luckily they still had my Corolla and they swapped it back. Whew!

That probably would have been a good car, I couldn't affors to run it long enough to find out. I went from 38MPG in the Corolla to about 18 in the Nova and just couldn't pay the premium to own the car.

I really can't explain the loyalty to Toyota. I just love thier cars. I wish I still had every one I ever owned. They are just very well made cars that rarely break and generally hold themselves together right up to the very end; mine had needed very little repair. No, if this were just one or two cars, I'd say, OK, I got lucky. But 6 New cars and three used cars, plus three more in the family; it goes beyond just getting lucky.

I know friends that have had Chevys that ran 200,000. Most of them are pretty ratty, and it's a good thing there are so many, 'cause junkyard parts are plentiful. Toyotas just seem to hold themselves together till the day they drop. But I know people that have had to fix their domestics on a regular basis, more so than Toyota owners I know. I know of one guy with a Buick Century and one with an Olds Cutlass that were truly exceptional; no more maintenence than I have put into my Toys. But these are exceptions rather than the rule. It's like GM screwed up and made on RIGHT.

Thanks, I'll keep my Toyotas...

CR depends on the opinions of readers who care to spend the time to responds, and they depend upon the reader to decide what is serious. So you end up with three type of people who respond - 1) happy owners who want to convince everyone they are right (and who likely believe what CR says, since they are buying the magazine), 2) unhappy owners who have an axe to grind,

3) people who just like filling out stuff and don't mind wasting first class postage. CR doesn't even give you a postage paid return envelope for the silly survey. They don't collect statistics on repair costs. They don't adequately define "serious." They don't differentiate between warranty and non-warranty repairs, etc., etc., etc. The result might be interesting, but they hardly reflect anything more than the opinions of a narrowly defined group that is likely to be biased towards confirming what CR has already told them was the right answer.

Ed

Your "most people" / "as a whole" in this case is less than half - assuming that all those trade in's are bought by someone.

10 years? For a Toyota, it's finally broken in. :-)

My guess would be that very few new car buyers look at resale value. With all the car loans and leases, they probably don't even look at the purchase price.

Priorities are the spoiler, the sound system, the color, and maybe the monthly payment.

Anecdotal evidence is meaningless... I could tell you about people who had nothing but problems with them, like my 1995 Corsica that needed frequent repairs until finally the transmission took a dump at 100,000 miles so I put in a junker tranny and sold it cheap. The car lasted seven years, and had all sorts of problems, control arms, intakes, alternator, and miscellaneous other stuff going wrong all the time, despite the fact that I took excellent care of it. The only thing I liked on it was the stainless-steel exhaust which never had a problem.

Wrong. Since you mentioned Chevy, let's compare base prices of entry-level models:

2005 Chevy Cobalt MSRP Price Range $13,625 - $21,430 Invoice Price Range $12,739 - $20,037 2005 Toyota Corolla MSRP Price Range $13,780 - $17,555 Invoice Price Range $12,744 - $15,886

Wrong. I have one and it doesn't cost any more to maintain it than any other car. In fact, it's cheaper to maintain than my Corsica was.

According to what data? Anecdotes don't count, sorry.

I call baloney. Please state your source--and no anecdotes.

Wrong. The 2005 Impala has 104.50 cubic feet of interior space, while the Camry has 101.80 cubic feet, a difference of 2.7 cubic feet. Not something you'd notice. If you had to shoehorn yourself into the Camry, you'd have to do the same with the Impala--2.7 CF is negligible.

Misleading. The Camry is less powerful but it is also lighter, so the power difference is less noticible. The Impala has a weight to power ratio18.8 pounds per horsepower vs. the Camry's 19.8 pounds per horsepower. Again, not something the average driver is likely to even notice. On the other hand, the Camry has double the towing capacity, 2000 lbs. vs. the Impala's wimpy 1000 lbs.

Wrong again. You'll pay THOUSANDS LESS for the Camry:

2005 Chevrolet Impala Sedan MSRP Price Range $22,350 - $28,555 Invoice Price Range $20,450 - $26,128

2005 Toyota Camry Standard MSRP Price Range $18,195 - $25,555 Invoice Price Range $16,645 - $22,743

Source:

There is no such myth. There is a common belief that Toyotas are much less likely to need major repairs than most other models, but this belief is backed up by solid evidence published by Consumer Reports and J. D. Power. Judging by the number of factually incorrect statements you made, you're going to have to back up any future statements with solid facts before I would even take the time to read them, as you have proven that you tend to spout misinformation.

Exhaust *is* a problem with some Toyotas, but not all. This is backed up by both of the car mags mentioned here, AFAIK.

Not to mention the costs of constantly repairing the damned GM heap.

Wow, how did you come to that conclusion?

Hey, good luck with that

Besides - Camrys are way too common ;-)

See above :-)

In repair costs alone...

I notice more cops using Impalas - I'm glad, because they were dying way too often in those damned Crown Vics

Um...because they are. I don't care what little stats you pull up somewhere, we've owned nothing but Toyotas, and will stay with them until we're too old to drive. LOL

But it's very well phrased, I must say.

A very accomplished bit of sophistry, there.

Natalie

So you replace the exhaust with a Toyota SS replacement that has a lifetime warranty and never pay again. My Mom's on her 2nd one replacement...free...

The thread was getting too long so I snipped it. Thanks for the comments, Natalie. Miss seeing your posts on alt.TV.enterprise since I quit going after the show ended. :-)

This brings up a pet peeve of mine--that exhaust systems (except for the stainless ones) are designed to wear out before the rest of the car. It's wonderful that Toyota has a lifetime warranty for everything on the exhaust replacement, including all connecting hardware--but if it was stainless in the first place, you wouldn't have had to pay to replace it the first time and waste the time to replace it the second time. I believe that all exhaust systems will be stainless steel within 10-15 years or so, except on really cheap models.

If a stainless steel exhaust was available, I'd rip out a perfectly good regular exhaust system and replace it with the stainless one, just to save having to replace the regular steel one at an inopportune moment in the future. It always seems you start getting loud or leaky exhaust when you really don't have the time to get it fixed.

Or when it has become so rusted it is almost impossible to remove parts without a blowtorch.

If they were it is because cops prefer the Crown Vic twenty five to one over the Dodge or Chevy. If you are referring to rear end collisions, they are far safer in a CV. The CV is built to take a 50 MPH hit while the dodge and Chevy are only designed to take a 30 MPH hit according the the NHTSA tests..

mike hunt

"Wickedldoll" wrote:

JD Powers is paid by car manufacturers to produce information that they can use in advertiseing. At least Consumer Reports is financially disinterested. JD Powers is nothing more than an ad agency. Conflict of interest means that they have no credibility.

Manufactures do not pay J D Powers, they must subscribe to their service to obtain their detailed reports. Powers only releases the list to the media

Try doing search of years back at what cars CR recommend as a 'good buy' like the ANC Alliance CR like any other mag it is merely stating their opinion of a new model, based on the ONE car they tested.

I stopped subscribing to CR may years ago when they said the Dodge Omni was a better buy than the Plymouth Horizon. The only difference was the grill.

Let us see how longer you think they are your bible now that they are saying some models in some class are better than the Toyota in that class. ;)

The only truly accurate survey is the new vehicle sales numbers. That is where buyers put their money where their mouth is.

mike hunt

No Spam wrote:

your only source of information is the Consumer Reports or JD Powers

DOOD! where have you been?!

Natalie

IIRC, the switch to stainless steel replacement exhausts was due to short life on the original ones. Most Toyotas are now stainless steel from the factory.

The ratio of CV to Dodge or Chevys in police fleets is only 25 to 1? I would have guessed more like 75 to 1 based on what I see in the Chicago area. I have noticed an increase in Impalas in the Illinois State Police fleet, probably because the people buying the cars are not the people spending 8 hours a day in the cars. To me, the choice between a V8 RWD car and a V6 FWD car is a no-brainer. Equipping somone we pay to protect us with a V6 FWD car is like making them carry only sidearms in their cars while the gang bangers get to carry whatever they want.

I read somewhere that Dodge is going to offer the V8 RWD Charger with a police package, which at least makes more sense than a FWD car.