2008 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study: Porsche, Honda, Chevrolet among big winners

johngdole · 2008-06-07T18:47:14+00:00

Porsche, Honda, Chevrolet Among Big Winners in 2008 J.D. Power InitialQuality Study - Car NewsGM and Ford do well, but Chrysler winds up near the bottom.BY JOSEPH SZCZESNYJune 2008For the third year in a row, Porsche came out on top in the J.D. Powerand Associates closely watched annual Initial Quality Survey (IQS) ofvehicles sold in the U.S. by three dozen top automotive brands. (Thecomplete rankings can be found on the next page of this article. Clickhere.)Porsche, which makes its home in Stuttgart, Germany, came out as thetop automaker in the annual quality survey, while the Mercedes-Benzplant in Sindelfingen just outside of Stuttgart was named the topassembly plant. Porsche's Stuttgart plant, where the 911 cabriolet andcoupe are built, came away with a "Silver" award as one of the bestassembly plants in Europe, just ahead of BMW's Regensburg assemblyplant.Overall, Mercedes-Benz moved up one place against last year from fifthto fourth in the brand-level ranking, and three Mercedes-Benz modelswere among the top three of their respective segments.However, vehicles from General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, and Nissanalso did well in the survey. For consumers, the survey is considered agood predictor of ownership experience throughout the life of avehicle, even though it measures buyer satisfaction after a vehiclehas been owned for just 90 days, officials from J.D. Power noted.David Sargent, vice president of automotive research at J.D. Power'svehicle group, said the 2008 results reflected a steady"democratization of quality" across the industry. Japanese brands nolonger dominate key vehicle categories, noted Sargent, echoingarguments domestic carmakers have been trying to make with onlylimited success. "All of the manufacturers are doing a really goodjob," Sargent said as he presented the 2008 survey results to theAutomotive Press Association in Detroit.Individual Vehicle Accolades and Overall ImprovementThe survey also highlights the best vehicle in 17 different...

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C. E. White 18 years ago

Please let me know wherer I can find the "numbers." I have the magazine and an on-line subscription. I've nver seen raw numbers. It is my opinion that CR does there very best to obsure the actual source of their data and to over emphasize minor differences. If they actually have the raw numbers available somewhere, maybe I would change my opinion.

And then they don't tell you the numbers, instead they feed them to some internal CR process that obscures the raw data and outputs meaningless little circles. Plus, they allow the respondent a lot of leeway in deciding what is minor and what is major.

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Thanks for posting this. It confirms my worst fears. CR is making very fine distinction form poorly collected data. The FAQ tries to spin this as being useful, but clearly the little circles are even less meaningful than I thought. In many cases they are giving vehicles a poor rating based on a reported problem rate 4% greater than average. There is no way the CR survey has an accuracy of +/-3% for most of the vehicles listed (the typical vehicle has 200 to 400 responses; they allow data to be reported with as few as 100 responses). This means the little circles are at best worthless for many vehicles. I suppose for high volume vehicles there may be some validity, but still the difference between an excellent and poor rating is at best very small. Probably so small as to be insignificant compared to other factors if people knew how small the difference truly is. My sister just purchased a RAV4, mainly because it had such good reliability ratings. If I had told her it was at best likely to have 4% fewer problems than an Escape, which she could have bought for thousands less, I suspect she might have considered the Escape (especially since my younger Sister has a 7 year old Escape that has been trouble free).

Actually I agree that my concerns apply to JD Powers is well. But at least JD Powers gives you the raw data (problems per 100 vehicles). From that I can infer that most vehicles are very close in quality. CR on the other hand gives you little circles that imply great difference, when in fact they are actually very minor in most cases. I find this to be a misleading approach.

Ed

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C. E. White 18 years ago

I didn't claim CR openly lied about reliability. Even CR doesn't have enough guts to make excuses for that turkey. Ditto for the V6 Camry. Some things are just to bad to cover-up. I was complaining about the Yaris getting a an excellent reliability rating when it is a new model, with no substantial history. I see the FAQ covers this (or is it excuses this?).

Ed

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Elle 18 years ago

"C. E. White" wrote

We discussed this already. Look at the key for the circles in the April issue.

The notion that what the CR circles tell us are the /differences between/ models, and not a statistically meaningful problem rate for each model-year, is not easy for a lot of people to grasp. Yet it's a well-known statistical concept. Most often it's the /difference/ in two averages that is most meaningful, and not the averages themselves.

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SMS 18 years ago

They look at other vehicles with similar engines and other major components, as well as the history of the company's reliability for other models.

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Jeff 18 years ago

They're not asking, "How do you like it?" They are asking a different question, "How many problems have you had with it?" I could just love my new Prius even though I had a problem with the power steering pump, a leak in the truck and a cracked windshield. Or I might hate it even though it has had no problems.

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Sharx35 18 years ago

Is THAT why you are no longer his roommate?

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Ray O 18 years ago

True, my post was a little incomplete. See my response to Ed White on the same point.

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Gordon McGrew 18 years ago

Actually, they probably only have 3 - 6K on the car as the average new model is only three months old when the survey is completed. As someone said, you might be able to determine it is terrible that quick, but it is too soon to know if it is great. That first year record is the equivalent of the JDP initial quality survey except JDP mixes reliability questions with fuzzy stuff like how the dealer treats you.

Why does Toyota give Yaris a solid prediction based on little evidence? You would have to ask them but I suspect that they looked at the first year results and compared them to older Toyotas that had similar first year reliability and decided that Yaris would likely be very good.

Sounds like a wild theory to me. If the water pump broke, the water pump broke. Even at the height of their popularity, the monster SUVs never were rated reliable by their smug owners.

First of all, the first year reliability ratings on Focus aren't as good as most Toyotas. Second, the prediction is based on all model years available, not just results for the most recent model year (which we agree doesn't mean much.) Focus reliability has been mediocre over the years.

They apparently decided that there were too many unknowns for the new design. If they had based a prediction on past experience with the Focus, it probably would have gotten an empty circle.

I think they base it on three years if available. I seem to recall them noting when a prediction was based on only a single year's survey.

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mack 18 years ago

FOAD, jerk.

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Gordon McGrew 18 years ago

But the only reason you know it is a "turkey" is because CR told you it was. Up until 2006, the Camry has an excellent reliability record. If there was bias in the system, how was the poor reliability of 2006 and 2007 models spotted so quickly? Same thing with the 2007 Tundra. Both of the vehicles received high marks in testing. There was no reason fro the owners to suddenly turn on them. They just independently reported the troubles they had and when the results were tallied, they had a relatively poor level of reliability that was very surprising for a Toyota product. There is no reason to suspect that the results are not accurate.

AFAIK, no one even suspected that Toyota quality was slipping until CR reported this. That says to me that they could easily have covered it up if they chose.

Predicting excellent reliability on a new model when the "manufacturer has a track record of consistently outstanding (above average) reliability" doesn't seem unreasonable.

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Tooommy 18 years ago

used to believe in JD Power but porsche?

puuurleeese - new short engine at each service?

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johngdole 18 years ago

Consumer Reports isn't the authoritative survey, but because it's on the magazine shelf it has a lot of clout with the typical consumer. If you know a more authoritative source than JD Powers let me know.

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