Do the Japanese or Germans make better cars?

Your post is absurd. Where are you getting this "318i BMW" versus "Subaru 2.5i Premium Liberty (Legacy)" argument? Obviously, as you've shown, if spend enough time at it, you can find a comparably priced BMW and Subaru in Germany. But this doesn't disprove my point. Indeed, these aren't the only cars compared in the survey. Porsche was compared to Subaru in the survey. Is that relevant? How about a relevant comparison between a 7 series BMW and a Subaru?

Newbie here...be kind.

They both make fabulous autos, but I do believe there is a difference in manufacturing philosophy depending on the culture. Just a theory (based mostly on personal experience with my own 96 Outback and my girlfriend's VW Cabrio, so it may or may not be way off base in the grand scheme of things.): In the past, the most I'd ever done on a car myself, outside of pump gas into it, is change an air filter....snap snap snap snap swap, reverse. When Pep Boys estimated $65 to replace a fuel filter on my OBW, I thought that was pretty absurd, so I decided to look into it and see just what kinds of things I can do for myself and save some $$$. Of course the filter was about 15 bucks and I could do it in about 10 minutes with the help of a Haynes and a few NG postings. Cool. I got it done for 1/4 the cost. In the last month I've gone from knowing nothing about this stuff to having swapped said fuel filter, changed my own oil and oil filter(sooooooo easy on the OBW. Didn't even have to jack it up. Can't believe I've wasted so much money the last oh so many years at Jiffy Screw etc.), replaced the PCV valve (OK...no biggy) and replaced the knock sensor. So, basically, I have done all that stuff to my car for about what it would have cost for Pep Boys to replace the fuel filter. I have discovered that, for the most part, I can maintain my Suby with the backside of a butter knife and a cotton swab.

Change scenes to my girlfriend's Cabrio:

Can't even get to the air filter to see if it needs to be changed, much less change it. A number of other things have to be removed just to get the housing open...unless you aren't too fond of your knuckles and weren't going to be using them anyway. Dealer or other mechanic has to do it. The more I looked into it, the more I realized how many other things are like that on her car. (Can't imagine what the cost would be. Dealer would most assuredly sell you an OEM filter and would probably charge for 1/2 hour labor....so, what, $50, $60, $70 to R/R an air filter?)

My understanding is that the Japanese design cars and other mechanical products to just last. You can do the maintenance if you must (and, of course, you should) but if you don't you'll get only slightly less life out of it. Germans seem to make autos and other products that need constant tweaking and maintenance by competent professionals. They will last and maintain peak performance if you do this. They will require expensive repairs if not. My owner's manual gives instruction about how to do a number of things yourself, including changing oil, drain/refill coolant, swap out light bulbs ... even align the headlights. Her manual says to have everything done by the dealer, even replacing headlight bulbs. They don't want you touching ANYTHING.

In the retail photo business I have discovered this to be true in 1 hour photo lab printers. Noritsu printers just go and go and are maintained very inexpensively. I've had employees fix them in the past with a hammer! Agfa printers require regular (expensive) maintenance, often requiring a $150/hour technician, and if it is not perforemd in a timely fashion, MAJOR repairs are due. You VILL pay!

Point is, since the Germans seem to make maintenance so difficult and expensive and, at a minimum, inconvenient, it might be done less often than needed, at which point reliability issues come into play. Plus, in a gogogo society, said inconvenience could affect overall satisfaction with the product.

My 2 cents....may not even be worth that....

I wouldn't give much merrit to a study or survey that puts Buick in the top 3 in dependability. We are talking about cars that spontaneously shut off on the highway, sometime spontaneously turning back on before you have to stop. We are talking about having to replace intake manifold gaskets that are leaking coolant into the engine. The list goes on. Aren't Acura, Honda, and Subaru much more dependable than that?

The more things change the more they stay the same.

I have a book called "How to Repair Your Foreign Car." It was written by sometime Road & Track contributor of humorous articles, Dick O'Kane. It is copyright 1968.

Here is what O'Kane had to say about maintenance of cars imported from different countries (in 1968 Japanese cars weren't a factor):

"You see, every nationality has its own philosophy of car building. To the British, everything is a sporting proposition and the removal of a starter motor is really a game to see who is more clever--you, trying to figure out how to get it off, or the designer who figured out how to get it on. When the thing finally comes loose and lands on your nose, you've won. Polite applause. [1]

"On the other hand, the Germans would rather you didn't fool around with the mechanicals at all. Who are you, with your crude tools and your pittance of knowledge, defiling an object that took teams of Germany's finest technical minds to conceive? Besides, it *can't* break. When it does, though, you're supposed to take it to a high priest from the factory who has the specialized tools, [2] the patience, and, above all, the training to fix it correctly. Said high priest, by the way, asks and gets up to seven dollars an hour [3] for his services, so, bearing that in mind, go ahead and defile.

"The Swedes build strapping good, strong cars that'll go over, around, under and through anything. And as long as it starts in the morning and keeps running, you won't mind if there are American, Whitworth, and metric fittings all on the same car, now will you?

"The French? Ahh, the French. Who can *begin* to understand the French?"

Having owned a couple of Italian cars, I regret he didn't have anything to say about them. I had a 1959 Fiat 1200 Gran Luce followed by a 1960 VW Beetle. The contrast was stark. The Fiat was a far better design, but it was poorly executed--there was always something falling off or jamming or getting out of adjustment. The Beetle was an absurdly poor design, but beautifully executed. You could feel the air pressure rise in your ears when the doors closed--but that didn't compensate for having to stop on Boston's Route 128 in the middle of a snow storm to clear snow off of the windshield.

Footnotes:

[1] I had a 1968 MGB and this is an accurate description of what I had to do to get at the starter solenoid. First remove the oil filter mounting bracket... [2] I still have a couple of special tools I had to buy to adjust the valve lash on my wife's 1978 VW Rabbit. [3] That was written in 1968, recall. Seven dollars in 1968 would be about $37 today. That sounds low to me.

Isn't this kinda like when Car & Driver did a review comparing the Subaru WRX to the Audi S4 Quattro and a BMW 330xi. If price were the deciding factor the BMW and Audi would have smoked the WRX. However if you read the article it shows 2 out of 3 reviewers ranking the Suby #1 (the third reviewer rated it #3 which caused it to fall out of it's #1 spot overall).

As the article points out money alone does not make a good car. The original post said it was an overall rating over a decent size portion of people (38k people is a decent size IMHO). Car & Driver as well as Motortrend and JD Powers all have their "car of the year" and it's usually not Ferrari, Lambourghini, Porsche, etc... that win, often times it is a mid priced car that is the best overall vehicle.

To L.Kreh,

Your post of earlier on states and I quote:

" Price?!?! It's easier to make a great car for $50,000 (i.e., German) than it is for $25,000 (i.e., Japanese). Moreover, it's easier to ignore minor quality problems in the $25,000 price range than it is in the $50,000 price range. In mind, the survey is meaningless if they didn't compare vehicles in the same price range."

I then posted the comparo of the BMWi and the Subaru Liberty 2.5i Premium as the BMWi is more expensive here (in Oz) but around the same price in Germany as one other person posted. This is your similarly priced vehicle you outlined above. You now say the following contadicting your original quote:

" Your post is absurd. Where are you getting this "318i BMW" versus "Subaru 2.5i Premium Liberty (Legacy)" argument? Obviously, as you've shown, if spend enough time at it, you can find comparably priced BMW and Subaru in Germany. But this doesn't disprove my point. Porsche was compared to Subaru in the survey. Is that relevant? How about a relevant comparison between a 7 series BMW and a Subaru?"

No matter how you cut it, the Japanese are obviously building cars that the people surveyed thought were better whether they are the same cost as a German car, cheaper than a German car or maybe even dearer than a German car. So which of your posts is correct, or am I missing something?

I have a friend who owns an Audi A4. He will never buy one again as he has had many problems with it and the repairs cost so much in comparo with his wifes Toyota Camry which hes never had to spend a cent on other than normal servicing. Yes, I know this can just mean he was unlucky, but then maybe not as according to the survey.

I also have no doubt that some time in the future the Koreans will also catch up with the Japanese and Germans as their technology gets better etc. I am no apologist for the Japanese or anyone for that matter, but we have to face facts. The Germans were/are at the forefront of auto manufacture, but because of their high relative wages in comparison to the Japanese or Koreans etc they may have to cut corners to be able to compete and maybe this is where some of the problems lie. Who knows?

I think it quite amusing that people get so hot under the collar about who makes the best cars. I don't really care who makes the best cars as long as the car I have does what it is advertised to do and what I want it to do. Who said that the Germans have been given the Golden touch for ever more as far as car manufacture is concerned. At some stage someone is going to catch up with them and I think that the time is quite possibly now.

Having said that, I still would very much like to have a Porsche in my stable. But I'm not blinkered as to believe that everything that the Germans or Japanese or whomever has the Golden touch as far as car manufacture.

To Aron,

You stated and I quote:

"I wouldn't put much merit to a study or survey that puts Buick in the top 3 in dependability."

Maybe the German cars ARE that bad that they can't even compete with a Buick. Who knows eh? LOL, ha ha ha.

note: owners were asked how satisfied they were with their car or SUV and the service its dealer provided

That is a good point. How well expectations have been met does not indicate the level of expectations or the quality of what the customer receives. If someone expects junk and gets junk then that's 100% satisfaction but it's also 100% junk. When someone expects the stars and gets the moon, so to speak, they're probably less than satisfied, maybe even very disappointed but what they've got isn't junk.