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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

309 points by luu 7y ago

kstenerud 7y ago
It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah blah launching with excellence". And then there's Tesla: "We fixed issue XYZ, which affected people in exactly this particular way." "We proactively send bulletins and over-the-air fixes." "This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been fixed."
- mrtksn 7y ago
  Oh definately, I wonder why these giants cannot replicate the Tesla PR? This is probably Tesla's strongest point, having a problem with the product you paind for and not having personalized response makes you feel powerless while response from someone who seems to understand the problem and the issues it creates is a such a huge difference even if the issue is not resolved. I always forgive companies that did sloppy job but cared enough to appologise and explain why it happend. You don't have to have a celebrity CEO to do that.
  - andreskytt 7y ago
    It has proven effectively impossible to sustainably project an incorrect image of a company. It’s not that they can’t do PR, their entire culture looks like that
- justapassenger 7y ago
  Words are cheap. They’re under investigation for possibly hiding recall and issuing OTA instead that surprised people with sudden range loss (https://www.businessinsider.com/nhtsa-investigating-tesla-update-hurt-model-s-model-x-range-2019-10?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/nhtsa-investigating-tesla-up...) They force customers to go over arbitration to fix yellowing entertainment screen on cars as young as few months. They tell people it’s normal wear and tear due to using cat in the sun (https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/yellow-screen-force-tesla-to-replace-it.158197/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/yellow-screen-force-...) Their service centers are over the capacity for years and cars can be stuck waiting for repairs and parts for months.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Perhaps the grandparent comment was actually talking about the quality of Tesla’s Public Relations department. Otherwise it would strike me as odd that someone would boost a vehicle manufacturer that doesn’t sell spare parts, in a thread on vehicle reliability. Edited a few words to better express my point.
    - linksnapzz 7y ago
      The difference is, the other automakers have decades of experience tailoring public pronouncements so as not to provide fodder for trial lawyers. Hence the vaporous noncommunication. Tesla hasn't been sued as much yet, but they'll get there eventually.
      - kiba 7y ago
        The PR department may have learned the wrong lesson from their environment.
      - smnrchrds 7y ago
        Unless their PR and legal department are exclusively staffed by recent graduates with zero work or real-world experience, it shouldn't matter whether or not they have been sued. It's not like every corporation starts figuring everything out by trial and error, never referring to literature or hiring experienced professionals.
        linksnapzz 7y ago
        Yeah, I would've thought the same thing about their manufacturing & labor relations depts., and yet...here we are.
    - ChrisClark 7y ago
      Buy all the spare parts you want here: https://epc.tesla.com https://epc.tesla.com Or just walk into a service center. Tesla now undercuts all third party prices on parts.
- w-m 7y ago
  I found this part very interesting: "In fact, the quality of brand-new Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015.". (I have no idea what "quality" means here, and how you can put a number on that, that rises 3.5x, but that's beside the point). With one sentence, Tesla is telling 2015 customers that they got screwed over, and future customers that they should wait 4 years after a new model comes out before buying it, because they need that time to figure out all the quality issues.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Isn’t that somewhat standard practice in tech? It’s an industry that experienced exponential growth for decades.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    That rule applies to pretty much any car though - having bought a completely new model of BMW when it first came out I would never do that again, mind you I would never buy a BMW again! Personally I'd wait at least a year before buying any new model of car.
    - thrill 7y ago
      I bought one of the first BMW 328 convertibles off the line. I drove it 20 years with over 500,000 miles with minimal repairs - even the soft top was still working fine and looked "ok" when I finally hit a large pothole and totaled it.
  - mojuba 7y ago
    The quality can be measured by cost of maintenance or more likely by the costs associated with warranty repairs (and product returns) incurred by the company.
    - luckydata 7y ago
      in this case quality just means how likely is a customer to experience issues covered by warranty in the first x days. That's usually called "initial quality" in the industry jargon. Model X was particularly bad off the gates, it had tons of issues especially with the stupid vertical doors that broke all the time.
- mariorossi666 7y ago
  > "This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been fixed." On the other hand, you don't have to fix a problem you haven't created. Most of Tesla problems are self inflicted. Moreover "Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015." According to which metric? It sounds a lot like "this is the fastest Mac ever built, 2.5x faster than the previous generation"[1] but on the market cheaper or faster options (or both) were already available. [1] in small writings "according to bench X and taking the best result. On average the improvement is about +0.3%"
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    According to an article I read recently[1], they measure quality in rate of defects per car produced. According to this, we can get an idea of the scope of the improvements. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/customers-rave-about-model-3-in-new-bloomberg-survey/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/customers-rave-about-mo...
    - mariorossi666 7y ago
      Thanks for adding the metrics. As much as I think they are doing a great job and deserve to be there, I've also never seen a car in the $40k range (more 50-60k euros on this side of the ocean) not being "a pleasure to drive" or not having a good customer service. For the same price I can buy this https://www.audi.it/it/web/it/modelli/a6/a6.html https://www.audi.it/it/web/it/modelli/a6/a6.html
- notacoward 7y ago
  "We fixed one issue" isn't really any more informative than "we're committed to quality" with respect to overall reliability. One issue out of how many? How many customers are affected by those others, and how severely? How long are fixes taking on average? Tesla's response might resonate better in a community notorious for confusing specificity with truth, but it's still just spin.
  - rockarage 7y ago
    Obviously you did not read or understand the article. The article mentioned specific issues that CR attributed to reliability problems in car brands, and Tesla addressed those issues regarding their brand with very specific and informative answers. The other questions you mentioned were not brought up. Your comment is unreasonably critical, read and try to understand the article first.
    - notacoward 7y ago
      I did read and understand the article, but the point stands. Over-specificity is as much of a smokescreen tactic as over-generality. It's not "unreasonably critical" to point that out, unless "unreasonably" has more to do with the sacred-cow object of criticism instead of the substance. Also, both the start and end of your comment violate site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pflats 7y ago
  I felt the opposite. Tesla's answer came across the worst to me, and reads to me with the over-specificity of a student making excuses for why their paper isn't done on time. > "It was a supplier-related issue". Passing the buck is really not a great look to start with. It makes the rest of the response seem like a series of excuses. Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. The only time Tesla should mention a supplier issue is in response to, "why can't you sell me a car?" > "[It] did not pose any threat to vehicle safety". That's good, but this isn't the safety survey. > "[T]here was a[...] false service alert [... that was fixed] within two weeks of being reported". I'm not even sure how to react to this one. Bringing my car in to be told "false alarm" is really not reassuring. And two weeks to fix a false alert doesn't help me - I've probably already brought it in for service. > "This proactive approach to improved reliability is one of the reasons why Tesla is the highest rated car brand among consumers, according to Consumer Reports." (Paraphrased:) Our cars are the safest and best performing, and Model S is #1 in satisfaction. To me, blaming a supplier for the issues is a terrible way to start, and this is likewise a terrible closing. "You just fell in the rankings to come in 3rd to last in our reliability survey. Any comments?" "Our cars are the safest and fastest and we have always ranked #1 on your customer satisfaction survey." Those stats are undeniably good. They also make me think those are the stats the company cares about a lot more than reliability.
  - woodandsteel 7y ago
    >Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. They are new at mass manufacturing and no doubt learned a lesson from this incident. And that is the whole point of their response, unlike the other American manufacturers they are successfully working away at rapidly improving quality and reliability. And you are angry at them for that.
    - pflats 7y ago
      But Tesla didn't say "we're new at this and we learned from it". They said it was a "supplier-related issue" that has been "addressed for cars in the field" and "resolved [...] with fundamental design improvements". Nothing in the statement tells me that there won't be another "supplier-related issue" down the line. There should be controls in place for this.
arethuza 7y ago
I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Actually, most of the problems we had were fundamental design flaws e.g. a Toyota my wife had where the instruments (speedometer etc.) started cutting out occasionally - problem was tracked back to, of all things, the sunroof! There was a small leak and the electrical connectors for the instruments were in the bottom of the passenger foot-well - where the water was collecting from the sunroof and shorting things out. Similarly I had a VW that was prone to flooding the interior due to poor design of the battery compartment - if the drain hole from the battery compartment was blocked it would overflow into the interior of the car (we're in Scotland so problems inevitably involved water). Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland with a sunroof, I do wonder and we'd never do it again!
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      >Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland with a sunroof, I do wonder and we'd never do it again! Actually I really enjoy a sunroof especially in cloudy weather as it makes the interior a lot brighter and less claustrophobic even in dark days.
    - Marsymars 7y ago
      I don't especially want a sunroof, as they inevitably leak, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a car at anything other other than the base trim level without sunroof - and when combined with other requirements I have (e.g. sat radio) presence of a sunroof is one of the first things I'll compromise on.
rtpg 7y ago
This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. My dad has a really expensive american-made fridge. It sucks. The UX is awful and it basically just looks shiny. Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. I like to think it’s the result of people not really traveling abroad (reasonable! It’s expensive and far away). People don’t get that so many other places are just nicer and have higher quality things for cheaper. There’s some quote about how somebody was super poor when growing up but was fine about it because they didn’t realize it. I think about that all the time when looking at some stuff in the US.
- starpilot 7y ago
  I could cherry pick examples from around the country to show exactly the opposite. There's a great Quora answer on this phenomenon, "Why do so many Europeans look down on 'American Cheese'?": https://qr.ae/TWJAc9 https://qr.ae/TWJAc9
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    I was expecting to read a great Quora article but the author compared American speciality cheese to European supermarket fast serving cheese to prove that not everything made in Europe is superior. What's next? Comparing an American ivy league university building to a newly built apartment somewhere in Brussels and prove that not everything is older in Europe? Of course every place has all kind of extremes. I look down on West European cheese too because they don't have proper white cheese that is available in the Balkans and Turkey and when abroad I have to rely on low quality feta as a substitute and get depressed. That said, I am not going to claim that Balkans and Turkey have the best chease, it's just that the kind of the cheese I like is not available in western Europe in good quality and I am better of to stick with the local cheese(which is superior to the versions found in the Balkans and Turkey). All those "country X is superior to the country Y" is inherently flawed unless you talk about specifics. Otherwise, all you do is some kind nationalistic masturbation.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan - that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and Aus. It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive, but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find official parts for them. It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot/trunk latch that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot/trunk by plastic pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30 only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that always leaked and you could never quite fix. The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name. I don't know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.
- mcny 7y ago
  My 2007 Toyota Camry was made in the US and has a known problem of burning oil because the sealing between the piston and the cylinder rent desire all the oil back or something. My next car will not be made in the US, regardless of manufacturer.
  - exhilaration 7y ago
    I'm in the US and Toyota fixed my 2007 Toyota Camry's oil burning problem in 2015 for free!!! The dealership had quoted me something like $8000 to fix it (more than the car was worth) so I'd given up. Then one day I got a letter from Toyota corporate telling me my car was covered by this warranty extension. That made me a Toyota customer for life -- my next car was a Toyota Sienna, I won't buy another brand at this point. My sister is still driving that 2007 Camry. You should contact your local dealer and ask them about this. You are most likely covered. If they don't help, find a way to contact Toyota corporate.
tim333 7y ago
A lot of the issues may come down to whether management prioritize financial engineering / making huge bonuses / pleasing wall street vs making good vehicles. The same with Boeing - they used to be run by engineers who wanted to make great planes and then the shifted control to finance guys in Chicago who wanted to make big profits. You see the effect a bit with Tesla where I'm sure Musk would love to focus on quality but has to rush things out to make decent quarterly numbers or risk going bust by not getting ongoing financing. The Japanese seem to have almost the opposite attitude to finance where they will keep putting money into loss making stuff for ages out of a kind of loyalty which may lead to it's own issues of course.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  I worked for years as an engineer and manager at a legendary Japanese corporation, known for their quality. It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal. But you can’t argue with the results. Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American engineers, when I talk about my methodology. I’m not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I’m merely talking about what I do, and I’m treated as if I’m eating a ham sandwich in Temple.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    > Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal. Sounds good to me.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
      Yes. It taught me a lot. I am still obsessed with quality, to this day. That obsession was not the problem. Frustrating, but it set them apart. Note that I worked there for many years. That indicates that we probably shared many values, and that I was respected; despite sometimes holding orthogonal points of view. I do feel as if we could have done more with software, though. What works for hardware does not necessarily scale to software.
huffmsa 7y ago
> CR says Chrysler’s Pacifica was one that contributed to the drop in rankings thanks to the minivan’s infotainment and transmission issues. Every single "downgrade" I read about is either infotainment or transmission or both. Except Honda, which apparently has shit locks on it's kid hauler. I'm a bit skeptical of consumer reports after actually reading it. My car, a Subaru WRX is given low marks for "stiff ride and constant engine noise", which I think re reason why people buy WRXs, not avoid them.
- tibbydudeza 7y ago
  Yep you buy a WRX for the drivetrain and rally heritage ... the terrible plastic interior was a moot point.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    The seats are comfy enough, the steering wheel is beefy, the only point of failure I've had is the battery. Otherwise, it's exactly what it's supposed to be. CR give my other car, a Jaguar F-Pace low marks for "loud engine and cabin, stiff choppy ride and bad infotainment." Which to me sounds like a lot of soccer mom's thought they were getting "luxury" utility vehicle but accidentally purchase a 350hp supercharged v6 "sport" utility vehicle. Cars are for driving, not "infotainment".
    - basch 7y ago
      These ratings are comparative. If youve mostly interacted with your two brands, and not the other ones at the top of the list, how can you compare them and say yours isnt worse? Infotainment includes maps, air conditioning, heat, radio. Those are important things to do easily in a car.
      - linksnapzz 7y ago
        HVAC is certainly not infotainment, there are safety implications if the defrosters don't work. The HVAC controls should never be at the mercy of whatever phoned-in UI the radio and satnav have in your car.
juskrey 7y ago
I have travelled US a lot and have rented a lot of different cars. Honestly I don't know a much about reliability (except I got several problems with top Nissan models), but comparing to US cars, the rest of the world cars just don't drive and are not fun. And then you got Tesla which is crap inside but for some reason is super fun and you want to buy it immediately.
- thomasedwards 7y ago
  Have you ever rented a Lamborghini?
  - juskrey 7y ago
    Ok ok, for me fun means the car should deliver fun to all my family while traveling.
    - elbrian 7y ago
      Ah, so like an Audi, BWM, Mercedes, Acura, Infiniti or Lexus?
- screye 7y ago
  Aren't british roadsters are classic driver's car ? (Mini coopers, Mazda MX-5, etc). Even in the sports car scene, it is Porsche that is lauded for being the most fun to drive. American cars are usually more powerful but are much heavier and a bit sluggish on controls.
- winrid 7y ago
  No fun Audi's or VWs??? Nissan Maxima? Subaru? Mercedes? Hyundai and Kia are also good handling and comfortable cars. I've completed in the Soul, Elantra, and some others and have some trophies with Korean cars (stock suspension etc).
- glofish 7y ago
  I agree, american cars have a driving quality to them that other cars do not. I drive Mazda (higher resale value) I wish I could "afford" american ("afford" in the sense of not minding a lower resale value). The engine is usually smooth and powerful, cabin comfort, the ride very quiet, it sort of glides with you. While I did not drive that many American cars, but I loved renting Chevy Impala, larger Fords
thdrdt 7y ago
This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are turning to Porsche. The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they shipped those cars.
- mgoetzke 7y ago
  sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ? I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Porsche only sold 256,255 cars last year after decades of existence since they target a certain clientele. Tesla will surpass that this year in volume.
  - thdrdt 7y ago
    The Porsche Taycan is pre-ordered more than 30000 times. Most of those customers currently own a Tesla.
    - Supersonic112 7y ago
      Would you mind disclosing your source(s) for both statements?
      - elbrian 7y ago
        I Google'd "Porsche Taycan 30000" and found these sources for the 30k pre-orders claim: * https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-surge-to-30000-three-variants-hinted-for-debut/ https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-su... * https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservations-surpass-30000-ahead-of-world-debut/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservation... There is almost-certainly no source for the "most of those customers currently own a Tesla" statement, because that's not something Porsche would ever disclose.
tibbydudeza 7y ago
Don't get me started on ANY German car ... my cars and home appliances are all Korean now.
- onlingyding 7y ago
  All power to you but I know if the choice was between a Bosch and a Samsung washing machine, it would be the Bosch one every time. Too many gimmicks, poorly designed software and cheap plastic pieces.
RickJWagner 7y ago
So much for my dreams of buying a used Tesla. I've got kids, so I buy my cars used. A while back I decided to start buying Toyota products, I haven't regretted the decision. I do hope the American manufacturers turn things around, though. Maybe with the electrics.
xchaotic 7y ago
Looks like a lot of discussion here is about housing, but the CR report suggests that most of the issues are with the infotainment systems in cars. And that includes Tesla. I assume that the ecosystem is big enough to create a 3rd player that’s better than android auto or iOS and better suited for cars specifically.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Maybe it's just me but the infotainment systems in cars, despite being more complex, aren't really better in any meaningful way compared to my 2007 Mazda 3 (RIP). I've got a new car with a touchscreen but it's more of a PITA then hooking up an MP3 player via the aux audio.
  - ranger207 7y ago
    I have an older car. I replaced the head unit with one that supports Bluetooth, and it stays on Bluetooth 24/7. I have a suction cup mount for my phone which runs GPS. That's all I need. I dread having to buy a car made in the past decade or so, purely because of way-too-intrusive infotainment systems.
    - charwalker 7y ago
      What you describe is what I did to my older Outback a few years ago, replaced the aftermarket non BT stereo my older brother had in it with BT. The swap wasn't too bad and It's been working great since then. I just got a recent year Mazda3 that came with the free (from Mazda) upgrade to Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I'm and Android guy so can't speak to Carplay but the basic functions provided by AA like music/podcast playback, navigation, and overall interface are solid even without a touch screen. In fact, I'd say the lack of touch screen is a perk as I'm not reaching out to tap something vs using the console/cup holder area interface that I picked up quickly and like (other than a so far not re-mapable star/favorites button that only goes to the Mazda audio favorites list outside of AA). It's less distracting than a mounted phone, has a bigger screen for navigation, and works really well for me. I don't think Id buy a newer car without either a basic BT stereo setup or full blown AA. That being said, I have the trade off now of requiring a cable for AA to work otherwise I'm only on the built in BT infotainment (which I still find way better than the Toyota Corolla interface I tested out recently). I'm still used to leaving my phone in my pocket or jacket so I have to remember to pull it out and often end up leaving it plugged in and walking away (the spot where it sits is well hidden so not too worried about theft in my location). According to forums, it is possible to hook my phone to AA setup via wifi and project wirelessly with some lag which I am interested in setting up but I think I need to update the software in my unit before it can make the wifi connection. I'm really liking the AA setup in this car. It's pretty intuitive, easy to set up and control, and feels safer than another setup with the caveat that it needs a cable. Good news is it keeps the phone charged up (the Toyota Corolla USB didn't provide enough power to charge my phone, for some reason). I would recommend it.
souterrain 7y ago
I’m quite pleased with my 2017 Ford Fiesta SFE with its German engine and French gearbox and Mexican assembly. Unfortunately, Ford is eliminating the Fiesta in the US.
- post_break 7y ago
  That's surprising considering that car has the worst transmission in car history. Unless the SFE is the one with a stick.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    AFAIK every trim level of the Fiesta has been available with either automatic or manual except the ST (i.e. the hot hatch version) which is manual-only.
    - souterrain 7y ago
      I believe the SFE (using the 1.0L, in-line 3 “EcoBoost” engine) was only available with a 5 speed stick. I suspect the performance with an auto transmission would be unbearable.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  Yeah, I like my Fiesta too, but Ford won't be making any vehicles I'm interested in going forward. Looking at Mazda/Subaru/Audi/Genesis for potential replacements when my Fiesta conks out.
AcerbicZero 7y ago
Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers makes the difference somewhat obvious. I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines with humans touching them (in the 911 factory). When a human is working on the car, the car isn't moving. Compared to the Corvette (much cheaper, but still "high end") you can see how quantity is prioritized, and how the car never really stops for any extended period of time, before moving down the line. Again, this is a totally subjective opinion, but comparing my current car (VW) to a similarly priced Ford I test drove the other day (GT350) the difference in build quality is night and day. This is a Porsche factory, building an expensive, high end 911 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA Here is the Chevrolet Factory building a Corvette - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No
- majormajor 7y ago
  German cars tend to be less reliable than Japanese ones, as in this survey, possibly due to those tolerance. My 2018 German car feels a lot nicer than a 2018 Toyota, but has already had more problems, too. :| Sometimes I wonder if the US auto industry suffers a bit competitively vs Germany and Japan due to a higher amount of "brain drain" to other higher-paying forms of STEM jobs in tech.
  - _s 7y ago
    Japanese manufacturers have found a good balance between simplicity and modern tech (see Mazda, Suzuki). German cars tend to be over-engineered; lots of modern tech in the vehicle + manufacturing, whereas American cars tend to be quite the opposite.
    - amyjess 7y ago
      And historically when the Japanese _have_ gone overboard on tech, back in the bubble era, they also tend to back it up with overengineering. Think of the fourth-gen Toyota Supra or any version of the Nissan Skyline GT-R. Or the Toyota Soarer/Lexus SC, which was basically a detuned Supra packed with luxury equipment and unique styling. They were technological marvels whose engines were overengineered beasts that could take ridiculous amounts of abuse.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Take this with a grain of salt. A vehicle's reliability has just as much to do with who you sell it to (at scale) as what the vehicle is. Reliability ratings are greatly biased toward vehicles that are expensive and don't have tons of manufacturer financing incentives to put them in the hands of everyone with a pulse.
crappy-doo 7y ago
what about Telsa?
gumby 7y ago
I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me. By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But some industries (cars, aircraft, et al) are perfectly happy to blame someone else. Note: it's OK if you say "we got some bad products and we failed to detect it..." That's defect analysis. But own it.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  This is one of my favorite aspects of the writing in Outer Worlds: that no one who works for a corporation is ever, ever allowed to speak ill of it, of it's products, or anything even tangentially related to the corporation. It's hilarious the mental gymnastics these fictional people will leap through to avoid earning the ire of their employer, and it's absolutely shocking how true-to-life it often is.
  - hartator 7y ago
    `Outer Worlds` the video game? I want to play it now.
    - FussyZeus 7y ago
      Correct. It's quite good, though the combat is a little one-dimensional and cast against the design, writing, and world-building, it's very much turned into a situation where the game itself is sort of an obstacle to what I'm enjoying in the game. I don't think it will prompt a re-play but I am thoroughly enjoying it.
  - rasz 7y ago
    Why go fictional when you have Apple employees?
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  > there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials There's reason to doubt that (from 3 days ago): https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/a-tiny-pharmacy-is-identifying-big-problems-with-common-drugs-including-zantac/2019/11/08/6dd009ca-eb76-11e9-9c6d-436a0df4f31d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/a-tiny-pharmacy-is-id...
gumby 7y ago
Not really a surprise. US manufacturing is optimized for the extrema (i.e. it's a saddle curve): inexpensive stuff to heavy to be worth shipping (e.g. paper) and inexpensive low-labor commodity product (e.g. grain) and at the other extreme: super high value, difficult to produce items (e.g. ultra-high precision bearings, cruise missiles).
- j8014 7y ago
  That is total nonsense. I buy nearly everything either made in the US or Europe. Kitchenware, tools, outdoor equipment, clothing, furniture and just about everything else except my phone, tv and computers. It's always excellent, durable and unfortunately, expensive.
  - gumby 7y ago
    I agree about many European products (the appliances in my house are all 20 year old European ones that still work perfectly). But inexpensive "made in USA" stuff I tend to find (folding outdoor chairs and the like) seems to pretty much last a short time or even single use, and as has been lamented publicly, is rarely exported. Most of the everyday product purchases seem to come from SE Asia.
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      Only on the extreme low end. If you want cheap crap, there is a certain national economy geared to that, and its not the USA.
korethr 7y ago
Some years ago, I heard it told that the American car companies had done the market research and found that the typical car-buyer in the US bought a car and kept it for 3 years, on average. And so, armed with this info, the cars were designed to last 3 years on average. This is also why the 3-year lease is a thing. Now, I don't know how true this is, or what definition of "average" was being used in those statements (mean, median, or mode), but let's roll with it. Assuming a normal distribution, that would mean half the cars built last less than 3 years, some significantly less so, and half the cars built last longer than 3 years, again, some significantly more so. Depending on how wide the distribution is, that could mean that there's simultaneously a lot of shitbox lemons and a lot of indestructible workhorses at the same time. And regardless of how wide that distribution actually is, that would explain the varying reports of various US-built cars I've personally heard: some glowingly praising reliability that rivals the Japanese stereotype, and some that would bring more value to the world as crushed metal cubes. I want to argue against engineering the cars to last only as long as the typical new-car-buyer keeps one, but I have a hard time doing so. If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it? I think you could argue that the poor reputation of your used cars could harm new car sales in the long term, but I don't know how to quantify that. In the absence of numbers of how such reliability planning harms long-term sales, I could totally see decision-makers coming to favor designing to a 3-year reliability target, with the car being considered disposable thereafter. In either case, if the average car buyer buys a car every N years, and thus, you treat that as reliability target, then targeting for a median or mean reliability of N years strikes me as the wrong way to to that. IMO, the ideal reliability distribution would be something of a skewed one, with a long right-hand tail. Keeping the assumption above of N = 3 years, then you'd want the mode on the reliability distribution to be 3 years, with the band below the mode as narrow as possible. If you couldn't reasonably make it any narrower, than push the target modal reliability up, such that the number of cars that fall below N are significantly less than the ones meet it. Yes, that means there will be more cars exceeding your reliability target, but having cars that lasted longer than the minimum necessary strikes me as a lesser evil than having ones that didn't. Of course, for all I know, the US manufacturers do exactly as I described in the above paragraph, and the German and Japanese brands simply have a longer tail. Edit: I should make it clear, I personally don't agree with this statement, "If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?". I'm not trying to excuse or justify the low reliability ratings of domestic manufacturers, I'm trying to understand how they got there. I'm trying to model the decision-making of US car manufacturers, and it's a mindset I can see them running on, given the paragraphs above it. Those down-voting, I'd love to hear your counterarguments. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but it's hard to make less-stupid arguments without knowing how I'm wrong.
randyrand 7y ago
Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.
- 663e1b 7y ago
  Does Toyota even import cars (to North America, at least)? I was under the impression that most of their models were built locally.
- mark-r 7y ago
  Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S. According to Wikipedia [1]: > Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America
  - randyrand 7y ago
    Thanks for the info! Didn't know that.
oflannabhra 7y ago
I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again until we switch to EV. Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit. The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought it used with 160k miles on it, and sold it at 200k. Over 5 years I have done my own brakes and oil changes, and have only had to replace the starter. I sold it for $1k less than I bought it (I got a good deal). We bought essentially the exact same vehicle, just in SUV. The Honda has been a little less stellar, but still good. AC compressor has gone out multiple times (a known issue affecting multiple models), but we replaced it with a warrantied aftermarket part the first time it failed. It's currently at 220k and still kicking. We only buy used and in cash, so finding the right car can take some time. Toyotas and Hondas have unbelievable resell value in the used market. A used Toyota can fetch a similar price as a brand new American made equivalent.
- GiorgioG 7y ago
  I'm an American and used to only buy american cars (until I finished college) because my father was a GM factory worker and that was the expectation (right or wrong, GM paid the bills for my upbringing.) I've driven GM, VWs, Hondas, Toyotas and currently drive a Ford F150. I've had the fortune of rarely having serious problems with any of them, but we haven't kept most of the vehicles for more than 4-5 years for a variety of reasons (VW Golfs are fine when you're single, but not when you have a couple of kids (at least not in America...we're spoiled.) Hats off to Toyota though. My parents have been driving my wife's old 2003 Camry for the past 3-4 years. It still runs great and up until this past weekend had zero issues. The master power window switch failed and now the rear driver side window fails to come up. Amazon is delivering the replacement part today for a whopping $23.50.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    That's not really a rare situation. Even the worst cars today are far better than the best were 30 years ago.
- 7y ago
smn1234 7y ago
this is from 2018!
mark-r 7y ago
I haven't bought a U.S. branded car since 1979. That 1975 Dodge Dart was bad enough to turn me off them forever, especially when I saw how much worse its replacement (the Dodge Aspen) was. My last 4 autos have been Toyotas, all excellent.
Havoc 7y ago
Can't help but draw a parallel to the Boeing mess. Is there something in corporate America that leads to this (aside from the obvious answer of profits over everything)
vannevar 7y ago
Is this new? I'd be curious to know the last time it wasn't true, outside of Tesla. I'm guessing you'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. I actually think US cars have improved tremendously in the last decade, though.
- Tagbert 7y ago
  they have improved. the measure in the article is relative reliability. Almost any car now is more reliable than the best cars from 30 years ago.
  - vannevar 7y ago
    I mean relative to the foreign competition. There's still a gap, but at least in terms of fit and finish it has narrowed. That's more initial quality than reliability, I guess.
- Arbalest 7y ago
  Maybe it finally got into the heads of American executives that you do actually have to put in some effort and not cut every corner. Probably because sales numbers were not in their favour.
ken 7y ago
Isn't this just stack ranking? Hasn't that always been a terrible way to measure quality? Every car, especially American makes, are drastically improved from even just a few years ago. Being in the bottom half in 2019 is a completely different story from being in the bottom half in 1999, or 1969.
- Tagbert 7y ago
  you're not going to get any clicks with THAT headline :)
- epistasis 7y ago
  The dynamics of how to evaluate a team of people that work together are quite different from ranking the quality of competitors in an industry. The reasons that stack ranking is bad don't really apply to choosing your next car manufacturer or to evaluating the relative health of US car companies versus others.
- smt88 7y ago
  As a consumer, I don’t really care how cars compare to 1999 equivalents. I care how they compare now.
- opencl 7y ago
  There have been plenty of drastic improvements in cars in the past 20 years, but I'm not convinced that reliability is one of them. Compared to 1969, definitely. Quality back then was awful. But there were plenty of very reliable cars around in the 90s, I'm still driving one of them. Those Buicks having major transmission problems within the first year of ownership would have been considered a disaster even in 1969. Same with Ford's powershift transmissions from a few years ago that tended to last ~25K miles.
perl4ever 7y ago
"alleged infotainment issues" I mean, not that it doesn't matter, but it feels like a bait and switch when people say "reliability" and then it comes down to this. I had a new Honda just a few years ago that had a broken internal engine part, a leaking head gasket, and a failed alternator within months. It had to be towed once. I decided to trade it for a "less reliable" vehicle. If you look online for used cars with high mileage, you will find, I think, that there are a lot of undesirable brands/models that nonetheless commonly last a long time.

309 points by luu 7y ago

It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah blah launching with excellence". And then there's Tesla: "We fixed issue XYZ, which affected people in exactly this particular way." "We proactively send bulletins and over-the-air fixes." "This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been fixed."

mrtksn 7y ago
Oh definately, I wonder why these giants cannot replicate the Tesla PR? This is probably Tesla's strongest point, having a problem with the product you paind for and not having personalized response makes you feel powerless while response from someone who seems to understand the problem and the issues it creates is a such a huge difference even if the issue is not resolved. I always forgive companies that did sloppy job but cared enough to appologise and explain why it happend. You don't have to have a celebrity CEO to do that.
- andreskytt 7y ago
  It has proven effectively impossible to sustainably project an incorrect image of a company. It’s not that they can’t do PR, their entire culture looks like that
justapassenger 7y ago
Words are cheap. They’re under investigation for possibly hiding recall and issuing OTA instead that surprised people with sudden range loss (https://www.businessinsider.com/nhtsa-investigating-tesla-update-hurt-model-s-model-x-range-2019-10?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/nhtsa-investigating-tesla-up...) They force customers to go over arbitration to fix yellowing entertainment screen on cars as young as few months. They tell people it’s normal wear and tear due to using cat in the sun (https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/yellow-screen-force-tesla-to-replace-it.158197/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/yellow-screen-force-...) Their service centers are over the capacity for years and cars can be stuck waiting for repairs and parts for months.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Perhaps the grandparent comment was actually talking about the quality of Tesla’s Public Relations department. Otherwise it would strike me as odd that someone would boost a vehicle manufacturer that doesn’t sell spare parts, in a thread on vehicle reliability. Edited a few words to better express my point.
  - linksnapzz 7y ago
    The difference is, the other automakers have decades of experience tailoring public pronouncements so as not to provide fodder for trial lawyers. Hence the vaporous noncommunication. Tesla hasn't been sued as much yet, but they'll get there eventually.
    - kiba 7y ago
      The PR department may have learned the wrong lesson from their environment.
    - smnrchrds 7y ago
      Unless their PR and legal department are exclusively staffed by recent graduates with zero work or real-world experience, it shouldn't matter whether or not they have been sued. It's not like every corporation starts figuring everything out by trial and error, never referring to literature or hiring experienced professionals.
      - linksnapzz 7y ago
        Yeah, I would've thought the same thing about their manufacturing & labor relations depts., and yet...here we are.
  - ChrisClark 7y ago
    Buy all the spare parts you want here: https://epc.tesla.com https://epc.tesla.com Or just walk into a service center. Tesla now undercuts all third party prices on parts.
w-m 7y ago
I found this part very interesting: "In fact, the quality of brand-new Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015.". (I have no idea what "quality" means here, and how you can put a number on that, that rises 3.5x, but that's beside the point). With one sentence, Tesla is telling 2015 customers that they got screwed over, and future customers that they should wait 4 years after a new model comes out before buying it, because they need that time to figure out all the quality issues.
- ianai 7y ago
  Isn’t that somewhat standard practice in tech? It’s an industry that experienced exponential growth for decades.
- arethuza 7y ago
  That rule applies to pretty much any car though - having bought a completely new model of BMW when it first came out I would never do that again, mind you I would never buy a BMW again! Personally I'd wait at least a year before buying any new model of car.
  - thrill 7y ago
    I bought one of the first BMW 328 convertibles off the line. I drove it 20 years with over 500,000 miles with minimal repairs - even the soft top was still working fine and looked "ok" when I finally hit a large pothole and totaled it.
- mojuba 7y ago
  The quality can be measured by cost of maintenance or more likely by the costs associated with warranty repairs (and product returns) incurred by the company.
  - luckydata 7y ago
    in this case quality just means how likely is a customer to experience issues covered by warranty in the first x days. That's usually called "initial quality" in the industry jargon. Model X was particularly bad off the gates, it had tons of issues especially with the stupid vertical doors that broke all the time.
mariorossi666 7y ago
> "This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been fixed." On the other hand, you don't have to fix a problem you haven't created. Most of Tesla problems are self inflicted. Moreover "Model X vehicles today is 3.5 times better than the quality of brand new Model X cars from 2015." According to which metric? It sounds a lot like "this is the fastest Mac ever built, 2.5x faster than the previous generation"[1] but on the market cheaper or faster options (or both) were already available. [1] in small writings "according to bench X and taking the best result. On average the improvement is about +0.3%"
- MayeulC 7y ago
  According to an article I read recently[1], they measure quality in rate of defects per car produced. According to this, we can get an idea of the scope of the improvements. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/customers-rave-about-model-3-in-new-bloomberg-survey/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/customers-rave-about-mo...
  - mariorossi666 7y ago
    Thanks for adding the metrics. As much as I think they are doing a great job and deserve to be there, I've also never seen a car in the $40k range (more 50-60k euros on this side of the ocean) not being "a pleasure to drive" or not having a good customer service. For the same price I can buy this https://www.audi.it/it/web/it/modelli/a6/a6.html https://www.audi.it/it/web/it/modelli/a6/a6.html
notacoward 7y ago
"We fixed one issue" isn't really any more informative than "we're committed to quality" with respect to overall reliability. One issue out of how many? How many customers are affected by those others, and how severely? How long are fixes taking on average? Tesla's response might resonate better in a community notorious for confusing specificity with truth, but it's still just spin.
- rockarage 7y ago
  Obviously you did not read or understand the article. The article mentioned specific issues that CR attributed to reliability problems in car brands, and Tesla addressed those issues regarding their brand with very specific and informative answers. The other questions you mentioned were not brought up. Your comment is unreasonably critical, read and try to understand the article first.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    I did read and understand the article, but the point stands. Over-specificity is as much of a smokescreen tactic as over-generality. It's not "unreasonably critical" to point that out, unless "unreasonably" has more to do with the sacred-cow object of criticism instead of the substance. Also, both the start and end of your comment violate site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pflats 7y ago
I felt the opposite. Tesla's answer came across the worst to me, and reads to me with the over-specificity of a student making excuses for why their paper isn't done on time. > "It was a supplier-related issue". Passing the buck is really not a great look to start with. It makes the rest of the response seem like a series of excuses. Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. The only time Tesla should mention a supplier issue is in response to, "why can't you sell me a car?" > "[It] did not pose any threat to vehicle safety". That's good, but this isn't the safety survey. > "[T]here was a[...] false service alert [... that was fixed] within two weeks of being reported". I'm not even sure how to react to this one. Bringing my car in to be told "false alarm" is really not reassuring. And two weeks to fix a false alert doesn't help me - I've probably already brought it in for service. > "This proactive approach to improved reliability is one of the reasons why Tesla is the highest rated car brand among consumers, according to Consumer Reports." (Paraphrased:) Our cars are the safest and best performing, and Model S is #1 in satisfaction. To me, blaming a supplier for the issues is a terrible way to start, and this is likewise a terrible closing. "You just fell in the rankings to come in 3rd to last in our reliability survey. Any comments?" "Our cars are the safest and fastest and we have always ranked #1 on your customer satisfaction survey." Those stats are undeniably good. They also make me think those are the stats the company cares about a lot more than reliability.
- woodandsteel 7y ago
  >Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. They are new at mass manufacturing and no doubt learned a lesson from this incident. And that is the whole point of their response, unlike the other American manufacturers they are successfully working away at rapidly improving quality and reliability. And you are angry at them for that.
  - pflats 7y ago
    But Tesla didn't say "we're new at this and we learned from it". They said it was a "supplier-related issue" that has been "addressed for cars in the field" and "resolved [...] with fundamental design improvements". Nothing in the statement tells me that there won't be another "supplier-related issue" down the line. There should be controls in place for this.

arethuza 7y ago

I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.

inferiorhuman 7y ago
They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Actually, most of the problems we had were fundamental design flaws e.g. a Toyota my wife had where the instruments (speedometer etc.) started cutting out occasionally - problem was tracked back to, of all things, the sunroof! There was a small leak and the electrical connectors for the instruments were in the bottom of the passenger foot-well - where the water was collecting from the sunroof and shorting things out. Similarly I had a VW that was prone to flooding the interior due to poor design of the battery compartment - if the drain hole from the battery compartment was blocked it would overflow into the interior of the car (we're in Scotland so problems inevitably involved water). Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland with a sunroof, I do wonder and we'd never do it again!
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    >Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland with a sunroof, I do wonder and we'd never do it again! Actually I really enjoy a sunroof especially in cloudy weather as it makes the interior a lot brighter and less claustrophobic even in dark days.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    I don't especially want a sunroof, as they inevitably leak, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a car at anything other other than the base trim level without sunroof - and when combined with other requirements I have (e.g. sat radio) presence of a sunroof is one of the first things I'll compromise on.

rtpg 7y ago

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad. My dad has a really expensive american-made fridge. It sucks. The UX is awful and it basically just looks shiny. Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. I like to think it’s the result of people not really traveling abroad (reasonable! It’s expensive and far away). People don’t get that so many other places are just nicer and have higher quality things for cheaper. There’s some quote about how somebody was super poor when growing up but was fine about it because they didn’t realize it. I think about that all the time when looking at some stuff in the US.

starpilot 7y ago
I could cherry pick examples from around the country to show exactly the opposite. There's a great Quora answer on this phenomenon, "Why do so many Europeans look down on 'American Cheese'?": https://qr.ae/TWJAc9 https://qr.ae/TWJAc9
- mrtksn 7y ago
  I was expecting to read a great Quora article but the author compared American speciality cheese to European supermarket fast serving cheese to prove that not everything made in Europe is superior. What's next? Comparing an American ivy league university building to a newly built apartment somewhere in Brussels and prove that not everything is older in Europe? Of course every place has all kind of extremes. I look down on West European cheese too because they don't have proper white cheese that is available in the Balkans and Turkey and when abroad I have to rely on low quality feta as a substitute and get depressed. That said, I am not going to claim that Balkans and Turkey have the best chease, it's just that the kind of the cheese I like is not available in western Europe in good quality and I am better of to stick with the local cheese(which is superior to the versions found in the Balkans and Turkey). All those "country X is superior to the country Y" is inherently flawed unless you talk about specifics. Otherwise, all you do is some kind nationalistic masturbation.

EdwardDiego 7y ago

Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan - that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and Aus. It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive, but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find official parts for them. It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot/trunk latch that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot/trunk by plastic pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30 only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that always leaked and you could never quite fix. The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name. I don't know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.

mcny 7y ago
My 2007 Toyota Camry was made in the US and has a known problem of burning oil because the sealing between the piston and the cylinder rent desire all the oil back or something. My next car will not be made in the US, regardless of manufacturer.
- exhilaration 7y ago
  I'm in the US and Toyota fixed my 2007 Toyota Camry's oil burning problem in 2015 for free!!! The dealership had quoted me something like $8000 to fix it (more than the car was worth) so I'd given up. Then one day I got a letter from Toyota corporate telling me my car was covered by this warranty extension. That made me a Toyota customer for life -- my next car was a Toyota Sienna, I won't buy another brand at this point. My sister is still driving that 2007 Camry. You should contact your local dealer and ask them about this. You are most likely covered. If they don't help, find a way to contact Toyota corporate.

tim333 7y ago

A lot of the issues may come down to whether management prioritize financial engineering / making huge bonuses / pleasing wall street vs making good vehicles. The same with Boeing - they used to be run by engineers who wanted to make great planes and then the shifted control to finance guys in Chicago who wanted to make big profits. You see the effect a bit with Tesla where I'm sure Musk would love to focus on quality but has to rush things out to make decent quarterly numbers or risk going bust by not getting ongoing financing. The Japanese seem to have almost the opposite attitude to finance where they will keep putting money into loss making stuff for ages out of a kind of loyalty which may lead to it's own issues of course.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
I worked for years as an engineer and manager at a legendary Japanese corporation, known for their quality. It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal. But you can’t argue with the results. Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American engineers, when I talk about my methodology. I’m not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I’m merely talking about what I do, and I’m treated as if I’m eating a ham sandwich in Temple.
- draw_down 7y ago
  > Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal. Sounds good to me.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
    Yes. It taught me a lot. I am still obsessed with quality, to this day. That obsession was not the problem. Frustrating, but it set them apart. Note that I worked there for many years. That indicates that we probably shared many values, and that I was respected; despite sometimes holding orthogonal points of view. I do feel as if we could have done more with software, though. What works for hardware does not necessarily scale to software.

huffmsa 7y ago

> CR says Chrysler’s Pacifica was one that contributed to the drop in rankings thanks to the minivan’s infotainment and transmission issues. Every single "downgrade" I read about is either infotainment or transmission or both. Except Honda, which apparently has shit locks on it's kid hauler. I'm a bit skeptical of consumer reports after actually reading it. My car, a Subaru WRX is given low marks for "stiff ride and constant engine noise", which I think re reason why people buy WRXs, not avoid them.

tibbydudeza 7y ago
Yep you buy a WRX for the drivetrain and rally heritage ... the terrible plastic interior was a moot point.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  The seats are comfy enough, the steering wheel is beefy, the only point of failure I've had is the battery. Otherwise, it's exactly what it's supposed to be. CR give my other car, a Jaguar F-Pace low marks for "loud engine and cabin, stiff choppy ride and bad infotainment." Which to me sounds like a lot of soccer mom's thought they were getting "luxury" utility vehicle but accidentally purchase a 350hp supercharged v6 "sport" utility vehicle. Cars are for driving, not "infotainment".
  - basch 7y ago
    These ratings are comparative. If youve mostly interacted with your two brands, and not the other ones at the top of the list, how can you compare them and say yours isnt worse? Infotainment includes maps, air conditioning, heat, radio. Those are important things to do easily in a car.
    - linksnapzz 7y ago
      HVAC is certainly not infotainment, there are safety implications if the defrosters don't work. The HVAC controls should never be at the mercy of whatever phoned-in UI the radio and satnav have in your car.

juskrey 7y ago

I have travelled US a lot and have rented a lot of different cars. Honestly I don't know a much about reliability (except I got several problems with top Nissan models), but comparing to US cars, the rest of the world cars just don't drive and are not fun. And then you got Tesla which is crap inside but for some reason is super fun and you want to buy it immediately.

thomasedwards 7y ago
Have you ever rented a Lamborghini?
- juskrey 7y ago
  Ok ok, for me fun means the car should deliver fun to all my family while traveling.
  - elbrian 7y ago
    Ah, so like an Audi, BWM, Mercedes, Acura, Infiniti or Lexus?
screye 7y ago
Aren't british roadsters are classic driver's car ? (Mini coopers, Mazda MX-5, etc). Even in the sports car scene, it is Porsche that is lauded for being the most fun to drive. American cars are usually more powerful but are much heavier and a bit sluggish on controls.
winrid 7y ago
No fun Audi's or VWs??? Nissan Maxima? Subaru? Mercedes? Hyundai and Kia are also good handling and comfortable cars. I've completed in the Soul, Elantra, and some others and have some trophies with Korean cars (stock suspension etc).
glofish 7y ago
I agree, american cars have a driving quality to them that other cars do not. I drive Mazda (higher resale value) I wish I could "afford" american ("afford" in the sense of not minding a lower resale value). The engine is usually smooth and powerful, cabin comfort, the ride very quiet, it sort of glides with you. While I did not drive that many American cars, but I loved renting Chevy Impala, larger Fords

thdrdt 7y ago

This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are turning to Porsche. The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they shipped those cars.

mgoetzke 7y ago
sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ? I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Porsche only sold 256,255 cars last year after decades of existence since they target a certain clientele. Tesla will surpass that this year in volume.
- thdrdt 7y ago
  The Porsche Taycan is pre-ordered more than 30000 times. Most of those customers currently own a Tesla.
  - Supersonic112 7y ago
    Would you mind disclosing your source(s) for both statements?
    - elbrian 7y ago
      I Google'd "Porsche Taycan 30000" and found these sources for the 30k pre-orders claim: * https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-surge-to-30000-three-variants-hinted-for-debut/ https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-su... * https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservations-surpass-30000-ahead-of-world-debut/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservation... There is almost-certainly no source for the "most of those customers currently own a Tesla" statement, because that's not something Porsche would ever disclose.

tibbydudeza 7y ago

Don't get me started on ANY German car ... my cars and home appliances are all Korean now.

onlingyding 7y ago
All power to you but I know if the choice was between a Bosch and a Samsung washing machine, it would be the Bosch one every time. Too many gimmicks, poorly designed software and cheap plastic pieces.

RickJWagner 7y ago

So much for my dreams of buying a used Tesla. I've got kids, so I buy my cars used. A while back I decided to start buying Toyota products, I haven't regretted the decision. I do hope the American manufacturers turn things around, though. Maybe with the electrics.

xchaotic 7y ago

Looks like a lot of discussion here is about housing, but the CR report suggests that most of the issues are with the infotainment systems in cars. And that includes Tesla. I assume that the ecosystem is big enough to create a 3rd player that’s better than android auto or iOS and better suited for cars specifically.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Maybe it's just me but the infotainment systems in cars, despite being more complex, aren't really better in any meaningful way compared to my 2007 Mazda 3 (RIP). I've got a new car with a touchscreen but it's more of a PITA then hooking up an MP3 player via the aux audio.
- ranger207 7y ago
  I have an older car. I replaced the head unit with one that supports Bluetooth, and it stays on Bluetooth 24/7. I have a suction cup mount for my phone which runs GPS. That's all I need. I dread having to buy a car made in the past decade or so, purely because of way-too-intrusive infotainment systems.
  - charwalker 7y ago
    What you describe is what I did to my older Outback a few years ago, replaced the aftermarket non BT stereo my older brother had in it with BT. The swap wasn't too bad and It's been working great since then. I just got a recent year Mazda3 that came with the free (from Mazda) upgrade to Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I'm and Android guy so can't speak to Carplay but the basic functions provided by AA like music/podcast playback, navigation, and overall interface are solid even without a touch screen. In fact, I'd say the lack of touch screen is a perk as I'm not reaching out to tap something vs using the console/cup holder area interface that I picked up quickly and like (other than a so far not re-mapable star/favorites button that only goes to the Mazda audio favorites list outside of AA). It's less distracting than a mounted phone, has a bigger screen for navigation, and works really well for me. I don't think Id buy a newer car without either a basic BT stereo setup or full blown AA. That being said, I have the trade off now of requiring a cable for AA to work otherwise I'm only on the built in BT infotainment (which I still find way better than the Toyota Corolla interface I tested out recently). I'm still used to leaving my phone in my pocket or jacket so I have to remember to pull it out and often end up leaving it plugged in and walking away (the spot where it sits is well hidden so not too worried about theft in my location). According to forums, it is possible to hook my phone to AA setup via wifi and project wirelessly with some lag which I am interested in setting up but I think I need to update the software in my unit before it can make the wifi connection. I'm really liking the AA setup in this car. It's pretty intuitive, easy to set up and control, and feels safer than another setup with the caveat that it needs a cable. Good news is it keeps the phone charged up (the Toyota Corolla USB didn't provide enough power to charge my phone, for some reason). I would recommend it.

souterrain 7y ago

I’m quite pleased with my 2017 Ford Fiesta SFE with its German engine and French gearbox and Mexican assembly. Unfortunately, Ford is eliminating the Fiesta in the US.

post_break 7y ago
That's surprising considering that car has the worst transmission in car history. Unless the SFE is the one with a stick.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  AFAIK every trim level of the Fiesta has been available with either automatic or manual except the ST (i.e. the hot hatch version) which is manual-only.
  - souterrain 7y ago
    I believe the SFE (using the 1.0L, in-line 3 “EcoBoost” engine) was only available with a 5 speed stick. I suspect the performance with an auto transmission would be unbearable.
Marsymars 7y ago
Yeah, I like my Fiesta too, but Ford won't be making any vehicles I'm interested in going forward. Looking at Mazda/Subaru/Audi/Genesis for potential replacements when my Fiesta conks out.

AcerbicZero 7y ago

Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers makes the difference somewhat obvious. I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines with humans touching them (in the 911 factory). When a human is working on the car, the car isn't moving. Compared to the Corvette (much cheaper, but still "high end") you can see how quantity is prioritized, and how the car never really stops for any extended period of time, before moving down the line. Again, this is a totally subjective opinion, but comparing my current car (VW) to a similarly priced Ford I test drove the other day (GT350) the difference in build quality is night and day. This is a Porsche factory, building an expensive, high end 911 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA Here is the Chevrolet Factory building a Corvette - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No

majormajor 7y ago
German cars tend to be less reliable than Japanese ones, as in this survey, possibly due to those tolerance. My 2018 German car feels a lot nicer than a 2018 Toyota, but has already had more problems, too. :| Sometimes I wonder if the US auto industry suffers a bit competitively vs Germany and Japan due to a higher amount of "brain drain" to other higher-paying forms of STEM jobs in tech.
- _s 7y ago
  Japanese manufacturers have found a good balance between simplicity and modern tech (see Mazda, Suzuki). German cars tend to be over-engineered; lots of modern tech in the vehicle + manufacturing, whereas American cars tend to be quite the opposite.
  - amyjess 7y ago
    And historically when the Japanese _have_ gone overboard on tech, back in the bubble era, they also tend to back it up with overengineering. Think of the fourth-gen Toyota Supra or any version of the Nissan Skyline GT-R. Or the Toyota Soarer/Lexus SC, which was basically a detuned Supra packed with luxury equipment and unique styling. They were technological marvels whose engines were overengineered beasts that could take ridiculous amounts of abuse.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Take this with a grain of salt. A vehicle's reliability has just as much to do with who you sell it to (at scale) as what the vehicle is. Reliability ratings are greatly biased toward vehicles that are expensive and don't have tons of manufacturer financing incentives to put them in the hands of everyone with a pulse.

crappy-doo 7y ago

what about Telsa?

gumby 7y ago

I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me. By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But some industries (cars, aircraft, et al) are perfectly happy to blame someone else. Note: it's OK if you say "we got some bad products and we failed to detect it..." That's defect analysis. But own it.

FussyZeus 7y ago
This is one of my favorite aspects of the writing in Outer Worlds: that no one who works for a corporation is ever, ever allowed to speak ill of it, of it's products, or anything even tangentially related to the corporation. It's hilarious the mental gymnastics these fictional people will leap through to avoid earning the ire of their employer, and it's absolutely shocking how true-to-life it often is.
- hartator 7y ago
  `Outer Worlds` the video game? I want to play it now.
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    Correct. It's quite good, though the combat is a little one-dimensional and cast against the design, writing, and world-building, it's very much turned into a situation where the game itself is sort of an obstacle to what I'm enjoying in the game. I don't think it will prompt a re-play but I am thoroughly enjoying it.
- rasz 7y ago
  Why go fictional when you have Apple employees?
AceJohnny2 7y ago
> there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials There's reason to doubt that (from 3 days ago): https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/a-tiny-pharmacy-is-identifying-big-problems-with-common-drugs-including-zantac/2019/11/08/6dd009ca-eb76-11e9-9c6d-436a0df4f31d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/a-tiny-pharmacy-is-id...

gumby 7y ago

Not really a surprise. US manufacturing is optimized for the extrema (i.e. it's a saddle curve): inexpensive stuff to heavy to be worth shipping (e.g. paper) and inexpensive low-labor commodity product (e.g. grain) and at the other extreme: super high value, difficult to produce items (e.g. ultra-high precision bearings, cruise missiles).

j8014 7y ago
That is total nonsense. I buy nearly everything either made in the US or Europe. Kitchenware, tools, outdoor equipment, clothing, furniture and just about everything else except my phone, tv and computers. It's always excellent, durable and unfortunately, expensive.
- gumby 7y ago
  I agree about many European products (the appliances in my house are all 20 year old European ones that still work perfectly). But inexpensive "made in USA" stuff I tend to find (folding outdoor chairs and the like) seems to pretty much last a short time or even single use, and as has been lamented publicly, is rarely exported. Most of the everyday product purchases seem to come from SE Asia.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    Only on the extreme low end. If you want cheap crap, there is a certain national economy geared to that, and its not the USA.

korethr 7y ago

Some years ago, I heard it told that the American car companies had done the market research and found that the typical car-buyer in the US bought a car and kept it for 3 years, on average. And so, armed with this info, the cars were designed to last 3 years on average. This is also why the 3-year lease is a thing. Now, I don't know how true this is, or what definition of "average" was being used in those statements (mean, median, or mode), but let's roll with it. Assuming a normal distribution, that would mean half the cars built last less than 3 years, some significantly less so, and half the cars built last longer than 3 years, again, some significantly more so. Depending on how wide the distribution is, that could mean that there's simultaneously a lot of shitbox lemons and a lot of indestructible workhorses at the same time. And regardless of how wide that distribution actually is, that would explain the varying reports of various US-built cars I've personally heard: some glowingly praising reliability that rivals the Japanese stereotype, and some that would bring more value to the world as crushed metal cubes. I want to argue against engineering the cars to last only as long as the typical new-car-buyer keeps one, but I have a hard time doing so. If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it? I think you could argue that the poor reputation of your used cars could harm new car sales in the long term, but I don't know how to quantify that. In the absence of numbers of how such reliability planning harms long-term sales, I could totally see decision-makers coming to favor designing to a 3-year reliability target, with the car being considered disposable thereafter. In either case, if the average car buyer buys a car every N years, and thus, you treat that as reliability target, then targeting for a median or mean reliability of N years strikes me as the wrong way to to that. IMO, the ideal reliability distribution would be something of a skewed one, with a long right-hand tail. Keeping the assumption above of N = 3 years, then you'd want the mode on the reliability distribution to be 3 years, with the band below the mode as narrow as possible. If you couldn't reasonably make it any narrower, than push the target modal reliability up, such that the number of cars that fall below N are significantly less than the ones meet it. Yes, that means there will be more cars exceeding your reliability target, but having cars that lasted longer than the minimum necessary strikes me as a lesser evil than having ones that didn't. Of course, for all I know, the US manufacturers do exactly as I described in the above paragraph, and the German and Japanese brands simply have a longer tail. Edit: I should make it clear, I personally don't agree with this statement, "If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?". I'm not trying to excuse or justify the low reliability ratings of domestic manufacturers, I'm trying to understand how they got there. I'm trying to model the decision-making of US car manufacturers, and it's a mindset I can see them running on, given the paragraphs above it. Those down-voting, I'd love to hear your counterarguments. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but it's hard to make less-stupid arguments without knowing how I'm wrong.

randyrand 7y ago

Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.

663e1b 7y ago
Does Toyota even import cars (to North America, at least)? I was under the impression that most of their models were built locally.
mark-r 7y ago
Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S. According to Wikipedia [1]: > Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America
- randyrand 7y ago
  Thanks for the info! Didn't know that.

oflannabhra 7y ago

I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again until we switch to EV. Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit. The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought it used with 160k miles on it, and sold it at 200k. Over 5 years I have done my own brakes and oil changes, and have only had to replace the starter. I sold it for $1k less than I bought it (I got a good deal). We bought essentially the exact same vehicle, just in SUV. The Honda has been a little less stellar, but still good. AC compressor has gone out multiple times (a known issue affecting multiple models), but we replaced it with a warrantied aftermarket part the first time it failed. It's currently at 220k and still kicking. We only buy used and in cash, so finding the right car can take some time. Toyotas and Hondas have unbelievable resell value in the used market. A used Toyota can fetch a similar price as a brand new American made equivalent.

GiorgioG 7y ago
I'm an American and used to only buy american cars (until I finished college) because my father was a GM factory worker and that was the expectation (right or wrong, GM paid the bills for my upbringing.) I've driven GM, VWs, Hondas, Toyotas and currently drive a Ford F150. I've had the fortune of rarely having serious problems with any of them, but we haven't kept most of the vehicles for more than 4-5 years for a variety of reasons (VW Golfs are fine when you're single, but not when you have a couple of kids (at least not in America...we're spoiled.) Hats off to Toyota though. My parents have been driving my wife's old 2003 Camry for the past 3-4 years. It still runs great and up until this past weekend had zero issues. The master power window switch failed and now the rear driver side window fails to come up. Amazon is delivering the replacement part today for a whopping $23.50.
- TylerE 7y ago
  That's not really a rare situation. Even the worst cars today are far better than the best were 30 years ago.
7y ago

smn1234 7y ago

this is from 2018!

mark-r 7y ago

I haven't bought a U.S. branded car since 1979. That 1975 Dodge Dart was bad enough to turn me off them forever, especially when I saw how much worse its replacement (the Dodge Aspen) was. My last 4 autos have been Toyotas, all excellent.

Havoc 7y ago

Can't help but draw a parallel to the Boeing mess. Is there something in corporate America that leads to this (aside from the obvious answer of profits over everything)

vannevar 7y ago

Is this new? I'd be curious to know the last time it wasn't true, outside of Tesla. I'm guessing you'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. I actually think US cars have improved tremendously in the last decade, though.

Tagbert 7y ago
they have improved. the measure in the article is relative reliability. Almost any car now is more reliable than the best cars from 30 years ago.
- vannevar 7y ago
  I mean relative to the foreign competition. There's still a gap, but at least in terms of fit and finish it has narrowed. That's more initial quality than reliability, I guess.
Arbalest 7y ago
Maybe it finally got into the heads of American executives that you do actually have to put in some effort and not cut every corner. Probably because sales numbers were not in their favour.

ken 7y ago

Isn't this just stack ranking? Hasn't that always been a terrible way to measure quality? Every car, especially American makes, are drastically improved from even just a few years ago. Being in the bottom half in 2019 is a completely different story from being in the bottom half in 1999, or 1969.

Tagbert 7y ago
you're not going to get any clicks with THAT headline :)
epistasis 7y ago
The dynamics of how to evaluate a team of people that work together are quite different from ranking the quality of competitors in an industry. The reasons that stack ranking is bad don't really apply to choosing your next car manufacturer or to evaluating the relative health of US car companies versus others.
smt88 7y ago
As a consumer, I don’t really care how cars compare to 1999 equivalents. I care how they compare now.
opencl 7y ago
There have been plenty of drastic improvements in cars in the past 20 years, but I'm not convinced that reliability is one of them. Compared to 1969, definitely. Quality back then was awful. But there were plenty of very reliable cars around in the 90s, I'm still driving one of them. Those Buicks having major transmission problems within the first year of ownership would have been considered a disaster even in 1969. Same with Ford's powershift transmissions from a few years ago that tended to last ~25K miles.

perl4ever 7y ago

"alleged infotainment issues" I mean, not that it doesn't matter, but it feels like a bait and switch when people say "reliability" and then it comes down to this. I had a new Honda just a few years ago that had a broken internal engine part, a leaking head gasket, and a failed alternator within months. It had to be towed once. I decided to trade it for a "less reliable" vehicle. If you look online for used cars with high mileage, you will find, I think, that there are a lot of undesirable brands/models that nonetheless commonly last a long time.