Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct? 672
Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that global competition is squeezing lemons out of the market and forcing automakers to improve the quality and reliability of their vehicles. With few exceptions, cars are so close on reliability that it's getting harder for companies to charge a premium. 'We don't have total clunkers like we used to,' says Dave Sargent, automotive vice president with J.D. Power. In 1998, J.D. Power and Associates found an industry average of 278 problems per 100 vehicles, but this year, the number fell to 132. In 1998, the most reliable car had 92 problems per 100 vehicles, while the least reliable had 517, a gap of 425. This year the gap closed to 284 problems. It wasn't always like this. In the 1990s, Honda and Toyota dominated in quality, especially in the key American market for small and midsize cars. Around 2006, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were heading into financial trouble and shifted research dollars from trucks to cars after years of neglect and spent more on engineering and parts to close the gap. Meanwhile Toyota's reputation was tarnished by a series of safety recalls, and Honda played conservative with new models that looked similar to the old ones. Now it's 'very hard to find products that aren't good anymore,' says Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the Edmunds.com automotive website. 'In safety, performance and quality, the differences just don't have material impact.'"
ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
if bad cars have gone extinct. take a seat, it will be a while before he's done laughing.
News to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The author has obviously not driven a GM vehicle lately. Let me count the problems with my two year old Pontiac...
Wait, what? (Score:0, Insightful)
An absolute minimum of 92 problems per 100 cars is considered reliable?
The Biggest Loss (Score:4, Insightful)
is the fact that most new cars are very difficult for the owner to repair themselves, given that many are highly integrated with computer systems. Shade-tree mechanics are going to disappear.
That and the fact that every new car seems to be built on the principle that repair costs are no obstacle, so if a car gets hit, its highly damaged, extremely expensive to repair, and much more likely to be a write off - meaning you need to buy a replacement.
Re:Is this a rule? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to any taxi rank in Germany (where almost all taxis are Mercedes). You won't have any trouble at all finding one with over 500,000 km on the clock.
Re:News to me (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct, it is two years old and not a new car. However, if you are only basing reliability on one year or whatever you define as a new car period then you sir (and the author) are fools.
Also, reading the article it becomes apparent that what he is actually referring to is that new models are more reliable. I don't see any mention of a brand new Chevy Malibu (the same car as my G6) being reliable. Maybe now the new designs are coming out that are built worth a damn.
You young people don't remember the horrors (Score:5, Insightful)
Of being stranded on the side of I95 in the dead of summer with steam pouring out of the hood of a behemoth Ford.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big news is not that the absolute reliability of the best-in-class has changed that much, though it has improved a touch; but that the average quality of the junk has increased quite sharply, narrowing the reliability gap considerably.
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:3, Insightful)
because water leaks into electronic modules, wires wear out, animals crawl into weird places, blower resistors melt, plastic bits break, murphy's law takes full effect. now your experience sounds wonderful, but from the cars i have seen it is not representative unfortunately.
Don't Confuse Initial Quality with Reliability (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between "initial quality" reports and long term (5, 10, 15 year) reliability, though there is probably some correlation due to overall manufacturing control at the factory. Initial quality tells you if something was built correctly, for the most part. Long term reliability has more to do with the design and specifications of the car and its components. You can have a cheap car (or camera, or toy, etc.) that works fine out of the box and breaks in a short time due to cheap materials. Or you could have one built of high quality materials with fine tolerances that lasts effectively forever.
Re:You young people don't remember the horrors (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Biggest Loss (Score:4, Insightful)
is the fact that most new cars are very difficult for the owner to repair themselves, given that many are highly integrated with computer systems. Shade-tree mechanics are going to disappear.
Tired meme. I've been hearing continuously and forcefully since I started helping my dad change the oil on his car... in the 80s... Let it die.
The funniest part is people going on and on about how expensive ODB-II scanner are... first of all yes in 1998 they were thousands of dollars, but I bought one half a decade or so ago, pretty full featured too, for something like 3 tanks of gas (and I drive a small car, for a SUV its probably more like one tank). Seriously, they cost less than an old fashioned PDA, figure less than a hundred bucks and you're good.
Secondly autozone will loan you one in exchange for a drivers license with the assumption that whatever you need to replace, you'll buy from them upon return, so if you can push-pull-drag the thing to the lot if it barely runs at all, or have one friend in the whole world who will give you a lift, its free.
Thirdly most failure modes don't require a scanner unless you're an idiot. Battery is dead, no lights no start no voltage, I'm not stupid enough to scan it, I put in a new battery. Same for coolant leaks, oil leaks, cracked hoses, suspension/tire/brake probs, blah blah blah. You do need a scanner for some more obscure emissions problems. If you are stupid and/or don't know how to google, sometimes the only way to test a sensor is a scanner.. a scanner is the Fastest way, thats how I figured out my 12 year old O2 sensor had gone out. If the rusty 5 year old muffler rattles when you floor it, only a idiot hooks up a scanner instead of replacing the rusted out muffler. Brakes make horrific scraping sound? I don't think a scanner helps you figure out the brake pads are toast (and after that scraping, the disks too)
Re:News to me (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the GM divisions have been tops for initial quality
With the exception of the now defunct Saturn. I'm convinced they gave Saturn the axe because it made all the other divisions look bad. Love my indestructible Saturn commuter car...
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News to me (Score:5, Insightful)
You're clearly not from the Motor City. Badges have little meaning - nearly no meaning, really - as it's the *platforms* that are designed by the automakers, with the badges shared among them.
Pontiac was put to pasture because its offerings were redundant to those from Chevy, Buick and Saturn. Even then, Saturn got the axe for the same reason. The end result was a healthier portfolio of platforms upon which various GM makes could be engineered, tuned and packaged.
This, however, is the insight few folks realize: The automakers each have a cache of core engineers with talent and capabilities that vary wildly. The executives move their most talented engineers to the platforms that need success most, and their lesser engineers to the platforms that need it least. So, Ford F-150 and Chrysler minivan engineers are the best of their respective companies for a time, and fleet car platforms get the chaff. When the fleet car platforms suffer to the degree they need triage (Chrysler 200, Dodge Durango, Ford Focus), the best engineers are shifted here to perform some one-off miracles.
From here, it sounds like the trim engineers assigned to the aging GMs you had were running in "maintenance" or "cost reduction" mode. Shame for them to lose you, as it's clear to me the star teams were on call for the recent launch of the Cruze and Sonic.
Hard as it was for GM to eliminate and consolidate (trust me, I know, I lived off Pontiac's teat for the last decade), it was the right thing to do.
The new farts know what the old farts don't: Follow the star engineers' platforms for great reliability success!
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Insightful)
There are, will be, and always will be quality control issues as manufacturers try to race each other to the bottom on cutting corners and therefore costs. Recall, not long ago, that brand new Chevy Sonics were leaving the factory missing brake pads. (The Chevy Sonic itself, a rebadged second-generation Aveo/Daewoo Kalos that is already notorious for having a laughably flimsy "new, revolutionary!" type of paint job, and is also a proven unreliable engine and drivetrain platform.)
Until very recently, the Dodge Neon/PT Cruiser combo was probably the single lowest quality modern production automobile ever produced, and it is a boon to motorists everywhere that the entire platform finally aged enough that it got the ax. Now, at least, you are less likely to be behind one of these things when it decides to blow its head off into the stratosphere and grind to a shuddering halt on the road ten feet in front of you.
Lousy cars are still out there, even brand spanking new ones. The only problem is, so many platforms are changing, being reinvented, or dropped in favor of completely new ones coming out that we don't know where they all are yet. The manufacturers, of course, all have their glossy print marketing machines going full tilt to convince you how wonderful ALL of their shiny new cars are, with their fancy new technology and brand new engine designs and computers and whatnot. Yes, gone are the days of flooding engines and sawdust in the transmission and all that 1950's bullshit, but new cars with their new technology can and will develop new types of problems that people are only just starting to discover. That's the price you pay for driving a fabulously complicated mass-produced piece of equipment every day in all types of conditions. Stuff will break. Some stuff will have unforeseen flaws, and break frequently. The only difference between now and cars of yesteryear is the parts that will produce lemons will be different (I predict lots of electronics/electrical problems, transmission issues for the zooty new million-speed automatics and CVT's, and the sudden availability of turbochargers demonstrating to American numbskulls that such things are not maintenance-free), and every time some issue pops up somebody will try to sue somebody else over it.
Re:Only Problem My Car Has... (Score:2, Insightful)
I really hate seeing this stupid meme passed around as though it had any semblance to reality.
Gas prices in the US are not "artificially low". Like many other places they are artificially high, mostly because of our historical reluctance to tap our own supply, despite it being readily available (Shale oil, gulf oil, tundra oil, the list goes on.)
Now, they certainly APPEAR low when compared to prices around the globe, particularly in Europe. But that is not because America has found a way to magically push prices down. It's because European countries push prices artificially HIGH through excessive taxation and regulation.
Lower taxes and lift burdensome regulation (including allowing additional refinery capacity to be built) and you will see prices drop everywhere after a time. The Market works amazingly well at providing for all and keeping prices low when the government doesn't get in the way.
Re:The Biggest Loss (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a mechanic by trade (though, admittedly I grew up with a family who races professionally) but I will take a modern car to work on over something 10+ years old any day. In fact, one of my "toy" cars is a 1988 Mazda. It's had an entire drivetrain from a 2001 GM product swapped into it, and that has in turn had even more modern electronic controls put into it.
My 2007 Infiniti is just as easy to work on as my 1987 Renault GTA was, and it's a damn sight easier to keep running well. Obviously electric/hybrid cars require a different skill set from ICE cars, but that's simply a matter of learning what to do.
BTW, many of the freelance mechanics I know are much more skilled than the average monkey at a dealership, the dealership simply has more books and specialized tools. Those are all available to the shade tree guys too, just call your Mac/Snap-On dealer.
I'm confused by this fear of technology on... Slashdot. Really guys? Come on.
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but none of those things is indicative of a bad design, just bad luck.
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy shit what's wrong with you!? And I thought buying a new car once every 5 years was bad...
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid it was way too late for them to keep me as a customer.
I'd like to point out that brand loyalty can be just as naive as nationalism in a buying decision. Maytag was considered unsurpassed in quality for most of it's existence, but if you bought one in the ten year period of 1996-2006, you'd just as likely have a pile of junk. Toyota hasn't fallen as far as Maytag, but there's no sense in pretending that they are the pinnacle of reliability anymore (I say this as the owner of two Toyotas, so I'm not hating).
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:5, Insightful)
ALL CARS are junk, says the guy with one of the biggest pieces of shit cars every manufactured.
Re:No. The opposite is true. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a mechanic who deals with these things often.
All those are old news. "Thin" sheet metal only matters if it rusts, and rust devoured old school sheet metal easily enough.
I've worked with plastic manifolds. So what? If well-designed, they do fine. You can't honk down on the hardware like on a cast iron intake, so don't do that.
Small wires and connectors are a bit fiddly, but again no big deal. Different connector tools aren't expensive.
I've been involved with rebuilding a lot of salvage vehicles from two or more organ donors, and don't find it intimidating. These are often "gut rehabs" where a burn job gets a complete dash and wiring and interior swap, and they are done with relatively basic equipment.
Vehicles now often last for very high mileage if well-maintained. Some design choices suck, which (Vega engines, Pinto bodies) has been the case since cars existed.
Re:ask a mechanic (Score:4, Insightful)
why would i go to this mechanic person?
You are getting rid of them before most long-term maintenance is even necessary. You could probably not do _anything_ to a modern car for two years and get away with it. Those cars could last 10, 15 or 20 years if properly maintained, but it requires a skilled mechanic to do the proper maintenance because after 100,000 miles or so there are major components that must be replaced.
I just replaced a car that was almost 14 years old and I was sorely disappointed that I had to because I felt it should have lasted another 5 or 10 years. It was a 1999 Honda Odyssey, and was generally trouble-free and in good shape, but the transmission was going, which is a well-known problem for those cars from that time period, and the logical choice was to replace it rather than replace the transmission, at cost of twice or three times the value of the car, and risk having another similar failure in another year or two, because based on our research, that was a distinct possibility.