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Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct?
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.'"
if bad cars have gone extinct. take a seat, it will be a while before he's done laughing.
The author has obviously not driven a GM vehicle lately. Let me count the problems with my two year old Pontiac...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
An absolute minimum of 92 problems per 100 cars is considered reliable?
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.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
No sig today...
Of being stranded on the side of I95 in the dead of summer with steam pouring out of the hood of a behemoth Ford.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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