On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:14 PM, paul stenquist <[email protected]> wrote: > J.D. Power does a variety of research studies. They measure initial > satisfaction three year satisfaction and long term durability among other > things. Initial Satisfaction tends to be a measure of dealership schmoozing > more than anything else. The U.S. guys used to get killed on that, but they > learned from the Japanese, and now many excel-- GM dealers in particular. > American carmakers always did fairly well in long term durability, in spite > of what you might hear. These days they do even better. I believe that three > of the top six brands in durability were American in the last surveys.
I'm not surprised that the Big 3 do well in long term durability. It's the sort of thing that plays well to their strengths and frankly anything that makes it to that point without dying is likely going to last a while. It's the 3 year that is the most telling for most consumers though, since that's just about dead on the replacement cycle for cars for the majority of the new market. > > In terms of people defending their brand, other studies show that import > buyers are much more likely to do that than are American car buyers. It's PC > to drive an import. It's uncool to drive an American car. I used to write a > column for the service industry. It appeared in Hearst's Motor magazine, and > it was called "Troubleshooter." The idea was to help service people with > problems they couldn't solve. I had access to all the engineers and factory > bulletins and tried to sort things out for the guys in the field. Our > audience was largely domestic service people, but I got plenty of letters > from import mechanics as ell. I rarely got letters from consumers -- with > two notable exceptions. Honda and Peugeot. Honda owners were very distraught > about recurring head gasket problems on Civics. But they always prefaced > their complaint with praise for their car and a profession of deep love. > They were all sure that they're car was an exception and all the other > Hondas were problem free. Peugeot owners had myriad problems, and once in a > while one of them would search out my phone number and call me. They were > begging for help. Everything went wrong with those cars. But, still, they > loved them. Go figure. > > Car research can be very misleading, because there's a lot going on. But in > the states, the intelligentsia drive imports. It's part of their calling > card. They won't be caught dead in an American made car. Their prejudices > are based on bullshit, but they're powerful. > Paul Somewhere approaching half the US population drives 'imports', many of which are actually made in the US unlike many big-3 products. It's not just the intelligentsia. The big 3 spent 30+ years making products that were for the most part distinctly inferior to the foreign brands while often providing a dealer experience that was once again far worse than the foreign brands. They didn't get their shit together on anything until the 90's and even then it was a crapshoot unless you were looking at a Taurus or an LH car. Even now if you look at say GM's best car, the Malibu, it's essentially a Corolla clone for the same money. If you're getting a Toyota clone for Toyota money, why not just buy the Toyota and not have to take the risk that the GM product will turn out to be a POS, just like every single one of its predecessors (which usually were hailed as 'just as good as the Japanese' when they came out too). People don't believe that the new products from the Big 3 are as good as the Japanese because the Big 3 have been feeding them that line since the 70's and it was flat out lies until recently. Frankly, I do like some Big 3 product. If I was in the market today I'd be buying a Ford Flex and my current car is a '94 Eagle Vision. I'm not biased against the big 3, but I have comparison shopped much of their product over the last 15 years and typically they came in well behind the major Japanese makers. Hell, I'd take a Kia over a Cobalt/G5 or Caliber any day. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
