US cars are getting better – unless they aren’t

NPR recently ran a story about how US car manufacturers are struggling to compete with

U.S. Auto Industry Battles Rivals, Image
by Frank Langfitt
Morning Edition, October 10, 2007 • While Detroit automakers have been busy trying to slash costs, they face another big challenge in changing their image for producing poor-quality cars. Some surveys indicate American vehicles actually are improving, even if many consumers haven't noticed.

This story gives you the impression that American cars are as good as the competition, but people are buying imports out of habit.

Driving this point home is their central quote:

Dave Sargent, J.D. Power's vice president of auto research, said Gray and others like her are making a mistake.

"Many consumers still have a view of the Detroit automakers that the products are not as reliable as the imports, but what our studies show is that that is simply not true," he said.

Okay – this is their premise: US cars, good. US consumers, unaware. Fair enough.

They add this nugget:

Detroit has been closing the quality gap in recent years, Sargent said. In a study this summer of three-year-old vehicles, J.D. Power said Buick tied Lexus as the most dependable brand. In another J.D. Power study on quality, Ford won in five categories — more than any other company.

And then wind out with a discussion of how US automakers like Buick had been coasting on old designs, but are now making cars that look better.

Boiling this down, it would appear that Mr. Langfitt has spoken to J.D. Powers about GM’s Buick line of cars, and has spoken to an employee of GM.

But I gotta ask, how does all of this square with what Consumer Reports has been saying for years (and is still saying as of this very minute?)

This is their chart of how many problems each manufacturer reports per 100 cars over time:

CR’s reliability chart of all makes and models (not shown) makes it clear that Buick lags far behind Lexus in reliability (Lexus being ranked number 5, while Buick is ranked 18th) and the best model Buick makes (the Rendezvous) is only as good as the average model being produced by Lexus.

I don’t think I’m out of line in wondering what gives? Surely any reporter has access to Consumer Reports – if there’s a distinction between these two sets of data, I’d sure love to hear it. How are they tied with Lexus with J.D. Powers, but so far behind according to Consumer Reports?

I’ll admit to a bias against domestic cars, but that bias is backed up every time I pop into a bookstore to look at the buying guide. Every year, domestic cars are listed as having more problems than Asian models over time. For the past ten years, the best used car came from Toyota (or from Toyota’s Lexus line).

Here’s CR’s current take on the best and worst new cars – see any trends?

I mean, urgh! Did the NPR guy just get fed a PR story from GM? Was he really this lazy? Is there a bigger story on how J.D. Powers knows more than Consumer Reports?

I guess we’ll never know.