Honda Car Forum

On Jun 9, 12:41 pm, Gordon McGrew <RgEmMcOgVr...@mindspring.com>
wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 17:27:00 -0400, "Mike Hunter"
>
> <mikehu...@mailcity.com> wrote:
> >The fact is most ALL of the vehicle manufacturers fall within the
> >statistical average of 2%, which is the average number of faults for ALL
> >manufactured products. Naturally one will be on top and one will be on the
> >bottom in ANY list but a variation of .05% to 1% is in indeed meaningless.
>
> What is meaningless is your 2% number. 2% of what? 2% of all
> transmissions fail every day? 2% of cars will need a repair if driven
> 300,000 miles?
>
> If you keep cars for two years (like you do) and have connections in
> the industry and/or enough money that you don't care about resale
> value, then it may not matter. For people who want to drive a car for
> 5 - 10 years and don't want to be making monthly trips to the garage,
> it makes a difference.
>
> >What the customers should be more concerned about is the total cost to drive
> >the vehicle home, dealer service, shop rates for that service, insurance,
> >and parts costs, not whose brand in on the grill.
>
> >mike
>
> Economical car ownership is most dependent on avoiding depreciation
> costs and finance charges. High-quality, durable and reliable cars
> are best for this.
>
>
>
>
>
> >"Rising Sun" <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote in message
> >news:6cfe4cac44b46f92eb10fc79aedaea4a@pseudo.bork ed.net...
> >> The Autobeathttp://snipr.com/1n8lb
>
> >> ..General Motors and Chrysler tumbled down the list in J.D. Power and
> >> Associates' annual Initial Quality Study. The study measures problems
> >> found in the first 90 days of ownership after interviewing 97,000
> >> consumers.
>
> >> GM did poorly and a company spokesman argued that the survey doesn't
> >> matter. All of GM's brands finished below the industry average, which
> >> is 125 problems per 100 vehicles...
>
> >> The reason it doesn't matter, says the spokesman, is that the
> >> difference between top performers and the middle of the pack is
> >> statistically irrelevant. Toyota, which tied Jaguar for sixth with 112
> >> problems per 100 vehicles, beat Chevy by just 17 problems per 100 cars.
> >> He makes a point. Few consumers will notice 17 problems per 100
> >> vehicles. The Power study, he told me, is becoming less and less
> >> relevant because quality is reaching parity.
>
> >> There's some truth to that. But the argument naively misses a huge
> >> point. While some brands like Mercedes moved way up the charts this
> >> year and others, like Chrysler, tumbled way down, hot names like Honda
> >> and Toyota are in the top 10 every year. Every year!
>
> >> Consumers love and trust those brands. And those companies have been
> >> dining on Motown's market share for decades now. Sure, Detroit is
> >> close, by the numbers anyway. But consumers won't believe that Detroit
> >> is as good as Honda and Toyota until they beat them and beat them
> >> consistently in J.D. Power surveys, Consumer Reports studies, word-of-
> >> mouth recommendations and just general buzz. I'm sorry, why should a
> >> guy who's on his third Toyota or Honda buy a Chevy? Because the initial
> >> quality is almost as good and the disparity is statistically minuscule?
> >> There's a great sales pitch...
> >> ==========
> >> Rising Sun:http://snipr.com/eat_me_jarhead- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

If God have intended for JD Powers or Consumer Reports to think for
you, he wouldn't have given you a brain. All cars built today are
pretty much equal, and have been for a long time. Continue to buy your
Japanese products, I'll buy my American, which for some reason, does
not break down nor get recalled at nearly the rate as these "perfect"
Toyotas do. (BTW, is it my opinion, or does EVERY NEW GENERATION
Camary look more ugly than the one before it?)

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:08:28 -0700, coachrose13 wrote:

> If God have intended for JD Powers or Consumer Reports to think for you,
> he wouldn't have given you a brain. All cars built today are pretty much
> equal, and have been for a long time.


It's just that some are more equal than others...

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:08:28 -0700, coachrose13@hotmail.com wrote:

>On Jun 9, 12:41 pm, Gordon McGrew <RgEmMcOgVr...@mindspring.com>
>wrote:


>
>If God have intended for JD Powers or Consumer Reports to think for
>you, he wouldn't have given you a brain.

Neither JD Power not CR constitute thought. They are information,
data if you will. Thought is the brain's process for interpreting
data.

>All cars built today are
>pretty much equal, and have been for a long time.

Just as you shouldn't confuse data with thought, you shouldn't confuse
unsupported assertions with data. CR data shows that there are big
differences in reliability among the cars on the market.

Unfortunately, CR changed their reporting a couple years ago and it is
now harder to determine exactly what the failure rates are. One
assumes they are not much different from what they were before the
change. Some domestic and German 5-7 year-old cars have 5 or 6
problem areas where failure rates exceed 10% or even 15% per year, not
to mention less than stellar rates in the other areas. There are some
domestics with reliability records which are not terrible and some are
equal to the second tier Japanese manufacturers. 5-7 year-old Toyotas
and Hondas seldom have any area with worse than 5% failure rate. and
many areas have less than 2% failures. With 14 different systems, and
a few years of ownership, this difference really adds up.

>Continue to buy your
>Japanese products,

Yeah, I continually buy one every eleven or twelve years.


> I'll buy my American, which for some reason, does
>not break down nor get recalled at nearly the rate as these "perfect"
>Toyotas do.

This is what is known as the straw man argument. No one claims that
Toyotas or Hondas are perfect.

> (BTW, is it my opinion, or does EVERY NEW GENERATION
>Camary look more ugly than the one before it?)

Yes, it is your opinion. A fact would be that every generation sells
better than the one before it.

Gordon McGrew wrote:

>> I'll buy my American, which for some reason, does
>>not break down nor get recalled at nearly the rate as these "perfect"
>>Toyotas do.
>
> This is what is known as the straw man argument. No one claims that
> Toyotas or Hondas are perfect.

Hmmm. Recall rate... I have an 06 Si. No recalls yet, and not a single
service visit. I've never had an American car with that kind of
reliabilty. A few oil changes in 20,000 miles, and a tire rotation.

Yep, that damned Japanese reliability just sucks...

On Jun 10, 9:16 pm, ACAR <getoutanp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jun 10, 6:16 pm, "Mike Hunter" <mikehu...@mailcity.com> wrote:
>
> > Really? My '64 domestic has 165K on the Clock and my, '71 has nearly 300K
> > on the clock. My '83 domestic only has around 100K on the clock, but all
> > three still have their original starters and water pumps. Like I said,
> > todays cars are even better, 200k should be a cake walk if one does the
> > maintenance
>
> > mike
>
> Sure Mike.
> Domestics are great.
> That's why their market share keeps declining.
>
> I've owned cars since the '60s and think you're lying.
> Never replaced a starter? After 40 years of car ownership? That makes
> you the only one.
> My '83 domestic required a water pump replacement under warranty while
> still running the factory coolant. Warranty covered the faulty fuel
> pump, too.
>
> None of my Honda or Toyota cars required as much repair or were as
> costly to maintain as my domestics. Why do you think GM was forced to
> go with a 100K mile powertrain warranty?

I think it is enlightening to realize that the Big Three designed
their cars to need repair frequently from the very beginning, while
the Japanese had the exact opposite approach and designed their cars
for durabililty from the very beginning. Hence the vast difference in
quality between the two. In recent years, this gap has indeed
dwindled for two reasons: the Americans have been forced by economics
of sale to improve quality, and the Japanese have taken on some of the
American way of thinking and have begun designing some of their
components to fail after a predetermined length of time or duration of
use. This allows future revenue in repairs and service. One
example: Honda designed their Odyssey with a condensor without any
protection from chips or stones from the road and has gotten back a
huge windfall with the repairs, but the rest of the vehicle is
absolutely top-notch. Another example: GM changed their horrible
minivan and small truck vehicle platform to a new one as seen in the
Envoy and Canyon etc... which is of top-notch quality and durability
but it took them so many years because they were reaping huge
windfalls from the downstream repairs of the old units.
So, in a nutshell, Mike is partly right and partly wrong. I buy
Hondas because I like the chassis designs and of course the engine
reliability is legendary. But so are the Toyotas, but I don't buy
them because I think they are plain ugly, the whole line of them from
the Corolla to the Tundra.