Japanese vehicle brands continue to rule the roost when it comes to car reliability, according to the latest annual survey from Consumer Reports.Toyota and Honda’s brands scored top marks overall in the magazine’s “2007 Annual Car Reliability Survey,” which was compiled from survey responses from over 1.3 million magazine subscribers. The survey results will appear in the April issue of Consumer Reports magazine, which goes on sale March 6.
Toyota, Honda, Scion, Acura and Lexus took the top five places, in order, in the Consumer Reports list of the 36 most reliable car brands for 2007.
This is so true:
"Toyota sedans have never throbbed with driving passion, but at least they could boast of unimpeachable quality. This Camry was impeachable. A few trim pieces hung loose. Some dash panels didn’t match up. The rear-seat armrest cup holder fell out with only the slightest persuasion, leaving behind a ragged hole in the fabric. If fit and finish ceases to be Toyota’s obsession, what will define the company’s products? We shudder to imagine."
Again, what will be of Toyota if they ceased to be the standard of reliability and quality?
I have said it here several times, Toyota's rankings will continue to fall for several years as reality meets up with perception, and the issues/recalls/dissatisfaction (due to Toyota's neglect from the past 2 years) begin to raise their ugly head(s). Some may not admit it, but consumer's confidence in Toyota has been shaken in the past 2 years (particularly the past 12 months) and for the first time, these car buyers are beginning to see that the once "perfect" Toyota is capable of making mistakes. . . . Is it enough to make them change cars? I don't think so, but it is enough to quiet their enthusiasm, and their "word of mouth" recommendations. This is much like the slow demise of the Big 3 that started in the 70's, and it started in much the same way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yrmac
If fit and finish ceases to be Toyota’s obsession, what will define the company’s products? We shudder to imagine."
Again, what will be of Toyota if they ceased to be the standard of reliability and quality?
Couldn't have said it better myself and C&D pose a great question. Toyota has never (arguably) been a car enthusiasts paradise. I can count on one hand (two fingers actually) the number of true enthusiast oriented cars produced by Toyota, so that is obviously not how they became the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Making great, reliable cars is what put them on the map, and make them the standard they are today. When Toyota no longer is known for "quality" or "reliability", what's left?
__________________
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I trust a copy of Consumer Reports as being fair and balanced about as far as I can throw it. Same thing with Car & Driver and their highly opinionated "gotta have it" rating system.
Quote:
I have said it here several times, Toyota's rankings will continue to fall for several years as reality meets up with perception, and the issues/recalls/dissatisfaction (due to Toyota's neglect from the past 2 years) begin to raise their ugly head(s). Some may not admit it, but consumer's confidence in Toyota has been shaken in the past 2 years (particularly the past 12 months) and for the first time, these car buyers are beginning to see that the once "perfect" Toyota is capable of making mistakes. . . . Is it enough to make them change cars? I don't think so, but it is enough to quiet their enthusiasm, and their "word of mouth" recommendations. This is much like the slow demise of the Big 3 that started in the 70's, and it started in much the same way.
It is much like what happened with GM in the 70s...so much that it's like Deja Vu. So many people on this website only care about Toyota becoming the #1 so they can pat each other on the backs and give hive fives. Meanwhile, the negative articles about Toyota have been mulitiplying over the last few months...I said countless times months ago that Toyota's quick growth was going to have consequences, and look what is happening now. GM is no longer weak...Ford is slowly coming around...Toyota has new stronger competition from the Americans and the free passes they received from the media for so many years are no longer being given out.
Toyota needs to tread carefully with its explosive growth...quality is what got it where it is and is what it has built its reputation upon. But when your recalls triple over three years and the media backlash begins, it's not a walk in the park any longer. And if Toyota becomes #1, just wait....all eyes will be on them for every single little thing they do wrong, just like it has been for GM.
This is going to be an interesting year to see what happens.
RAV, you sure have a talent for drawing in the tards, don't you?
Toyota like GM in the 70's? I had to laugh at that one, but not for the reason intended...
C
Nice show of maturity, Corona. Instead of calling us a bunch of "tards," why not tell us your point of view why you don't see Toyota's recent issues as troubling and very reminiscent of the arrogant management at GM 30 years ago?
I sure hope Toyota doesn't go GM on our ass. Obviously growth is a good thing but then again it can be your worst enemy at the same time, at least growth too fast. I fear Toyota is a big bubble ready to pop. Sure it wasn't and never will be perfect, no company is especially as big as Toyota. Also I hope they are smart about their management. Meaning like most companies who are huge have huge overhead and beauracracy, which is the nature of the buisness to some extent but I believe management has a huge part in determining out come of sales, publicity, effeciency, etc. Sure you can have the biggest budget, most sales, full car line up, a luxury and "youth" division, but its how you manage that is the key. As bad as the past experiences were and I'm sure they won't stop, I hope this will humble Toyota. ALso it seems like I hear conflicting views from Toyota, I read news that they say, "oh we're not trying to be number one" and other views "We hope to pass GM soon" along those lines so its like okay. I"m NOT BASHING Toyota, I'm just observing the events lately and in the last two years or so with recalls and what not. Toyota don't dissapoint me.
__________________
U.S. media is a systematic censorship on free speech. They don't like what they hear they don't report. Don't want to upset the political and advertising sponsors. Its so corrupted. While they don't have to agree with certain views, its their job to report and let US decide.
It is much like what happened with GM in the 70s...so much that it's like Deja Vu. So many people on this website only care about Toyota becoming the #1 so they can pat each other on the backs and give hive fives. Meanwhile, the negative articles about Toyota have been mulitiplying over the last few months...I said countless times months ago that Toyota's quick growth was going to have consequences, and look what is happening now. GM is no longer weak...Ford is slowly coming around...Toyota has new stronger competition from the Americans and the free passes they received from the media for so many years are no longer being given out.
Ridiculousness.
There's one big difference between Toyota vehicles and Ford or GM vehicles:
People actually want to buy Toyota vehicles.
Malibu, Impala, and Ford Five Hundred (nee Taurus) are molehills compared to the sales of Camry, Avalon and such from Toyota. In the overall sales pictures, virtually NOBODY is buying these US-nameplate cars. Even though the Fusion seems to be getting good reviews, it's really just a Mazda 6 under Ford clothing, and its sales are still just a fraction of what Toyota and Honda are selling. Chrysler has actually made some desirable cars (though they're tanking on that with Caliber/Sebring/Avenger and their woeful designs), but they have been among the worst of horrifyingly-unreliable US-nameplate cars. And sorry for using the term "US-nameplate," because Chrysler is owned by a German company, and the US companies have been moving more and more and more of their assembly plants to Canada and especially Mexico. "US-built" just doesn't apply to these cars very much these days -- it applies far more to the Camry and the Accord than to the equivalents that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are selling!
Trucks are a different story, as the US companies can actually SELL some of them, but their huge SUV's are taking a big hit with gas prices -- wait and watch them bomb to abysmal levels once gas gets over three bucks a gallon this summer.
In the end, I'm not so sure that Toyota has had "rapid" growth or has "exploded" in growth -- it has been consistently selling more and more cars each year, in an attempt to meet the demand for its cars. Any "reliability issues" have had a lot more to do with the nature of an increasing percentage of parts assembled into a vehicle coming from suppliers rather than being built in-house, and the real comparison with US-nameplate vehicles will always be between Toyota's "legendary" reliability and the US-nameplates' reputation for being virtually the least reliable vehicles a consumer could choose to purchase. In the real world, some unnamed "loose trim pieces" in an auto enthusiast magazine don't compare equally to, for instance, the problem Chrysler pickup and SUV vehicles tended to have with shedding front wheels while under way on the highways, which hit the major TV newscasts and newspapers. And some people actually comprehend the difference between how Chrysler FOUGHT the government in regards to issuing a recall for that problem, as compared to how Toyota WILLINGLY has recalled vehicles to correct much more minor issues.
All the US-nameplates have to do is build interesting cars that people want to buy, and build long-term reliability into them. It's really very simple -- that's what Toyota has been doing all along. While I'm not so sure about "long-term reliability," the US nameplates do seem to sell some very interesting vehicles overseas -- even vehicles with capable driving dynamics and other "foreign" characteristics. But, the genius-level-paid bufoons who run these US-nameplate companies just can't figure out that US consumers might like to buy "interesting" cars, too. While GM seems to be finally "getting" this, Ford seems to have totally lost the point -- the fact that the "new" Focus won't be built on the highly-acclaimed chassis that Ford uses for the car and related vehicles in overseas markets, which has already been around for several years, shows that the people in charge just simply don't even have a freaking clue. "Hey, let's rename the Five Hundred as the Taurus!" does disappointingly seem to be best that these sad excuses for corporate executives are capable of coming up with.
I'm sure not going to "reward" clueless, second- or third- or fourth-rate engineering with my hard-earned dollars, no matter where the people who run the business live. If Ford goes bankrupt, GM slides farther downhill, and Chrysler sinks so low that it winds up being purchased by one of its suppliers, they will do so only because they have EARNED their fates so well. In the end, people like me believe that Toyota will remain leagues ahead of the US-nameplate companies, and their several-decades-long record of horrifyingly poor reliability. I have no sympathy for these companies, nor the people who wind up getting stuck paying for any of their vehicles. Let's see them come up with three or four decades' worth of world-class, long-term, corporate-wide high reliability, and then I might consider laying my money down on one of their vehicles. They haven't even started that, yet.
Postings exemplified by the above just reinforces how consumers can be blindly bounded by self-fulfilling hypocrisy.
If the past few years is an indication of what Toyota products might become, then their reputation will not carry them for so long. I don't think the consumers are gullible and/or stupid enough to buy products that are falsely based on reputation alone.
My 3rd gen Camry is 13 years old and still running. This car never had any recalls nor any major problems. I also had a 2004 Toyota Highlander that had 2 recalls and I believe a reputation for engine sludge (I don't think Toyota was a willing participant with the warranty extension for the engine sludge problem).
What I don't understand is that some people vehemently try to cover up failures by a company. Don't they realize that it is for the benefit of the consumers to show that Toyota products are becoming more like GMs? Maybe, just maybe, Toyota will open their corporate eyes to these problems and rectify them before they become their "reputation".
There's one big difference between Toyota vehicles and Ford or GM vehicles:
People actually want to buy Toyota vehicles.
Malibu, Impala, and Ford Five Hundred (nee Taurus) are molehills compared to the sales of Camry, Avalon and such from Toyota. In the overall sales pictures, virtually NOBODY is buying these US-nameplate cars. Even though the Fusion seems to be getting good reviews, it's really just a Mazda 6 under Ford clothing, and its sales are still just a fraction of what Toyota and Honda are selling. Chrysler has actually made some desirable cars (though they're tanking on that with Caliber/Sebring/Avenger and their woeful designs), but they have been among the worst of horrifyingly-unreliable US-nameplate cars. And sorry for using the term "US-nameplate," because Chrysler is owned by a German company, and the US companies have been moving more and more and more of their assembly plants to Canada and especially Mexico. "US-built" just doesn't apply to these cars very much these days -- it applies far more to the Camry and the Accord than to the equivalents that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are selling!
Trucks are a different story, as the US companies can actually SELL some of them, but their huge SUV's are taking a big hit with gas prices -- wait and watch them bomb to abysmal levels once gas gets over three bucks a gallon this summer.
In the end, I'm not so sure that Toyota has had "rapid" growth or has "exploded" in growth -- it has been consistently selling more and more cars each year, in an attempt to meet the demand for its cars. Any "reliability issues" have had a lot more to do with the nature of an increasing percentage of parts assembled into a vehicle coming from suppliers rather than being built in-house, and the real comparison with US-nameplate vehicles will always be between Toyota's "legendary" reliability and the US-nameplates' reputation for being virtually the least reliable vehicles a consumer could choose to purchase. In the real world, some unnamed "loose trim pieces" in an auto enthusiast magazine don't compare equally to, for instance, the problem Chrysler pickup and SUV vehicles tended to have with shedding front wheels while under way on the highways, which hit the major TV newscasts and newspapers. And some people actually comprehend the difference between how Chrysler FOUGHT the government in regards to issuing a recall for that problem, as compared to how Toyota WILLINGLY has recalled vehicles to correct much more minor issues.
All the US-nameplates have to do is build interesting cars that people want to buy, and build long-term reliability into them. It's really very simple -- that's what Toyota has been doing all along. While I'm not so sure about "long-term reliability," the US nameplates do seem to sell some very interesting vehicles overseas -- even vehicles with capable driving dynamics and other "foreign" characteristics. But, the genius-level-paid bufoons who run these US-nameplate companies just can't figure out that US consumers might like to buy "interesting" cars, too. While GM seems to be finally "getting" this, Ford seems to have totally lost the point -- the fact that the "new" Focus won't be built on the highly-acclaimed chassis that Ford uses for the car and related vehicles in overseas markets, which has already been around for several years, shows that the people in charge just simply don't even have a freaking clue. "Hey, let's rename the Five Hundred as the Taurus!" does disappointingly seem to be best that these sad excuses for corporate executives are capable of coming up with.
I'm sure not going to "reward" clueless, second- or third- or fourth-rate engineering with my hard-earned dollars, no matter where the people who run the business live. If Ford goes bankrupt, GM slides farther downhill, and Chrysler sinks so low that it winds up being purchased by one of its suppliers, they will do so only because they have EARNED their fates so well. In the end, people like me believe that Toyota will remain leagues ahead of the US-nameplate companies, and their several-decades-long record of horrifyingly poor reliability. I have no sympathy for these companies, nor the people who wind up getting stuck paying for any of their vehicles. Let's see them come up with three or four decades' worth of world-class, long-term, corporate-wide high reliability, and then I might consider laying my money down on one of their vehicles. They haven't even started that, yet.
And people also want to buy Ford and GM vehicles...that's why retails sales for both companies have been increasing over the past few years. The reason sales continue to track downward is because they are cutting the fleet crutch they had been using to prop themselves up with in the early 00s, and the big SUV's aren't selling well with high gas prices (same thing is happening with Toyota's large SUVs). But hey, look at GM's recent sales figures for February...up3.4% and retail sales up18%. It's the reason Ford and GM are receiving more praise in the media for increased quality and why conquest rates from import customers are also on the rise. Don't give me this "no one wants to buy them" crap...that's purely a false generalization.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler still command nearly 50% of the American market, by the way.
I will argue that the reason many Toyota vehicles sell so well is the perception that they are better than anything Detroit makes, even if that isn't always true. Toyota builds good cars, yes, but they aren't the only ones doing it anymore. And the perception toward GM and Ford is changing...just look at recent reviews in the media and by consumers. GM is really starting to push the boundaries with new product coming out...the '08 Malibu will set the bar higher in the midsize sedan segment and open a few eyes to those who haven't bothered to look at a GM in the last 20 years. The '08 CTS will do the same for the midsize luxury segment.
You are completely simplifying the process of bringing the C1 Focus platform from Europe over here....it's a lot more than just "let's put it on a boat and ship it to the US." The cost of the European Focus is much greater than the American Focus and Ford would have a hard time selling it in this market without decontenting it...people just don't pay premium prices for a small sedan in the US. But, the next Focus WILL be using the global C2 platform, and it will be out in either '09 or '10.
As for the Taurus...the sheet metal may not have changed much, but it is receiving a new engine, improved interior, and the Ford Sync voice-actived nav system that will put it on par with the Avalon and Lucerne (maybe even beyond since it is the only one with AWD available). And the Taurus is a much more recognized name than either of those two...it was a natural choice to go back to it. They didn't just rename the damn thing like you have implied.
Ford Edge sales doubled for February and are off to a better start than the Fusion was...it this continues it will sell at least 200,000 this year, along with 150,000 for the Fusion. Those are two brand-new nameplates with no long-recognized history like Taurus, Camry, or Accord. And you're telling me people don't want to buy domestic vehicles?
Unfortunately, your last comment is echoed by many Americans....if one of the largest sectors of American manufacturing goes down, you simply don't give a shit. It's quite disturbing to me though...because as much as competition is a good thing, not giving a shit about our home-based corporations is why this country is going to hell in a handbasket. 350,000 assembly jobs and 1.9 million other jobs tied to GM and Ford can't compare to the vast 300,000 jobs supplied by Toyota, Kia, et al. After all, they're more American because they've built a few plants here that employ 2000 or so each.
I have no problem that people buy Toyotas and enjoy them...it's the ones that don't care or root for the downfall of our automobile industry that is just baffling.
^^Well said!!! I didn't have the patience to correct all of Thoots misguided opinions, and baseless diatribe. . . . . . thank you for taking the time to correct him/her, and adding a little balance to the topic. To be totally honest, I stopped reading after the "people actually want to buy Toyota's" comment. It was only after your reply did I take the time to read thoot’s post. . . .
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For car reliability, looking East is still best
They should stick to cars.
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