
Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings - luu
https://jalopnik.com/every-single-american-car-brand-is-on-the-bottom-half-o-1829974713
======
gumby
I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem
was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the
supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me.

By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they
don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when
they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But some industries
(cars, aircraft, et al) are perfectly happy to blame someone else.

Note: it's OK if you say "we got some bad products and _we_ failed to detect
it..." That's defect analysis. But own it.

~~~
FussyZeus
This is one of my favorite aspects of the writing in Outer Worlds: that no one
who works for a corporation is _ever, ever_ allowed to speak ill of it, of
it's products, or anything even tangentially related to the corporation.

It's hilarious the mental gymnastics these fictional people will leap through
to avoid earning the ire of their employer, and it's absolutely shocking how
true-to-life it often is.

~~~
hartator
`Outer Worlds` the video game? I want to play it now.

~~~
FussyZeus
Correct. It's quite good, though the combat is a little one-dimensional and
cast against the design, writing, and world-building, it's very much turned
into a situation where the game itself is sort of an obstacle to what I'm
enjoying in the game. I don't think it will prompt a re-play but I am
thoroughly enjoying it.

------
kstenerud
It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company
PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both
responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of
passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah
blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above
industry average blah blah blah" "blah blah launching with excellence".

And then there's Tesla: "We fixed issue XYZ, which affected people in exactly
this particular way." "We proactively send bulletins and over-the-air fixes."
"This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been
fixed."

~~~
pflats
I felt the opposite. Tesla's answer came across the worst to me, and reads to
me with the over-specificity of a student making excuses for why their paper
isn't done on time.

> "It was a supplier-related issue".

Passing the buck is really not a great look to start with. It makes the rest
of the response seem like a series of excuses.

Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the
car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. The only time Tesla
should mention a supplier issue is in response to, "why can't you sell me a
car?"

> "[It] did not pose any threat to vehicle safety".

That's good, but this isn't the safety survey.

> "[T]here was a[...] false service alert [... that was fixed] within two
> weeks of being reported".

I'm not even sure how to react to this one. Bringing my car in to be told
"false alarm" is really not reassuring. And two weeks to fix a false alert
doesn't help me - I've probably already brought it in for service.

> "This proactive approach to improved reliability is one of the reasons why
> Tesla is the highest rated car brand among consumers, according to Consumer
> Reports." (Paraphrased:) Our cars are the safest and best performing, and
> Model S is #1 in satisfaction.

To me, blaming a supplier for the issues is a terrible way to start, and this
is likewise a terrible closing.

"You just fell in the rankings to come in 3rd to last in our reliability
survey. Any comments?" "Our cars are the safest and fastest and we have always
ranked #1 on your customer satisfaction survey."

Those stats are undeniably good. They also make me think those are the stats
the company cares about a lot more than reliability.

~~~
sunstone
If I had to choose, I would choose specifics over platitudes.

~~~
rednerrus
Especially specifics backed by OTA fixes.

------
EdwardDiego
Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from
various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier -
a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan -
that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and
Aus.

It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive,
but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I
spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a
surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers
chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find
official parts for them.

It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by
turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot/trunk latch
that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot/trunk by plastic
pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30
only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that
always leaked and you could never quite fix.

The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a
bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels
of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name.

I don't know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was
hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.

~~~
linksnapzz
Why not both?

The J-cars (cavalier/sunfire/sunbird) existed b/c of the second oil crisis in
'78\. GM needed something FWD, smaller than the X-cars, that could get better
fuel economy than the RWD V-6 and V-8 cars it had been selling in the '70s.
The thought was that people in the US would buy these because they had to, not
because small cars would suddenly become appealing to Americans in their own
right.

The Js were never terribly profitable, the lower-end ones were almost
certainly sold at cost to boost the company's mileage compliance numbers. The
traditional easy way of squeezing costs out of a car is to pull them out of
the interior & trim, which would explain the sunroof, the dash electronics,
the trunk closures and taillights.

The engine you got in yours is almost certainly the Quad OHC, one of the last
Oldsmobile powertrain designs...in its original 2.3L config, Olds had it
making 185hp (in 1989, with no turbo!). Powerful but with no balance shafts,
it pulled well but sounded & shook like a pair of wolverines trapped in a
dryer, which is why the 2.4L version got balance shafts and was detuned to
150hp.

~~~
davidgould
My then girlfriend had a Sunbird. She was a very nervous driver. I thought it
was part of some other psychological issues she had. Then I had to drive her
Sunbird somewhere. Terrifying! Somehow in a noisy gutless cramped smallish car
GM had managed to reproduce the floaty uncontrolled body motions and vague
imprecise steering of the full size cars of a decade earlier.

~~~
linksnapzz
It might sound crazy, but according to one of Bob Lutz's books, there is/was a
huge corpus of GM Engineering Standards, some of which dated back to the
1930s, that had a big influence on design. This might explain why a compact
Pontiac Sunbird might feel like a fullsize 1979 Pontiac Parisienne-both cars
might have to meet the same set of criteria regardless of market fit!

------
AcerbicZero
Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and
Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers
makes the difference somewhat obvious.

I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the
workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to
build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines
with humans touching them (in the 911 factory). When a human is working on the
car, the car isn't moving. Compared to the Corvette (much cheaper, but still
"high end") you can see how quantity is prioritized, and how the car never
really stops for any extended period of time, before moving down the line.

Again, this is a totally subjective opinion, but comparing my current car (VW)
to a similarly priced Ford I test drove the other day (GT350) the difference
in build quality is night and day.

This is a Porsche factory, building an expensive, high end 911 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA)

Here is the Chevrolet Factory building a Corvette -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No)

~~~
dajohnson89
it's worth pointing out that a porsche 911 base MSRP is ~$110,000, while a
corvette base starts around $60k.

~~~
nwallin
Last time I checked, everything was an optional extra in 911s too. Even stuff
that is a standard feature on cheap econoboxes. Last I looked there was
something utterly bizarre as an expensive optional extra, it was something
like powered windows or remote locks. Something that I didn't even know didn't
come as standard in a car. I wish I could remember what it was. (this was like
2010, so whatever it was might have changed, but it was still grossly out of
place back then. It was not air conditioning, that at least makes sense from a
weight perspective on a performance car.)

------
oflannabhra
I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again
until we switch to EV.

Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've
sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently
selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit.

The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought
it used with 160k miles on it, and sold it at 200k. Over 5 years I have done
my own brakes and oil changes, and have only had to replace the starter. I
sold it for $1k less than I bought it (I got a good deal). We bought
essentially the exact same vehicle, just in SUV.

The Honda has been a little less stellar, but still good. AC compressor has
gone out multiple times (a known issue affecting multiple models), but we
replaced it with a warrantied aftermarket part the first time it failed. It's
currently at 220k and still kicking.

We only buy used and in cash, so finding the right car can take some time.
Toyotas and Hondas have unbelievable resell value in the used market. A used
Toyota can fetch a similar price as a _brand new_ American made equivalent.

~~~
invaliddata
For someone who doesn't want to buy American made cars, you sure speak fondly
of some of them. Tundra and Sequoia have only ever been made in the us, matrix
was once upon a time made in the nummi factory that is now Tesla's, and have
been made in North America since, crv have also mostly been made in the us,
otherwise North American production, same with all newer fits. The only car
you mentioned made outside of North America would be the first generation fit,
made in Japan.

I had a friend's dad who was one of the few people I talked to who, as a
Japanese brand enthusiast, went out of his way to find a Chevy/Geo prizm -
same mechanical bits as a Corolla, built in the same factory, but way cheaper
because of all the people who reflexively avoided American brands.

~~~
heymijo
It seems you and OP aren't working from a shared definition of "American
made."

OP seems to have a reverence for autos made by foreign-based companies (Toyota
and Honda).

While you are rightly pointing out that both Toyota and Honda manufacture in
America.

The key difference in OP's enthusiasm seems to be not in location of
manufacture but in company process/ethos/culture that delivers reliable
vehicles.

------
huffmsa
> _CR says Chrysler’s Pacifica was one that contributed to the drop in
> rankings thanks to the minivan’s infotainment and transmission issues._

Every single "downgrade" I read about is either infotainment or transmission
or both.

Except Honda, which apparently has shit locks on it's kid hauler.

I'm a bit skeptical of consumer reports after actually reading it. My car, a
Subaru WRX is given low marks for "stiff ride and constant engine noise",
which I think re reason why people buy WRXs, not avoid them.

~~~
Marsymars
I dig the WRX, but I would love if the engine were quieter. IMO a quieter
engine is _always_ desirable - akin to how I always want my computers to have
quieter fans for any given level of performance.

~~~
asperous
Not to enthusiasts, who are driving for the experience of driving, including
the feel, sound, etc

~~~
Marsymars
I consider myself an enthusiast, and still consider engine noise to be
undesirable.

Among various other car things, I'm very enthusiastic for in-car noise
cancelling: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175748/bose-noise-
cancel...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175748/bose-noise-canceling-
system-car-ces-2019)

~~~
amyjess
Interestingly enough, the industry is actually going the opposite direction.
Engines are getting quieter externally, to avoid pissing off your neighbors
(there are few things as annoying as a tuner with a fart-can exhaust driving
down a residential street), but with artificial engine noise piped into the
cabin via the speakers in order to give enthusiasts the noisy experience they
want.

~~~
microtherion
That should help with _some_ of the fans of loud engines—those who just like
listening to their own car.

But I can't shake the suspicion that a significant percentage of loudness fans
want _other_ people to listen to their vehicle (With bikers, this is
explicitly acknowledged in the name of security: "Loud Pipes Save Lives").

------
tim333
A lot of the issues may come down to whether management prioritize financial
engineering / making huge bonuses / pleasing wall street vs making good
vehicles. The same with Boeing - they used to be run by engineers who wanted
to make great planes and then the shifted control to finance guys in Chicago
who wanted to make big profits. You see the effect a bit with Tesla where I'm
sure Musk would love to focus on quality but has to rush things out to make
decent quarterly numbers or risk going bust by not getting ongoing financing.

The Japanese seem to have almost the opposite attitude to finance where they
will keep putting money into loss making stuff for ages out of a kind of
loyalty which may lead to it's own issues of course.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I worked for years as an engineer and manager at a legendary Japanese
corporation, known for their quality.

It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the
smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where
even one failure pooched the whole deal.

But you can’t argue with the results.

Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is
of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American
engineers, when I talk about my methodology.

I’m not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I’m merely talking about what
I do, and I’m treated as if I’m eating a ham sandwich in Temple.

~~~
JPKab
It's funny, because this is the kind of philosophy that makes software
engineering in Japan so difficult, but is very ideal for automotive mass
production.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Yup. It hobbled our software engineering efforts, but they make excellent
hardware.

I quickly learned never to use the word "agile" in Tokyo. Frowny faces
everywhere.

Since leaving that company, I have gone to "ultra-agile" methodology, but
quality is still one of my principal axes.

------
arethuza
I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted
that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability
should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over
twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty
of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky
though.

~~~
inferiorhuman
They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require
experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules
to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.

~~~
arethuza
Actually, most of the problems we had were fundamental design flaws e.g. a
Toyota my wife had where the instruments (speedometer etc.) started cutting
out occasionally - problem was tracked back to, of all things, the sunroof!
There was a small leak and the electrical connectors for the instruments were
in the bottom of the passenger foot-well - where the water was collecting from
the sunroof and shorting things out.

Similarly I had a VW that was prone to flooding the interior due to poor
design of the battery compartment - if the drain hole from the battery
compartment was blocked it would overflow into the interior of the car (we're
in Scotland so problems inevitably involved water).

Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland _with a sunroof_ , I do
wonder and we'd never do it again!

~~~
Marsymars
I don't especially want a sunroof, as they inevitably leak, but it's becoming
increasingly difficult to get a car at anything other other than the base trim
level without sunroof - and when combined with other requirements I have (e.g.
sat radio) presence of a sunroof is one of the first things I'll compromise
on.

------
xchaotic
Looks like a lot of discussion here is about housing, but the CR report
suggests that most of the issues are with the infotainment systems in cars.
And that includes Tesla. I assume that the ecosystem is big enough to create a
3rd player that’s better than android auto or iOS and better suited for cars
specifically.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Maybe it's just me but the infotainment systems in cars, despite being more
complex, aren't really _better_ in any meaningful way compared to my 2007
Mazda 3 (RIP). I've got a new car with a touchscreen but it's more of a PITA
then hooking up an MP3 player via the aux audio.

~~~
ranger207
I have an older car. I replaced the head unit with one that supports
Bluetooth, and it stays on Bluetooth 24/7\. I have a suction cup mount for my
phone which runs GPS. That's all I need. I dread having to buy a car made in
the past decade or so, purely because of way-too-intrusive infotainment
systems.

~~~
charwalker
What you describe is what I did to my older Outback a few years ago, replaced
the aftermarket non BT stereo my older brother had in it with BT. The swap
wasn't too bad and It's been working great since then.

I just got a recent year Mazda3 that came with the free (from Mazda) upgrade
to Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I'm and Android guy so can't speak to Carplay
but the basic functions provided by AA like music/podcast playback,
navigation, and overall interface are solid even without a touch screen. In
fact, I'd say the lack of touch screen is a perk as I'm not reaching out to
tap something vs using the console/cup holder area interface that I picked up
quickly and like (other than a so far not re-mapable star/favorites button
that only goes to the Mazda audio favorites list outside of AA). It's less
distracting than a mounted phone, has a bigger screen for navigation, and
works really well for me. I don't think Id buy a newer car without either a
basic BT stereo setup or full blown AA.

That being said, I have the trade off now of requiring a cable for AA to work
otherwise I'm only on the built in BT infotainment (which I still find way
better than the Toyota Corolla interface I tested out recently). I'm still
used to leaving my phone in my pocket or jacket so I have to remember to pull
it out and often end up leaving it plugged in and walking away (the spot where
it sits is well hidden so not too worried about theft in my location).
According to forums, it is possible to hook my phone to AA setup via wifi and
project wirelessly with some lag which I am interested in setting up but I
think I need to update the software in my unit before it can make the wifi
connection.

I'm really liking the AA setup in this car. It's pretty intuitive, easy to set
up and control, and feels safer than another setup with the caveat that it
needs a cable. Good news is it keeps the phone charged up (the Toyota Corolla
USB didn't provide enough power to charge my phone, for some reason). I would
recommend it.

------
gumby
Not really a surprise. US manufacturing is optimized for the extrema (i.e.
it's a saddle curve): inexpensive stuff to heavy to be worth shipping (e.g.
paper) and inexpensive low-labor commodity product (e.g. grain) and at the
other extreme: super high value, difficult to produce items (e.g. ultra-high
precision bearings, cruise missiles).

~~~
j8014
That is total nonsense. I buy nearly everything either made in the US or
Europe. Kitchenware, tools, outdoor equipment, clothing, furniture and just
about everything else except my phone, tv and computers. It's always
excellent, durable and unfortunately, expensive.

~~~
gumby
I agree about many European products (the appliances in my house are all 20
year old European ones that still work perfectly).

But inexpensive "made in USA" stuff I tend to find (folding outdoor chairs and
the like) seems to pretty much last a short time or even single use, and as
has been lamented publicly, is rarely exported. Most of the everyday product
purchases seem to come from SE Asia.

~~~
Jamwinner
Only on the extreme low end. If you want cheap crap, there is a certain
national economy geared to that, and its not the USA.

------
rtpg
This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super
Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super
different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice.

I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are
multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap.
The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe
or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California

Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to
even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world.
All the chocolate is bad.

My dad has a really expensive american-made fridge. It sucks. The UX is awful
and it basically just looks shiny.

Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. I like to think it’s
the result of people not really traveling abroad (reasonable! It’s expensive
and far away). People don’t get that so many other places are just nicer and
have higher quality things for cheaper.

There’s some quote about how somebody was super poor when growing up but was
fine about it because they didn’t realize it. I think about that all the time
when looking at some stuff in the US.

~~~
Someone1234
American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe.
Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in
a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it.

After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style
Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and
certainly less good than fresh made French bread (which in my opinion is world
class). But it is very notable that it has a 7~10 shelf life, not one month
like other supermarket breads, is actually soft, and not overly sweet.

It is kind of unfortunately that in the US basically passable bread is called
"Artesano" and earns a price premium. Many living in the US haven't had the
opportunity to try elsewhere to compare. The strangest thing about this is
that you'd expect the US's bread to be much cheaper (given the quality
reduction) but that wasn't at all my experience (in fact fresher bread in
Europe was substantially cheaper than long-shelf-life-bagged bread in the US).

~~~
Cthulhu_
It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically
intended for a toaster.

But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily
staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through
a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for
a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-
produced) bread daily, and a lot of grocery stores have an in-house bakery as
well nowadays if you want to go super fancy. (I'm sure that's a logistical
optimization as well, that is, dough or its components are easier to transport
than ready-made bread, especially because some (like croissants) are very
fragile).

~~~
rjzzleep
I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world
while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even
in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very
close to my place.

The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness
and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside.

But the point being is that some of the couchsurfers would hilariously laugh
at the strangeness of having bread that isn't white fluffy toast. I got that
reaction from Brits and South Americans. The French would appreciate it and
the cheese choices with it.

The UK is an interesting little phenomenon IMHO. Not quite the US but also not
quite Europe. In a lot of ways more similar to the US(not always in a bad
way). You also get plenty of HFCS there

~~~
ubercow13
Are you sure things have HFCS in the U.K.? What’s it labelled as? I often look
at ingredients and only ever notice “sugar” ie. sucrose

------
thdrdt
This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are
creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are
turning to Porsche.

The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the
side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they
shipped those cars.

~~~
mgoetzke
sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any
electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g
German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really
pricey and slower with less range ?

I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they
sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap.
But Porsche only sold 256,255 cars last year after decades of existence since
they target a certain clientele. Tesla will surpass that this year in volume.

~~~
thdrdt
The Porsche Taycan is pre-ordered more than 30000 times. Most of those
customers currently own a Tesla.

~~~
Supersonic112
Would you mind disclosing your source(s) for both statements?

~~~
elbrian
I Google'd "Porsche Taycan 30000" and found these sources for the 30k pre-
orders claim:

* [https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-su...](https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-surge-to-30000-three-variants-hinted-for-debut/)

* [https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservation...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservations-surpass-30000-ahead-of-world-debut/)

There is almost-certainly no source for the "most of those customers currently
own a Tesla" statement, because that's not something Porsche would ever
disclose.

------
vannevar
Is this new? I'd be curious to know the last time it _wasn 't_ true, outside
of Tesla. I'm guessing you'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. I
actually think US cars have improved tremendously in the last decade, though.

~~~
Tagbert
they have improved. the measure in the article is relative reliability. Almost
any car now is more reliable than the best cars from 30 years ago.

~~~
vannevar
I mean relative to the foreign competition. There's still a gap, but at least
in terms of fit and finish it has narrowed. That's more initial quality than
reliability, I guess.

------
ken
Isn't this just stack ranking? Hasn't that always been a terrible way to
measure quality?

Every car, especially American makes, are _drastically_ improved from even
just a few years ago. Being in the bottom half in 2019 is a completely
different story from being in the bottom half in 1999, or 1969.

~~~
epistasis
The dynamics of how to evaluate a team of people that work together are quite
different from ranking the quality of competitors in an industry. The reasons
that stack ranking is bad don't really apply to choosing your next car
manufacturer or to evaluating the relative health of US car companies versus
others.

------
mark-r
I haven't bought a U.S. branded car since 1979. That 1975 Dodge Dart was bad
enough to turn me off them forever, especially when I saw how much worse its
replacement (the Dodge Aspen) was. My last 4 autos have been Toyotas, all
excellent.

------
perl4ever
"alleged infotainment issues"

I mean, not that it doesn't matter, but it feels like a bait and switch when
people say "reliability" and then it comes down to this.

I had a new Honda just a few years ago that had a broken internal engine part,
a leaking head gasket, and a failed alternator within months. It had to be
towed once. I decided to trade it for a "less reliable" vehicle.

If you look online for used cars with high mileage, you will find, I think,
that there are a lot of undesirable brands/models that nonetheless commonly
last a long time.

------
RickJWagner
So much for my dreams of buying a used Tesla.

I've got kids, so I buy my cars used. A while back I decided to start buying
Toyota products, I haven't regretted the decision.

I do hope the American manufacturers turn things around, though. Maybe with
the electrics.

------
tibbydudeza
Don't get me started on ANY German car ... my cars and home appliances are all
Korean now.

~~~
onlingyding
All power to you but I know if the choice was between a Bosch and a Samsung
washing machine, it would be the Bosch one every time. Too many gimmicks,
poorly designed software and cheap plastic pieces.

------
Havoc
Can't help but draw a parallel to the Boeing mess. Is there something in
corporate America that leads to this (aside from the obvious answer of profits
over everything)

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souterrain
I’m quite pleased with my 2017 Ford Fiesta SFE with its German engine and
French gearbox and Mexican assembly.

Unfortunately, Ford is eliminating the Fiesta in the US.

~~~
post_break
That's surprising considering that car has the worst transmission in car
history. Unless the SFE is the one with a stick.

~~~
Marsymars
AFAIK every trim level of the Fiesta has been available with either automatic
or manual except the ST (i.e. the hot hatch version) which is manual-only.

~~~
souterrain
I believe the SFE (using the 1.0L, in-line 3 “EcoBoost” engine) was only
available with a 5 speed stick. I suspect the performance with an auto
transmission would be unbearable.

------
randyrand
Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm
curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.

~~~
mark-r
Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S.

According to Wikipedia [1]:

> Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly
> plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San
> Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America)

~~~
randyrand
Thanks for the info! Didn't know that.

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juskrey
I have travelled US a lot and have rented a lot of different cars. Honestly I
don't know a much about reliability (except I got several problems with top
Nissan models), but comparing to US cars, the rest of the world cars just
don't drive and are not fun. And then you got Tesla which is crap inside but
for some reason is super fun and you want to buy it immediately.

~~~
thomasedwards
Have you ever rented a Lamborghini?

~~~
juskrey
Ok ok, for me fun means the car should deliver fun to all my family while
traveling.

~~~
elbrian
Ah, so like an Audi, BWM, Mercedes, Acura, Infiniti or Lexus?

------
dsfyu404ed
Take this with a grain of salt. A vehicle's reliability has just as much to do
with who you sell it to (at scale) as what the vehicle is. Reliability ratings
are greatly biased toward vehicles that are expensive and don't have tons of
manufacturer financing incentives to put them in the hands of everyone with a
pulse.

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smn1234
this is from 2018!

------
korethr
Some years ago, I heard it told that the American car companies had done the
market research and found that the typical car-buyer in the US bought a car
and kept it for 3 years, on average. And so, armed with this info, the cars
were designed to last 3 years on average. This is also why the 3-year lease is
a thing.

Now, I don't know how true this is, or what definition of "average" was being
used in those statements (mean, median, or mode), but let's roll with it.
Assuming a normal distribution, that would mean half the cars built last less
than 3 years, some significantly less so, and half the cars built last longer
than 3 years, again, some significantly more so. Depending on how wide the
distribution is, that could mean that there's simultaneously a lot of shitbox
lemons and a lot of indestructible workhorses at the same time. And regardless
of how wide that distribution actually is, that would explain the varying
reports of various US-built cars I've personally heard: some glowingly
praising reliability that rivals the Japanese stereotype, and some that would
bring more value to the world as crushed metal cubes.

I want to argue against engineering the cars to last only as long as the
typical new-car-buyer keeps one, but I have a hard time doing so. If most new
cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts
after the first owner has sold it? I think you could argue that the poor
reputation of your used cars could harm new car sales in the long term, but I
don't know how to quantify that. In the absence of numbers of how such
reliability planning harms long-term sales, I could totally see decision-
makers coming to favor designing to a 3-year reliability target, with the car
being considered disposable thereafter.

In either case, if the average car buyer buys a car every N years, and thus,
you treat that as reliability target, then targeting for a median or mean
reliability of N years strikes me as the wrong way to to that. IMO, the ideal
reliability distribution would be something of a skewed one, with a long
right-hand tail. Keeping the assumption above of N = 3 years, then you'd want
the mode on the reliability distribution to be 3 years, with the band below
the mode as narrow as possible. If you couldn't reasonably make it any
narrower, than push the target modal reliability up, such that the number of
cars that fall below N are significantly less than the ones meet it. Yes, that
means there will be more cars exceeding your reliability target, but having
cars that lasted longer than the minimum necessary strikes me as a lesser evil
than having ones that didn't.

Of course, for all I know, the US manufacturers do exactly as I described in
the above paragraph, and the German and Japanese brands simply have a longer
tail.

Edit: I should make it clear, I personally don't agree with this statement,
"If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long
the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?". I'm not trying to excuse or
justify the low reliability ratings of domestic manufacturers, I'm trying to
understand how they got there. I'm trying to model the decision-making of US
car manufacturers, and it's a mindset I can see them running on, given the
paragraphs above it.

Those down-voting, I'd love to hear your counterarguments. If I'm wrong, then
I'm wrong, but it's hard to make less-stupid arguments without knowing how I'm
wrong.

~~~
29083011397778
>If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long
the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?

Because those that buy second-hand hear how much trouble a given OEMs vehicles
will likely be to own. If they become money-sinks, then after-market value
will plummet. If they become worthless on the second-hand market, either
consumers will hang onto them longer (encountering the problems themselves),
or they'll become less popular to buy first-hand (because they are difficult
to sell for a worth-while price).

~~~
tmh88j
This is exactly why you can snag a relatively low mileage 4-5 year old S Class
for around $30k, a car whose msrp was nearly triple that. Vehicles in that
segment of the market typically cost a fortune to keep running. Check out the
youtube channel Hoovie's garage for a hyperbolic version of this. His schtick
is buying the cheapest used car of a given model that he can find and usually
ends up dumping a ton of money into it, only for it to still be in terrible
condition. The cars are usually beaten into the ground to begin with, but it
does give you a sense of the little things that add up over time, especially
on high end luxury vehicles and sports cars. His E60 M5 and Maserati
Quattroporte were absolute nightmares.

