Domestics vs Imports

[EricTheCarGuy]

Ever since I posted this video it’s been an ongoing discussion, lets bring it hear and see what we come up with.

Topic

[road2perfection]

British list of errors per maker, you will like this ETCG

However just personal opinion.
Nothing ever… ever ever ever ever ever will beat a jap made car in reliability.
Unfortunately there are hardly any car that is japmade avaiable to us..
In europe atleast.. the prius is made in Japan, what has the least erorrs after 1-2-5-10 years ? prius wins it all by good margin, but I hate the car…

% chance of a error, breakdown or alike during 1st year of ownership.

Nr. 1 Honda 10 %
Nr. 2 Toyota 17 %
Nr. 3 Lexus 18 %
Nr. 4 Suzuki 19 %
Nr. 5 Subaru 20 %
Nr. 6 Hyundai 21 %
Nr. 7 Mazda 21 %
Nr. 8 Mitsubishi 21 %
Nr. 9 Chevrolet 22 %
Nr. 10 Nissan 25 %
Nr. 11 Kia 26 %
Nr. 12 Ford 31 %
Nr. 12 Skoda 31 %
Nr. 14 Citroën 32 %
Nr. 15 Peugeot 35 %
Nr. 15 Daewoo 35 %
Nr. 15 Smart 35 %
Nr. 18 Mini 37 %
Nr. 19 Fiat 38 %
Nr. 20 Seat 39 %
Nr. 20 VW 39 %
Nr. 20 Volvo 39 %
Nr. 20 Porsche 39 %
Nr. 24 Vauxhall (Opel) 40 %
Nr. 25 BMW 41 %
Nr. 26 Audi 42 %
Nr. 27 Rover 43 %
Nr. 27 Jaguar 43 %
Nr. 29 Mercedes-Benz 45 %
Nr. 30 MG 48 %
Nr. 31 Saab 50 %
Nr. 31 Chrysler 50 %
Nr. 33 Renault 52 %
Nr. 33 Jeep 52 %
Nr. 35 Alfa Romeo 55 %
Nr. 36 Land Rover 71 %

[EricTheCarGuy]

I think it’s interesting that the high end German cars have a pretty high failure rate as compared to some other “lesser” makes. It has been my experience that the more systems you put onto a vehicle the more chances for failure, perhaps that’s coming into play here. Thanks for your post.

[road2perfection]

Some numbers of brand sale stats from Norway, these are low numbers are we just 5 million people.

And by these numbers I’d like to point out the inability for GM to stay competetive, for the last 40 years in europe, I see they are changing fast for the better on all areas! so no generally bashing american car makers here, but GM based brands are Opel (vauxhall in Australia and UK) and Ford. less influenced brands are kia and hyundai but controlling stake by GM, but doesnt share much design features.

Both have done far better since 2007 when they had their crysis, and they took care of things the right way! as seen with the new Mondeo especially!
generally worthless info as it’s from europe but general faith with american brands have faded slowly over 40 years to start impressing us again 🙂

Volkswagen Golf – 6779
Volvo V70 – 3485
Toyota Avensis – 3425
Nissan Qashqai – 3382
Volkswagen Passat – 2904
Ford Mondeo – 2904
Volkswagen Polo – 2576
Toyota Auris – 2465
Skoda Octavia – 2435
Ford Fiesta – 2321
Volvo V50 – 2272
Peugeot 3008 – 2196
Audi A4 – 2047
Toyota Prius – 2032
Ford Focus – 1990
Volkswagen Tiguan – 1867
Mitsubishi Outlander – 1814
Toyota RAV4 – 1635
Toyota Yaris – 1560
Toyota Urban Cruiser – 1546

[SpawnedX]

Mitsubishi at 21%? Sounds too low. Mitsubishi makes as much crap as Hershey’s makes chocolate.

[Red Morris]

Whoa SpawnedX, I gotta step in a defend my marque here :cheer:

Actually, I was going to step in anyway to make a couple of points. My first is that I think the best way to have a reliable car is to take your time in purchasing, and then stick with it. Service it when recommended, and do it yourself where you can so you know the right fluids, torque settings, etc, were used. And when things fail, as they will, investigate them and find out if there’s an upgrade part that can save it happening again. After a while you will have a well sorted car that should do you proud.

I have a Mitsubishi 😉 FTO, which were only ever made in Japan, so I can testify to what road2perfection said. I’ve had the same car for 11.5 years now, and it has NEVER broken down. Once I had an overheat from a broken thermostat, and even then it somehow managed to fix itself. Of course I changed it though. Maybe Mitsubishis made in Europe or the US are of different quality.

I think the key is to look around at what you can see before buying a car based on the brand and assuming it will be fine. A friend just returned a Mercedes and got a full refund after 6 months because of the troubles he’d had. Including 4 sets of discs!! :ohmy: So nothing is guaranteed, you can only try to get as much info as you can, and find the best example you can.

[Ted Jankowski]

I did enjoy your video on this subject. And I myself having grown up in a GM labor’s Home where my father worked there and retired and know the hours he spent at work. Later I did get the opportunity to work for GM in a Supervisory positions at about 8 different plants and even one Ford Plant. I have a little bit of a different point of view.

Regarding GM not having the money for research and development. They sure seem to have the money for everything else that the Foreign companies don’t waste money on. 1st big difference. Executive pay rates. American companies reward their executives for poor decisions. GM’s CEO got a 15% increase in pay the year before they went bankrupt. Which brought his compensation to 15 million a year. They are just in the last few years starting to raise their CEO’s pay to about 1/2 of what the average Big Three’s pay is.

Another thing. the Japanese companies don’t waste money of projects. They formulate a plan then implement it. (I’ll mention more about that later.) Where GM will say we are going to build a plant at this location. (Flint mi Van Slyke road) spend over a million dollars to build a ramp to this non existent plant. and after the ramp to the plant is completed. Tear it down. because they decided not to build the plant. Or say a plant get a new plant manager like the Marion In metal stamping plant. He doesn’t like all the millions of dollars they’ve spent in spare parts in the basement taking up space. So it is cleaned out and sent to the scrap yard. When they need those parts buy them and wait till they arrive to install them. Take these seemingly isolated incidents and multiply them by the number of plants they have. and imagine how much money is wasted. Or like when I was working at Indy Truck and Bus and the manager there wanted their brand new porous tile floor waxed. paid three shifts on overtime to clean and wax the floor after it had been explained to the manager for over a year that wax will destroy the non slip properties of the Floor. And if it is waxed will never be able to get the wax out of it. After the floor was waxed one of the first employees to walk on the newly waxed floor almost was sent to the hospital when they slipped on the floor walking into the cafeteria. Guess what was being done for the rest of the week. Stripping the wax of off the floor. There was a minimum of over a half million spent on the project and I was transferred out o the plant before the stripping was finished. But I would guess that they have replaced the floor since then. The plant manager screwed up the floor not the worker. They only did what they were told to do.

Here’s another issue I have. Having been working within the auto industry I used to work in tires and service. As a salesman, I want to keep my customer happy and returning when they need further work done or new tires and service. Say your the owner of a 1999 Buick with the 3800 in it. You’re gonna need a plenum. It is not a question of if you need one it is when will it fail. Well they were failing. GM knew hey were failing. So their fix was a campaign. not a recall. They ran the numbers and figured it was cheaper to put stop leak in all those vehicles rather than fix the problem. Which they didn’t fix for at least 3 years. I used to keep one under the counter to show customers. Now had GM been run by a salesman that had come up through the ranks he would have understood the reasoning behind fixing the problem properly and taking care of the customer so they would want to return later and buy from again. Instead GM basically crapped on their customers and fixed it with a band aid that eventually cost them money that GM should have taken care of.

Along the same lines. People that usually blame union worker will talk about the guy who left a wrench in the door with a note saying you finally found the rattle. GM’s management style is not one creating a work environment that encourages quality production. That’s a ten page response right there. From the classes management was given on stress release because GM knows that many supervisors die within 5 years of retirement from the stress of working their under their management style. But what they don’t talk about is like what I just mentioned. One idiot put a wrench in the door. GM engineers designed the plenum and knew it was bad. But refused to fix it right for years. That one everybody who owned a vehicle with a 3800 in affect got the wrench in the door and NOT ONE UNION WORKER was responsible for the bad plenums. And when they found out they were failing. It wasn’t a union worker that made the decision to screw over the customer and band aid the repair instead of replacing it with one that was good. Dorman made one that was half the price of the GM one and it didn’t melt. There are lots of other examples of this.

At the Big three the name of the game is CYA. All the time and if you want to get ahead glorify your boss. I talked to a supplier that made specialty parts for the auto industry. He was telling me that it was so much easier to work with the Japanese companies that the US companies. When I asked why his answer really made sense. When he would go into a Big Three plant it was next to impossible to get input from GM engineers as to designing the part they needed to resolve their problem. But when going into a a Toyota or Honda plant. He would immediately be assigned an engineer that would take him right out tot he floor. Show him the machine then pull out a note pad pencil and ruler and draw a picture of what they needed. They would together take measurements and work together to be sure when he brought back a sample it was basically what they needed. At the BIG three No one wants to take responsibility for making any decision. He would bring the sample back and they would test it. Make adjusts to the design if needed and resolve their issue. A process that the Big three would spend 10 times as much on the process of resolving their problem because no one would take ownership of fixing the problem. So what would take a few weeks to fix and resolve at a Japanese plant would months if not a year to fix at the Big three.

I was going to write more but I’m tired right now. I’ve got three years of supervision at GM and Ford. The good I can say is at least at Generous Motors they would take time to plan. Where Ford would make a plan but failed many times to actually plan it out. When a project was under taken at GM all the players met numerous times before the actual project. Where Ford would just this is what’s going to happen then everybody was supposed to magically be where they needed to be at the right time.

I know that at GM the rule is. If Sales are slow quality is priority. If Sales are high Let the dealer deal with it. Can’t help myself got one more story, Fort Wayne Truck Plant. Supervisor and General foreman. Gives the quality control Union worker a direct order to pass a truck that has a broken dashboard. Shop committeeman takes the vehicle when it comes of the line right out to the Union Hall and the grabs the Union local president and they drag the Plant manager out to show him. They took off the first bracket to show the plant manager what they had been ordered to send out to a customer. and the Dash Collapsed. This type of thing happens in so many plants where the employees have to fight with management to make sure the product going out is just assembled correctly. The Union workers do not design the parts that fail. They only install them.

I believe if GM didn’t waste so much money of things that have nothing to do with the production and quality of production. They’d have more money for research and development. And stop paying executives big money to run their company into bankruptcy.

[Dave]

I would have to agree with some guys here that the big three haven’t made any good cars/trucks since the 70’s but I think the big point has been missed, It is not the car or brand that is good or bad but the customers that are good or bad I have seen good cars destroyed by bad owners and bad cars that last forever by good owners. Not being in the auto manufacturing industry I have to scratch my head and wonder what were they thinking when I get some vehicles in at work. I put imports and domestic cars on the same level and know that most import cars are actually more domestic than the domestic cars.

[Author]

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