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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._dependability

DETROIT - Toyota Motor Corp. (news - web sites) remains the automaker with the most dependable vehicles, led by its Lexus luxury brand, though Detroit's Big Three manufacturers all showed improvement in the past year, according to the latest J.D. Power and Associates vehicle dependability study released Tuesday.

For the 10th consecutive year, Lexus was the highest-ranking brand in the closely watched study. It was followed by General Motors Corp.'s Buick nameplate, Nissan Motor Co.'s Infiniti brand, Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln label and GM's revamped Cadillac lineup.

GM was the only one of the domestic automakers to score better than the industry average of 269 problems per 100 vehicles, but Ford and DaimlerChrysler AG made significant headway. Last year's industry average was 273 problems per 100 vehicles.

"The domestics are putting their money where their mouths are in terms of consistent long-term quality improvements," said Joe Ivers, J.D. Power's executive director of quality/customer satisfaction. "However, while the domestics continue to outpace the Europeans, the Japanese continue to dominate."

The study is based on responses from more than 48,000 original owners of 2001 model-year cars and trucks. It measures problems such as wind noise, excessive brake wear, vibrations and the replacement of parts not called for under normal maintenance.

Toyota, whose U.S. sales were up 11.6 percent through May, had seven models score highest in their respective segments — the Corolla compact car, Avalon premium midsize car, MR2 Spyder sports car and 4Runner midsize sport utility vehicle for the Toyota label, and the ES 330 entry luxury car, LS 430 premium luxury car and RX 300 entry luxury SUV for Lexus.

Among individual brands, the most improved from last year were Kia, Suzuki and Audi, though all three continue to perform below the industry average. Kia had 77 fewer problems per 100 vehicles, Suzuki 38 and Audi 23.

GM was tops among the Big Three with 262 problems per 100 vehicles, two fewer than last year. Ford (275) improved by 12 problems from a year ago, and DaimlerChrysler (302) was better by nine problems.

Segment-leading models for the Big Three included the Chrysler Concorde among full-size cars, Ford Ranger among compact pickups and the redesigned GMC Sierra HD among heavy-duty, full-size pickups.

Hyundai, which showed the most improvement among 37 brands in J.D. Power's initial quality study released in April, was near the bottom in the dependability study, registering 375 problems per 100 vehicles.

The bottom five in terms of problems per 100 vehicles were Volkswagen (386), Isuzu (393), Daewoo (411), Kia (432) and Land Rover (472).

Among manufacturers, Toyota (207) was followed by American Honda Motor Co. (news - web sites) (210), Porsche Cars North America Inc. (240), GM (262) and BMW of North America (264). Those were the only manufacturers to rank above the industry average.

attgig

it's because Japanese people are short and they're closer to their work, and they can make higher quality products.

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brainsmile

my mechanic doensn't even crouch when my car is up on the hydraulics for an oil change.

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bachviet

Honda is not far behind from Toyota.

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InfiniteNothing

I think there are obvious flaws in this thread. I think the only reason the upscale cars did so well was because of pride. Owners think their car problems don't "count" as problems because they are small problems or the dealer fixed them for free. They don't want to look bad in the polls not to mention they don't want to get beat by resale values.

The second problem is they are so close to eachother. Does it really matter who is number 1 when number 2 (honda) is so close. Does even 100 cars make a diffence. Who cares if you have 3 problems with your car as opposed to 2?

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whitak24

it's good to see that the U.S. automakers are finally beginning to put emphasis on build quality and are working to lower the terribly high rate of problems that they've had in the past.

one thing that i think makes it difficult for them is that especially for GM and ford, they control such big chunks of the market that they can never be too far away from average. i mean, if GM cut the number of problems to 200, the average would probably end up being 215 or something.

Jeffbx

Toyota... because caucasians are too d*mn tall.

LegendKiller

There should be a ratio such as problems/avg selling price to see if you are truly getting more bang for your buck.

Heck, plotting out the average problems on a chart would be cool. Seeing how many occured during how old (in months) the car was. That way you could also keep track of the avg problems / dollar that you have.


However, this would require too much thought and would probably "skew" the results back to american cars.


LK

attgig

:-)

so, I feel silly asking this question (considering i started the reference), but what movie was my reference from? I remember the scene with the sony exec and what not....but I can't remember which movie.

Jeffbx

Crazy People - funny move

attgig

that's it!

i totally remembered the scene, but kept on thinking it was Michael Keaton instead of Dudley Moore... (getting confused with Gung Ho), and it was screwing up my google searches.

thanks =)

kimchicowboy

remember how i posted about hyundai having good initial ratings? well, it got crap (as did kia) for durability rankings. hahahaha. go figure. go korea!

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SnowSurfer

i think one of the reasons the american car companies are doing better is they are buying up alot of the europeon car companies lol

bmw would have been better if it hadnt been for the x3, lot of problems with that so ive heard, its because they outsourced it.

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