SaraWI

Have you guys seen this? I'm kinda bummed out by this. Toyota (Lexus) has taken the prize the last 10 years!? Honda was near the middle of the list with Acura behind that. What's the deal??? Can you believe Cadillac is above Honda? I, mean, come on. Accord has been on C&D's 10 best for decades. Any insight on why these reports come up the way they do? What's the appeal behind Toyota/Lexus and why can't Honda/Acura touch them?

MSN Most Dependable Vehicles

kenbiddulph

Toyota IS dependable. I'll give them that.

As for Cadillac and Buick, the owners are so car-oblvious, deaf/blind/old that they don't notice their belts squealing, inbalanced wheels and underinflated tires!

slo007

Well, let's see... the Toyotas we had never had a problem (one had some at 96K). My TSX has rattles galore. I can see how it works, yeah.

SaraWI

DGH

Note that Honda is the second best CORPORATION.

(Not quite sure what that means, though.......)

robert_tsxgeek

But hey Honda/Acura rides Toyota in this list from that report

* Lexus 162 PP100
* Buick 187 PP100
* Infiniti 189 PP100
* Lincoln 194 PP100
* Cadillac 196 PP100
* Honda 209 PP100
* Acura 212 PP100
* Toyota 216 PP100
* Mercury 224 PP100
* Porsche 240 PP100

kenbiddulph

As I mentioned above, certain brands bought by the elderly do better.

Take a Pontiac, Chevy, Olds and a Buick model that share the same parts/platform. The Pontiac gets the worst reliability generally because of the younger and more driver-focused clients. The Buick is driven by a 50+ person who can be duped into buying "halogen fluid" for their headlights. So of course, Buick comes out on top. Those people are so brain-dead and ignorant of their vehicles. Hence the Buick reliability myth. I'm sure Cadillac is the same way, only they might actually get a bit better parts than the more plebian GM brands.

Sad but true.


EDIT: Keep in mind, problems per car... I'd rather have a rattle (a typical complaint in a Japanese built car due to PICKY owners) than my engine dying on me.

While we Acura owners complain about a moonroof shade rattling on rough roads, others are dealing with blown headgaskets and oil leaking at 5,000 miles.

fdl

So has the ford focus.

That list has nothing to do with reliability or dependability.

MarkPinTx

The latest Cads are pretty nice. I looked at a CTS pretty hard, but felt Cadillac would age me, so I quit.

It's a pretty sweet machine. The CTS-V is scary.

Buick, Olds and Cad did/do a pretty nice interior, too. Beats crap out of Nissan/Infiniti for instance.

My 95 Aurora was rock-solid after 10 years. Beats the holy living crap out of my buddy's 96 BMW 850.

GA_TSX

Prior to my TSX I had an Infiniti G20t. The Infiniti car and dealer quality are far and away better than Acura. The TSX is a better car though. There is more to a car then just quality.

gilboman

where do you come up with "brain-dead" BS like this???

kenbiddulph

Consumer Reports, observing cars/family friend who own such vehicles and 1st hand experience. I also sold cars, you see a lot there.

I'm not going by the "he said, she said" routine. Its a simple fact that older people who want appliances for vehicles are far less likely to notice problems than those who seek some excitement in their cars.

Older customers are less likely to see, hear or feel problems in their cars. Younger people are more likely.


So yeah, this "BS" comes from something known as logic and deduction.

SaraWI

I do agree that the new Cads are pretty nice, but I do not believe them to be more reliable than Hondas. :shakehd:

kenbiddulph

The Auroras were quite nice. Reasonably reliable too, I know because I drove one for work rather than putting miles on my Accord.

sleeper

i think it's acura and honda combined.

not sure, you guys figure skyon is included in the toyota corporation ratings? seems if so, they aren't dragging toyota corps ratings down no more than toyota (the nameplate) would.

lexus is the industry leader in quality and really lowers toyota's overall rating. that's why like ususal, overall toyota's #1 and honda's #2.

and yeah, i really can't believe any domestic nameplate is better than a japanese one in quality. lincoln and mercury? did they not realize they're fomoco?

heyitsme

Sounds like its coming from your ass. You're a moron thinking older people are just going to accept problems. Stupid ass logic to somehow maintain superiority of "my favorite brand honda or imports".

Micah476

Reliability was the top consideration I had when I was looking to buy a new car this time around. While Lexus and Infiniti might be ranked slightly higher on these types of lists, I don't think that the difference is material. If you drive a Lexus, Infiniti, or Acura, you are most likely going to get a car with top-notch reliability. Personally, I think that Lexus makes a terrible looking car and Infiniti makes a car with an early-Hyundai quality interior, so I went with an Acura.

kenbiddulph

Heyitsme:

I never said older people accept these problems, I said they are unaware of them.

This is partly due to their reduced senses but also because of the cars they buy (boats with no road feel, Buicks/Cadillacs and Toyota Camry's even)


I'm not sure what your obsession is with my ass but I assure you I pull nothing out of it.


As for accusing me of being a Honda fanboy. I am and not ashamed to say so. When they deserve criticism I am usually the first one there. I do it out of love for the brand as it is needed to keep them on the edge.

TSXfan23

Scion/Toyota/Lexus is gonna continue to rule.

Honda cars now are all bleh to me, except of course the TSX, TL, and s2000

MarkPinTx

I really figured the Aurora to be the salvation of GM. Was a hella nice car.

The GTO looks pretty good too.

But I have no faith. Seems theyre even corroding Opel.

majormojo

Older people are more likely to hear and feel problems in their cars because they aren't blasting the radio at 100 dB all the time.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Typically speaking, those individuals looking for something nice to drive from point A to point B won't notice minor issues such as rattles and things because their vehicles are well damped by the soft suspensions and pasta noodle chassis tuning. These individuals also tend to be older in age and make up a much larger portion of the population.

Auto enthusiasts, who tend to be younger and make up a smaller portion of the population, tend to buy cars based on performance. Performance oriented vehicles tend to exhibit more problems because of the stiff suspension and chassis. The stiffness is less likely to absorb road impact and will result in greater levels of shock being transferred to the cabin area and everything in it.

Therefore, this list makes sense as the typical buyer of the Lexus is looking for something soft and cushy to drive around. This similarly transfers to Toyota. The Lexus and Toyota products, for the most part, are centered around comfort and thus, with their softer suspensions, are most suitable for individuals looking for appliances of transport.

Porsche is at the bottom of the list because people who buy Porsches come from one of two groups. The first group is the true enthusiast who understands that the Porsche is a true sports car and thus will exhibit true sports car tendencies (i.e. hard suspension, stiff chassis, extra noise, etc.). Group two is those individuals who buy the car as a status symbol. These people are expecting a premium vehicle that is easy to drive and quiet and soft and so on and so on. These people do not get anywhere close to what they want and they start looking for problems to report because subconciously, they can't stand the car.

In the end, it all comes down to a balance of understanding and personal preference. I tend toward the enthusiast side of the equation and therefore understand that with a well tuned suspension and stiff chassis, there will be some drawbacks in ride comfort and NVH. Most buyers of cars have not done the extensive research and thus do not understand that there will always be compromises. Therefore, when they pick a vehicle that tends to be sportier, they file more complaints and that drags down ratings.

gilboman

the education system really failed you if you think this is logic and deduction :sqnteek:
your logic is as sound as adam likes apple, adam is a man, all man like apples

besides we all know old people bitch the most about everything since they have less stuff to occupy their time

and as for the domestics being up there, firstly, their cars don't incorporate as much new technology as the other brands and most of their platforms especially the buick and etc... have been around for the past couple decades

biker

Gilbo makes a good point.

ric

This is really interesting. Apparently a number of "young people" are concerned about the reliability and satisfaction ratings of an automobile brand that, by self-identification of purchase and participation in this webpage, you enjoy rather a lot - even to the point of being an "enthusiast". Some of those young people assume that the ratings are, perhaps, skewed by the participation in the survey of "the aged" buying "aged' (dumpy, sloppy, fat, wallowy, obscenely insensitive) automobiles, such as loaded Lexii, capacious Cadillacs and timid but reliable Toyotas and, in their doddering collapse of the basic senses, become unaware of malfunction issues that would drive an acutely-equipped young person into auto-rage...... and in their inacapacity, skew the results due to malformed judgements.

Perhaps, in my own senility, I fail to get the point of why a dependability rating driven by a survey process are of critical focus by anyone who enjoys driving the car they've picked; any such survey is most likely quite subjectively driven. More accurate by far, on some emperical basis, would be reviewing the commentary on this webpage as it emerges over time. The metrics of dependability in a survey would need to be established by something more objective than a survey which allows the equation of body rattles to blown gaskets as performance issues of a parallel nature, at least by the survey participants. The critera for "functional performance" will vary radically, based upon the owner's age, socioeconomic class, functional demands placed on the vehicle and experience with items automotive. The results of the survey will also vary radically based upon the response ratio, and the pool from whom the response has been drawn, however "random" the distribution of the survey tool might be. I doubt that the survey represents a classic "blind study" or a detailed analysis of reported failures or an objective crosscheck of a crossection of users by an objective panel, in any case, and becomes perilously close to sloppy statistical analysis at its worst - the application of statistical analysis to issues that are primarily subjective. The matrix of the survey becomes the basic presumptive quality of the vehicle in terms of build and performance against the expectations of the owner.

I would aver that for every acute young individual who discerns every minute flaw there exists, perhaps, (in a parallel universe?) a young individual whose life experience hardly equips him/her to form a correlative assessment of function. For every dodderning senile drooling senior who waddles down the road in a sedate Crown Vic blind to basic presumptive malfunctions, there is, I suspect, a mature adult who can percieve, based upon decades of experience, an emperical assessment of performance, based upon a self-determined set of critical criteria. So - Who does JD Power survey, what are their controls, how objective is the survey tool, what drives people to respond to the tool, what is the return ratio of survey tools that are distributed and how balanced is the application of the survey across a consistent population group? Their webpage remains rather light in terms of commentary in depth concerning the specifics of their survey "tools". I may risk blasphemy to suggest that many of these kinds of surveys are a simple form of "beauty contest" however rigorously defined and shaped.

And, if you enjoy driving the car, why does it matter what a "beauty contest" presumably prooves? At least the various reviews of automotive performance in the auto "slicks' are presented as subjective opinion, and can be read, reveiewed and assessed in that light as emperical commentary rather than "science".

Sorry if this is a rant, folks, but geez!!!!!!!!!

ric

This is a really fascinating thread, because so much is mixed up in it.

JD Power runs "blind survey" information which then is tabulated, thus giving a statistical gloss and the opportunity to label this collation process a "study". However, it is essentially the garnering of subjective information from a population subset. The webpage does not reveal what percentage of returns they garner from their survey pool, nor do they define how the pool is determined. Thus, one has a self-selected subset of those who return the survey in the first place, drawn from a pool whose characteristics are not defined.

I would suggest that a survey that attempts to define dependibility by assessing the comfort level of a population subset is bound to be somewhat arbitrary in nature. The results will be skewed by the nature of the judgement of the individual responding, the willingness of the individual to respond and the time during the ownership cycle in which the survey arrives at the door. Is it possible, in the language of one of the posts on this site, that the results will be skewed to favor lushly drawn luxobuggies owned by older people whose senses are failing? Indeed. It would also be possible for the results of the survey to be skewed by young folks who have owned one car in their entire lives, and thus lack a correlative basis upon which to derive a sense of "performance" and "dependability" both really elusive words, and for whom one malfunction represents the end of the world. So the results are arbitrary; their being couched in tables, pie charts and a statistical ranking is simply the application of statistical correlation data to data that is, politely put, "mush". Far better to derive an opinion by reading car driving critics and a variety of webpages where the input is frankly experiential, emperical and "subjective".

In defense of aging farts whose night vision is gone, who have arthritic bodies wracked by pain and whose spines are now compressed so that visualizing over the end of the windshield is now a major task - we do have, as a result of aging, frequently the opportunity to acquire emperical data over the process of living, thus giving us a live-basis for forming opinions and decisions.

At the age of 55, my firm leases me the TSX because I found it fun to drive, comfortable to be in, economical to operate and easy to navigate in a congested city. The TSX is the 14th or 15th car I have leased or owned; by now I have a damn good sense of what I want and can conduct the emperical research necessary to form and support a decision. I did that without the assistance of JD Power's highly structured survey process, the very nature of which I find suspect.

My apologies to those who assume that, because of age, my senses are dulled, my brain slowed, and my choices for vehicles narrowed to a Lincoln Town Car, a Toyota Avalon or a Buick Century, at least if I am to follow with my demographic destiny that some on this posting suggest, a concept which I flatly reject. The 69-year old (now retiring) CEO of my firm drives a Porshe (manual). It is his fourth, replacing the Nissan Z series when they went out of production. I believe he leases them because they are fun to drive. I'm pretty sure that, at the age of 69, he doesn't give a damn about the status of the vehicle. Maybe it's our corporate culture.

To cut to the chase, if you do the research, and EVALUATE what you are reading, and like the car - enjoy. Who cares what anyone else thinks, including a survey process that establishes "science" by tabulating statistical jello?

biker

There's always need for some adult input on this site and ric has said it quite well.

bob shiftright

Speak for YOURSELF!!!!



The average Harley-Davidson buyer is 47 and the average Porsche 911 buyer is 52.

I'd guess the distinction isn't exactly age, it's more "car enthusiasts" vs. "non-car enthusiasts". (A car enthusiast? Skip Barber, twice, PCA and BMWCCA member, and I still have my R&Ts going back to 1967.)

As people age, on average they become less interested in cars. But I still seem to see a fair number of us geezers who are motor-heads.

"Car people" are going to be much more "picky" about their cars than people who look at a car as an appliance. Most Camry buyers probably aren't "car people". By my count, Acura offers four models with manual transmissions and Lexus offers one model, so I think "car people" are more likely to be naturally attracted to the Acura (and Honda) model lineup than to Lexus (and Toyota).

Excuse me for now, I have to take my Geritol before I go to visit my Porsche dealer to ask about the new 997....

biker

Good one bob.

gilboman

i would rate Honda and toyota to have equal number of non car ppl buying them, as for acura, with execption of RSX, most are non car enthuasists as well. i mean, if you were a real car enthuasists, you wouldnt drive around in a rebadged accord rite? you'll be in somesort of RWD sportsedan with 50/50 weight distribution and decent brakes. :P Just a general observation about TSX/TL drivers. cheapest entry lux sedan attracts a lot of ppl who wont otherwise be afford a semi lux car.

half j/k, and i couldnt resist commenting how car enthausist like to drive accords.

biker

Just when I was putting in a good word for Gilbo......

ianS

totally I dun see it is ne more fun to drive my 328 than my tsx for daily driving. I am not making a 60mph on every corner nor driving a twisty mountain on every trip(btw, is there ne of it in toronto?) But I enjoyed every shift from the tsx, I still can do 40 on every corner, rev to 7000rpm, spacious trunk to carry 2 baby stroller & seat 2 kids comfortablely.

I think most of tsx owner doesn't matter our tsx is badge as acura or honda, a tsx or accord. And I dun see why people getting a cheap, inferior 325 with not true 50/50 weight distribution and want to get impression they are driving a bimmer but still consider themselve as real car enthuasist.

majormojo

How's that trollbait tasting, ianS?

1SICKLEX

Manual to the wrong wheels= :-* I mean I can appreciate it but I'll just keep a Civic manual. Shit my ES 300 is a manual. Wrong wheels though.

People are attracted to Acura cause it's hella more affordable and offers sporty cars. A RSX and TSX can be had by anyone working at McDonalds for longer than 6 months. Shit I almost bought a 1st gen CL 8 years ago as it was brand new and 23k out the door for a 2.2 (the 3.0 was not out yet). I was 18.
I think most Honda/Acura people have not owned a RWD car. Cause even in daily driving there is a difference.

Lexus just costs more so their age will be higher (all things relative, higher age= higher income). Like Benz age is higher (hella more expensive cars).

I wonder what BMWs avg age is?

biker

Probably just below the MB ave age.

bob shiftright

"According to market research provided by New York-based Mediamark Research Inc., buyers of new Honda Accords are typically 40, have household incomes of around $59,000, live in homes valued at $167,000 and hold at least a bachelor's degree. Most think they dress more fashionably than the general population."

"The median age of a BMW 300 series owner is 40.9 years and their median household income is $54,000. BMW owners are twice as likely as other motorists to believe they dress more fashionably than most people. Fewer Beamer owners prefer making things from scratch; for them buying ready-made products is more likely. And they broadly interpret the Bible, says Mediamark."

ianS

I think is 18 in Toronto

1SICKLEX

This is VERY interesting.

SaraWI

I agree Still trying to wrap my brain around this. How can someone with a household income of $54k afford a $30k+ vehicle?? Furthermore, why is it that the ave income of Accord owners higher than that of BMW??? Is it that Accord owners know and want a good deal?

TSXfan23

thats such bs.