Japan the Most Reliable? Think Again!

[G. David Felt]

CNBC just posted this story that looks at facts gathered from quality studies and came to the conclusion that while Japan is not getting worse parse, they have fallen behind the competition in consumer surveys.

 

Seems Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and Subaru are not keeping pace with the industry and Korea has surpased them.

 

According to the report, the average world wide is a 3% improvement in product quality. Japan has had a zero improvement rate for the last few years where as Korea had an 11% product quality improvement over last year leading the over all industry.

 

Interesting is that Ford and Lincoln are mentioned for cutting the number of problems only and GM and Buick not only cut problems further but placed vehicles in the top 11 brands and for the past year showed fewer than 100 problems per 100 auto's built leading the industry.

 

The story goes on to say this will have many ask if Japan has lost the considered GOLD standard of auto reliability.

 

The final comment is that Japan is struggling in dealing with infotainment systems and voice recognition as 16 of the bottom 20 models are all from Japan and have their core problems rooted in the Infotainment / nav / voice recognition systems.

 

Yahoo Posting of CNBC story

[cp-the-nerd]

The evidence has been there for anyone open minded enough to see it. The American auto industry has come roaring back over the past 10 years and caught Japan with its pants down. Even years ago I was reading a review of an American car, and they made a great point about the import bias in our country that's unlike anywhere else in the world: vehicles of this quality built by our own companies should be outselling imports 2 to 1. There's no excuse anymore.