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Automotive News & Views Inside Line Article Comments Article Comments: Perception Is Reality
149 messages, Last post on Feb 12, 2007 at 1:54 PM
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Article comments for Perception Is Reality - Witness the tale of two companies — Toyota and General Motors. Despite recalls and public relations woes, Toyota's image of bulletproof quality persists, and sales and market share rise. Despite concrete evidence to the contrary, GM's reputation for inferior quality remains, while sales and market share decline. (more)
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(my faves)I now am interested in Suzuki. Namely, the new Suzuki SX4. That small SUV will have 2WD FWD as the gas-saving mode of drive, with 4WD available and AWD as the everyday drive. All for $15,000 and it looks very attractive. I'm now interested in Suzuki, only seriously this time. This is the breakthrough rig for Suzuki, IMO, that blasts them away from the rest of the competition and officially draws my interest towards them. |
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You have got to be kidding me about the J.D. Power initial quality survey. J.D. Power is a joke. Initial quality..... I don't know anyone who buys a car for 30 days of use. GM car quality is terrible check Consumer Reports....more unbiased than J.D. Power. The new cobalt is one of the most unreliable vehicles out there. Even my dad a life time "buy American" recently bought his first Brand new vehicle......a toyota Sienna Minivan after years of buying Chrysler Minivans(moderate quality). I try and give credit where it is due and outside of the truck market I wouldn't buy an american vehicle. Even trucks are going to be seriously challeged in the full size category by Toyota. Nissan, Toyota, and Honda already make the best midsize pickups. Poor corporate management and corrupt unions hurt americans and the products that they build. Why is it that americans making japanese branded vehicles have better quality than American vehicles made by Americans. Better quality parts and engineering. American corporations cut too many corners on quality to try and produce it cheaper. Then they try and convince Americans through "marketing and advertisement" by telling them "we build the best cars". If they spent the advertisement and marketing budgets on building better vehicles they wouldn't have to convince people that they build the best cars. I still believe America has the best most educated labor force in the world but we also have some of the worst corporate management to go with it. Excuse me I have to go cut some joe schmoes pension while granting stock options to myself "back dated of course" in order to make the bottom line look better. Can I get the gov't to pick up my corporations underfunded pension plan....if so I can get a bigger bonus. one2mark |
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Replying to: KarenS (Sep 07, 2006 7:37 am) One company whose reputation has remained intact, indeed has gotten better and better over the years, is BMW. |
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| exists very visibly in some of these replies. Despite obviously not having driven recent GM products, there are some that are so hung up on the perception thing that they wouldn't consider the GM product if an offer was made to give it to them. I like some Toyotas. I owned one for many years. The new ones aren't what the older ones were, that's for sure. And my recent GM vehicles are much better than the older ones were. My most recent purchase is an Avalanche. It and its new 900 series SUV / truck kin have nothing close in the Toyota lineup. In cars it's debatable, but I can honestly say that the latest Camry interior is below the Aura / G6 level of materials and design. Fit still seems to be there, but it just looks cheaper inside. Worse, this is also true if you compare it to previous generations of Camry. | |
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after talking pretty extensively with a person who designs seatbelt systems for ford and many of gm's bigger trucks, i must say that the perceived quality is not unfounded. i guess the regulators use a certain graphing technique to gauge quality and consistency between components, the higher, the better. 1.6 is the lowest necessary to do business in america. this manager was telling me that in some cases, they even have to fudge the numbers a little bit in order to meet that 1.6 mark... this is SEATBELTS we are talking about here... alright, so gm and ford are getting 1.6's on their consistency ratings, while honda and toyota are getting 13's! that seems like a bit of a disparity to me... now mind you, this is a vauge description of the actual scale that they use, but it gives you a good idea of where they are at. gm and ford are all about old money in detroit. the families all work together and help each other out. in ALL the aspects of manufacturing a vehicle. when this is the case, you don't get the best, you get whatever their buddy makes. i agree, though, that gm has the most quality throughout their line amongst american manufacturers. particularly within cadillac. i would even go so far to say that cadillac and buick (well, gm's v6s in general) are the most reliable of their kind outside of japan. german quality is a joke and korean cars, for all their improvements still aren't there yet. with that established, you have this, america makes great big cars and trucks. japan pulled the rug from under them with their civic and camry, small cars. every small car ever to come out of detroit has sucked. once they make a good small car, they could possibly win again, since the people who own the small inexpensive cars tend to complain alot more loudly when something goes wrong (i.e. small car = less income) of course this is a generalization, but you get the idea. (sorry for the long winded rant!)
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Why is it so hard for some people here to believe that Toyota quality may be slipping while GM quality is increasing? The old saying about the only thing that is certain is change seems appropriate. Just as you can't keep churning out sub-par products because the market won't allow it, you can't keep on sustaining high levels of performance without something giving out... Just my opinion.
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Replying to: pharmd3 (Sep 08, 2006 10:24 am) How soon we forget that GM led the recall race for 2004 and was second to Ford for 2005. Let's see how the numbers tally up at the end of 06'. This recent news is candy to the GM fans but enjoy it while you can cause it won't be on the table for long. Witness the delayed launches of future products and you'll understand that Toyota is not going to let their reputation, yes I said REPUTATION and a well earned one, slip away. However, this born again wonder we call General Motors has such a poor reputation, there WAS nowhere to go but up. And with THEIR recent woes and bankruptcy allegations, I think their renaissance is more of a fire lit under managements butt than an actual desire to improve. Had the competition not been wiping the floor with them, you GM fans would be revelling in modern renditions of Citations, Vegas and Celebrity's... GM is not certainly improving out of the goodness of their sweet little hearts. NO, they are improving because it's the only way they are going to save their collective butts. GM fans want to call it a turn of the tides (GM comeback at Toyota's demise)? Go for it. I see it as no more than a hump in the rollercoaster that GM and the rest of Detroit have ridden for decades. Toyota will correct their issues, and continue on the right path for the future whether the naysayers want to believe it or not. For the Record, I have never, ever owned a Toyota and you couldn't give me a Garbage Motors product that I would want outside the Vette and now defunct GTO. I am not rooting for either one in this. |
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| ... my confidence in GM is low. why? I have had to face 4 big repair bills in just 4 months. Thats ludicrous and most of these shouldnt show up until a few years down the road. | |
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Replying to: KarenS (Sep 07, 2006 7:37 am) Most of what GM makes is garbage. Their quality may be improving in the JD power survey (first 30 days - that's a joke) but many of their products still have serious design and implementation issues. The only GM car I'd consider would be a Vibe - and that's over half Toyota. Regarding Toyota my opinion hasn't changed either: they don't deserve the reputation they have, and maybe this recent spate of troubles will make more people realize it. Their initial designs are typically superior to many other manufacturers, and their ability to tweak a product to near perfection and milk it for what it's worth is obvious, but they don't run forever and they do need about as much babying and mothering as the majority of other brands. I find that people who buy Toyota's and other highly ranked brands quite often won't admit that they had a serious problem whereas the moment anything goes wrong with a made-in-America vehicle they'd be up in arms. I had a co-worker with a Toyota Camry that he claimed was a modicum of reliability - only needs gas and oil and the occasional tune up. On further prodding I discovered that it needed a new engine at 120,000 KM (~75,000 miles), but that was a "one off". Yeah, right. (Strangely enough I know of two other vehicles that needed new engines; one was a GM 3.1 V6, the other a Saturn 1.9L 4 cylinder.) With a different co-worker, we were comparing his Tercel to my Escort Wagon each of approximately the same age (9 years). I had needed new rear springs, new tie rod ends, thermostat, and a set of new front brake shoes in the 9 years and 104,000 km (not a lot of distance, but most of it was commuting). His car just needed new brakes at ~120,000 km (it had 140). Oh, must not forget a new transmission. Plus the alternator and power steering pump. But other than that, it was great. Uh huh. My "unofficial wrecker survey" that I've been keeping for a few years - completely unscientific - of checking what cars I see going on tow-trucks for non-accident related issues turns up far more Toyota's and Honda's getting towed than their reputation would justify. My perceptions changed? Hardly! |
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Replying to: inaudible (Sep 08, 2006 10:03 am) Also, I can't argue with you on Korean quality being subpar, but German quality is a joke? I beg to differ. I have an old Volkswagen Fox that's going on 17 years. Volkswagen has long had a reputation of making solid cars. As far as the upper-end luxury cars, quality is not an issue for them either. Did you know that GM buys a large amount of V6 engines from Honda? Maybe that's why V6's in GM cars are so reliable. |
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