Sudden Rise in American Car Quality?

Did you see the AP story today showing that Americans now believe Ford, GM and Chrysler produce higher quality cars than Asian car companies? An excerpt…

Slightly more Americans now say the United States makes better-quality vehicles than Asia does, with 38 percent saying U.S. cars are best and 33 percent naming autos made by Asian countries, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll. When the same question was asked in a December 2006 AP-AOL poll, 46 percent said Asian countries made superior cars, while just 29 percent preferred American vehicles, reflecting a perception of U.S. automotive inferiority that began taking hold about three decades ago.

Do you believe that American car companies have made massive improvements in quality since 2006 – in the midst of the worst recession in decades – that warrant such a dramatic change in public perception? I don’t.

On the other hand, I have never completely accepted the notion that there was a huge gap in quality between American and Asian cars in the first place. I have long been suspicious of so called “reliability ratings” made by Consumer Reports and the oft cited JD Powers “initial quality ratings”.

The majority of cars built today are really quite good. When all the products in the sample are really good, it is difficult to detect meaningful differences in quality – especially if your measurement tool is a customer satisfaction survey. Besides, it is hard for me to put much faith in these surveys when the vast majority of people being surveyed don’t know the difference between a spark plug and a dip stick!

In addition to lack of technical knowledge, many people carry brand loyalty biases that defy logic. This loyalty bias seems to run deeper with foreign brands than domestic brands. Have you ever tried to talk cars with a loyal VW owner?

Setting my concerns about the survey methods aside, let’s look at the actual numbers from the JD Powers initial quality ratings. Taken at face value, you will see there is little difference between brands in the top half of the survey.

JD Powers measures things in terms of defects per 100 vehicles in the first ninety days of ownership. In the last survey, American car companies averaged about 112 defects per 100 vehicles. Imports averaged about 106 defects per 100 vehicles. That’s a difference of 6 defects per 100 vehicles between the American and Asian fleet.

Do you seriously believe that the average person, whom we have already established doesn’t know the difference between a spark plug and a dip stick, can detect the quality difference represented by 6 defects per 100 vehicles? Probably not.

It is exactly this kind of hair splitting that has been used by the media to claim that American brands are inferior to Asian brands. To some extent -- and this AP story helps make this point -- the media’s message sharpens consumer bias. That consumer bias feeds back into the results of the JD Powers and Consumer Reports surveys.

Now that the American car buying public suddenly has a better view of the American car industry, even if for no objective reason, it will be interesting to see if this new attitude shows up in as better ratings for Detroit in the next round of Consumer Reports and JD Powers surveys.

For the record I drive a 2007 Mazda6 and my wife drives a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan.