Ford passed Toyota Initial Quality

[Ingolstadt]

Ford Mustang gets a nod for initial quality impression?

WTF is going on there?

Maybe stopping the production of Ford GT helped in offsetting alot...

Anyway, these surveys are crap.

[2ndclasscitizen]

What's the point of an initial quality survey? I think the more relevant is the quality survey in a few years.

[Ingolstadt]

What's the point of an initial quality survey? I think the more relevant is the quality survey in a few years.

Add to that the benchmarking of these surveys are based on number of complaints from buyers. . . . which IMO is a false logic.

[Ferrer]

Ford Mustang gets a nod for initial quality impression?

WTF is going on there?

I guess expectations are different from Europe or Australia...

[culver]

I don't really like consumer surveys. Because the benchmark was done on very different segment of people. For example buyers of Toyota would expect very high perceived 'quality', hence perhaps a slight faint sound would render them going back to the dealers. And for Porsche buyers (car enthusiasts) perhaps they would even understand and forgive some errors where they know why and how it happened, and that they just have to perform some (i-dunno-waht) thing to make it work...

I don't like this direction of survey based on very drastically segment of buyers. well, of course people can mention that Ford and Toyota were under the same category, but perhaps the ailing ford gotten more 'i-can-see-they're-trying-so-it's-ok' such consumers as oppose to toyota's 'i-thought-they're-perfect?' consumers.

just my opinion.

The point you are making is very legitimate but I have heard (and personally experienced) that it works the other way more often than not. If you have a problem with a Toyota you are more likely to forgive them because your car is perfect and you just had the one unlucky sample. If you have an "unreliable" Ford anything that goes wrong is because Ford messed up.

In '00 I bought a new Ford. Until then I had owned Toyotas and had great faith in Toyota. However I really liked the Contour SVT (Mondeo ST200). I figured I was taking a risk but bought it anyway because I enjoyed driving it more than any of the Japanese cars I looked at. After about a year the driver's side mirror motor quit working. I was mad about this failure so shortly after buying the car and felt mad at Ford. I assumed this failure was a bad sign of things to come. I figured I gave Ford a chance and got burned. Had the same issue happened to a Toyota I would have just assumed it was bad luck.

Then I stated looking at the body of the mirror. There was spider web crack in the paint. It didn't sit on the door quite right. A little investigating revealed that it had been hit in a parking lot. The mount bosses had broken and the wires came unplugged. A bit of glue fixed the mount and I reconnected the plug after which everything worked again.

Because I "knew" Fords were unreliable I blamed Ford first rather than the real culprit, the person who hit my car. When things went wrong with my Toyotas I didn't stress it and never assumed it was a sign the car was unreliable.

It is quite likely that Toyota owners will be more likely to overlook/forgive a problem than those who have been told their cars aren't reliable.

[nota]

^^ Great example of the risks in 'perceived' quality

[culver]

Very true. Perceived quality tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy. If we all believe Toyotas are reliable and they generally are they will get high marks. If we all believe Fords to have poor reliability and if they actually have lots of problems it will show. The problem is when things are changing. A Toyota with actual reliability problems will get the benefit of the doubt while a Ford with good reliability is seen as an anomaly. Effectively it isn't easy to filter out bias of the consumer from the data.

When reading CR data I apply my own filter to what I read. If a car from a "reliable" brand scores "average" I tend to assume it's actual performance is worse than average because it would get the benefit of the doubt I outlined above. However, if something like a Chevy gets a constantly average score I'm going to place more faith in that rating. In that case it actually did well despite a sampling bias that would tend to hold it down.

[henk4]

Very true. Perceived quality tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy. If we all believe Toyotas are reliable and they generally are they will get high marks. If we all believe Fords to have poor reliability and if they actually have lots of problems it will show. The problem is when things are changing. A Toyota with actual reliability problems will get the benefit of the doubt while a Ford with good reliability is seen as an anomaly. Effectively it isn't easy to filter out bias of the consumer from the data.

hence the efforts of French and Italian brands to enter the BMW/Audi/Mercedes class still fail because of the prejudice of reliability/quality issues, despite all the changes that have taken place during the last 5-10 years...

[culver]

I can believe that. I have no first hand experience with it as we get no French cars and our Italian cars seem to make 911 Turbos look affordable.

[Fleet 500]

J.D Power is warped.

Not according to Matra.

[Fleet 500]

p.s. Screw JD Power, oh and Top Gear Survey as well.

I have a feeling that if Toyota came out on top, many people here would not be questioning JD Power!

[IBrake4Rainbows]

I'm sure we would, in fact.

the argument is that perceived quality surveys like this do not properly represent living with a car for an extended period of time.

[Fleet 500]

I'm sure we would, in fact.

the argument is that perceived quality surveys like this do not properly represent living with a car for an extended period of time.

Then I wonder why Matra defends JD Power & Associates?

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Because in the UK they have a survey which checks in on owners and their vehicles after 2-3 years. perhaps a better understanding of how a vehicle truly performs in it's lifetime (and it also includes dealer service, etc)

[Fleet 500]

Because in the UK they have a survey which checks in on owners and their vehicles after 2-3 years. perhaps a better understanding of how a vehicle truly performs in it's lifetime (and it also includes dealer service, etc)

Then perhaps some members here like The_Canuck and Ingolstadt should learn that.