Strategic Vision Says: “VW Has Best Total Quality, But Toyota Has Fewest Problems"

Before I purchased the Prius, my last two cars were new VW's, a 2006 Jetta and a 2009 Jetta. I never owned any car that had to go back to the dealer so many times for stuff like those two. Misaligned doors, hood liners falling down, wiring harnesses, locks, sensors, banging transmissions, etc.. Even the day/night mirror jammed. Best total quality? Hah!

 

Those of you who consider JD Powers Initial Quality survey to be worthless, I'm guessing, weren't buying cars in the days when new cars were so filled with problems, within weeks, buyers made special trips to the dealers specifically to get them fixed and corrected. My first new car was a 73 Mercury (Ford) Capri 2600. I loved it, but, within hours after taking delivery, I had a list going of things that needed fixing. By the time I brought the car back to the dealer, the next week, the list had grown to about 20 items, ranging from mis sewn stitches, to strange clutch noises, ill fitting interior panels, and a practically worthless "premium" radio.

In comparison, my last two cars: a 2008 Smart and a 2012 Prius V, have been absolutely perfect, I think mostly thanks to JDW's survey.

 

Toyota ranked highest "fewest problems".

The rest of Strategic Vision's promotional piece seemed to be a sell of its "Total Quality Index" and why car manufacturers et al should buy Strategic Vision's "TQI" product.

That TQI discounted the number one stat of repair rate such that the most reliable, trouble free vehicle was not the highest "quality" would make TQI a useless stat for me.

 

Which shows how far car quality has come in forty years, and how close the best and worst are on the IQS. One way of looking at JDP's list is that a new Lexus has a 73% chance of develop a problem in the first 90 days. A Fiat or Smart will have one problem and a 51% chance of a second during that time. Considering what the term problem covers in the survey, the likely hood of any new car now being a problem case is low in the beginning.

 

Then what is the chance of an individual Lexus having a problem?

There are 73 reported problems(I alluded to it before, but problem covers extremely minor, and possibly imaginary, stuff) per 100 cars. They are spread out among the line up or isolated to individual model or vehicle. We have limited data here. Just saying that car initial quality is close.

Is "a Lexus buyer has a 1% chance of getting a car with 73 problems" better?

I could have said Fiat and Smart cars have more than twice as many problems as Lexus. That's only bad if Lexus has a lot of problems to begin with. The worst are either close to the best, or the best is so bad that every new car is going back to the dealer anyway.

I believe reasonable people buy a new expecting that some issue might come up with it. They are large, complicated pieces of machinery with lots of parts after all.

 

With my '09 VW, it was back to the dealer with a banging transmission after the first tank of fuel. I wouldn't consider that reasonable.

 

JD IQS is really about how happy are you with new car, it is more of satisfaction survey, so it has little to do with quality... but their 3 year reliability one is pretty good.

Strategic Vision has nothing to do with quality at all. There are plenty of these surveys from less reputable companies that are made so they can get paid.

 

the cars they picked are mostly on the bottom of the list ,fiats were always junk dodge are one of the worst cars on the road the repairs go on and on jeeps are no better my civic didn t break at all in 60000 miles not a single thing my prius c should be no different you just can t do that in a dodge ,chys ,jeep gm car .Vw s are also junk mechanics love these cars .look at where they build stuff if it is mexico they really don t care about quality .

 

On this note, 2012 Volkswagen Beetle: Windows are Fixed seems to show that not much has changed w/VW.

 

When the parts broke on my Fiat, at least they were inexpensive. Couldn't say that about the VW parts.

 

You are still misunderstanding the statistic. I am not sure of the time interval, so I'll call it one year.

This means that each year, on average every Lexus car will have 0.73 problems. There is no way to calculate the variance from the data supplied; although the likelihood of 99% of cars having no problems and 1% having 73 problems a year is vanishingly remote.