And here we go... first Ford lawsuit for not meeting its EPA stickers

Consumer Reports would STRONGLY disagree with you. See Consumer Reports Auto Reliability Survey: Ford Continues Fall While Seven Japanese Brands Top List: Consumer Reports http://pressroom.consumerreports.org/pressroom/ and Japanese brands tops in Consumer Reports' 2012 Car Reliability Survey, Ford continues fall, for instance.

If you look at Consumer Reports, a fair # of Fords with not so good (somewhere below average) to HORRIBLE reliability. Ford Explorer 4WD V6, IIRC was the least reliable vehicle of EVERY vehicle in their most recent reliability report. Almost all Toyotas, Lexuses and Scions are above average.

 

The way I see it, every car can be as reliable as the owner wants it to be. A well maintained car will go a long ways. Case in point, I've owned Land Rovers for many years, and they've been very good to me. As long as you take good care of them, they'll be good to you.

Toyotas on the other hand, don't seem to care if they get love and attention from the owner. Just fill up the tank and drive.

So if you compare the different cars in this fashion, I think Toyotas are MORE reliable.

 

I totally disagree w/your first statement. Stuff can fail on cars that has NOTHING to do w/how well they're taken care of and maintenance. You can follow maintenance schedules to the T on 100 units of a car w/a poor reliability record and 100 w/a good reliability record and I bet you'll see a difference.

You just got lucky w/your Land Rovers or you dismissed problems as not being problems.

For instance, both power window motors on my former 350Z failed (fortunately, under warranty). They failed at almost the same time (and it was a reasonably common problem on my year of Z). Dealer's prognosis: both motors and regulators are messed up. Later, a valve cover gasket started seeping oil. I also had to slight squeak in certain cases that turned out to be covered by an "axle click TSB" (also a known common problem). My two front tires were feathering and cupping (also a well known problem and later got publicity). Nissan ended up extended the alignment warranty several times and replaced tires if they met certain criteria and realigned the car. I was in that boat (as were many others, including some in the automotive press).

I had a few other problems, IIRC.

In about 7 years time, my Z had far more problems than my mom's over 12 year old Camry.

On my Prius, my coolant heat storage pump started squealing, I got it replaced under warranty as there was a TSB.

There's no maintenance item for any of these.

Other examples, on Tivocommunity, there's been a bunch of discussion about recent Ford Explorers (have terrible reliability ratings in CR), mainly due to MyFord Touch problems. One guy was thinking of buying a Ford Edge that was bought back under lemon law due to MFT.

Even a Ford fanboy chimed in and said:

Another owner chimed in and said

A former owner said:

You think this had much to do w/maintenance?

I've NEVER EVER had to pull fuses or disconnect my 12 volt battery on any of my cars due to electronics glitches.

 

The MFT is a piece of junk, but it doesn't affect how the car handles and drives, just the radio and NAV if you have it. Half the time I have the radio turned off, so non issue for me. I have had the screen go wacked on the Prius twice when I had it, so no big deal to me, car still ran and drove fine.

For me reliability means I get in the car, it starts, I get from point A to point B and back without incident. If the radio stops working, well, it happens. I dont like the MyFord Touch in the Fusion, I prefer the regular Sync that was in the F150 that had Applink, worked great, and the Nav/Sync in my 2010 has never had a problem since the day I got it.

So far out of the 2 Toyotas I had, they both had some issues, the Prius had the touch screen go dark twice, the Camry, had a list, Sunroof stuck, wind noise, squeaks and rattles, and overall material quality to me was sub par for the price I paid. The cloth on the seats was thin, I could feel the springs through the seat front, the center dash was overly bright and couldn't be dimmed which became a problem in dense fog, and the braking was becoming a problem when the regen would kick off while slowing down from 55, and it felt like there were no brakes.

Of my Fords, I bought 4 of them since 2010, the first was a Sport, It had a rear caliper stick, fixed that when I replaced the pads, The drivers door handle broke, they have been breaking since 2006, bad design, $35 and 15 minutes to replace, out of 45,000 miles and 2 years, that was it, no other problems with it. The second was a Ford Flex, first year model Ecoboost, and it had an electrical gremlin that would reset the climate control every so often, but no other problems during the 2 years and 35,000 miles I drove it. 2010 Fusion Hybrid, had a bad MAP sensor, a spider built a nest in it, and the blower motor started to squeak, replaced under warranty, 34,000 on it so far, no other problems with it. 2012 F150, put 12,000 on it until I realized, I really didn't need a pickup, and not a single problem with it when I had it, it was well built, super quiet and rode so very nice, but was a gas hog that I didn't really need. The 2013 I have now, other than the crappy MPG is very nice, solid, I haven't found a single thing on it that is wrong other than that stupid MyFord Touch.

IOW the Toyotas were in the shop just as much as the Fords were excluding normal maintenance.

BTW most of the complaints on MFT are due to it being overly complicated to use, and it does have speed issues when the car is first started, once it has been up for a few minutes, the speed problem goes away, kind of like a laptop when it first boots. The problem I have is inputting addresses via the touch screen, it will pause between letters while searching for streets or towns, and while you are pressing the letters, if it finds matches it will pop up a list, which I usually wind up pressing on one I dont want and have to start all over again. It's more of an annoyance than anything, but it is very buggy.

 

MFT is sourced from MicroSoft.

'nuff said

 

I wonder if the same firm will bring a suit against Toyota for any misleading MPG displayed on the Prius MFD during test drives.

 

Drove a CMax Hybrid, Fusion 1.6 Ecoboost, Escape Ecoboost, Malibu Eco, and Volt at the San Diego Auto Show yesterday. It has some nice qualities, i'm not going to lie but I drove my Prius on the same drive and got 51mpg while I only got 34.8 on the Cmax with 2 other people in it. Fastest speed was 40 and mostly traffic. Granted I have 19k miles and the CMax SEL only had 2200. I did notice you can press the pedal down more before the ICE kicks in vs. the Prius. My braking score was 99% regen as well.

In the Malibu Eco same route was able to get 32mpg and the Volt was in EV the entire time obviously as they had 4 that they rotated between charging and testing. The new Fords are amazing as far as interior goes and the Ecoboost works well in the Escape but in the Fusion it felt sluggish in stop and go traffic aka no boost at low RPM when traffic opened up a bit.

 

If Ford had lower MPG numbers that really matched what they get, there wouldn't be such a big stink, as the cars are really nice cars. They ride well, drive well, are put together well, the only black mark is the MFT.

 

Yep, GM I can see for substandard MPG claims. Honda too.

DBCassidy

 

My Prius, and the majority of others on this forum meet or exceed easily the stated MPG.

Sounds like you have gripes on you MPG, then sue Toyota.

DBCassidy

 

I don't know whether the suit is frivolous or not .... but corporate America does seem to lean toward the latest trend - which is dishonesty - which is in HUGE part due to no accountability. In many cases, the punishment for wrongdoing is a fine that represents less than the interest of the value of the profit made via the dishonesty. I listened to a commercial for the Volt just yesterday. GM still calls it an electric car. The rationale nowadays is that " we don't want to hurt big business because we need big business" ... unfortunately the fine print of that rationale says, "at any cost".
It's not very easy for the consumer to get a litigation firm to move forward against a multinational corporation. The reason is - the rules favor the big corporation because they're wealthy enough to make the rules, via the legislators that they put into office. The irony is - the knee jerk reaction the people have when they hear about such suits is that it's frivolous. The plaintiff's attorney, as well as their client are branded as "money grubbers". And yet - because laws are written to protect corporations, the consumer attorney is sometimes one's only hope. Next time you hear about "litigation reform" - I can promise you 1 thing - it's sponsored by the trillion dollar insurance industry.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

It is frivolous because the legal standard for advertising mileage is the EPA test, but the law firm wants to sue based on a different test that doesn't even pretend to be indicative of user mileage (CR). Now you may want to argue that the regulation is bad - camry hybrid has a big 43 mpg billboard, and doesn't show the combined or highway at driving speed. Many commercials show highway not combined or city, but at least you can read the small print.

By allowing these suites it is political to help the large legal PACs. I do agree with you that the big business pacs seem to get underregulation, but that is a different issue. A third issue is if EPA does a good job. I think it does, compare it to JC08 for other government over ratings, but it is not a perfect job.

This lawsuit was brought by a firm already suing Honda and GM. In the honda civic hybrid case was not frivolous as honda did a car modification that did not allow it to perform as well on the government test.

This law firm does engage in these tactics, and I do expect that if they are successful on ford, they will sue Toyota next. I do think that a judge should be able to throw out a suite with prejuduce if it is about advertising claims that the law says are legitamate. The purpose of this lawsuit is to create enough negative PR for Ford, Honda, GM, etc so that the lawyers will be paid off. The plainifs rarely see anything but a low percentage of the money in these cases.

 

or worse ... I've lost track of the number of discount oil changes or free software upgrades that count as my portion of class action settlements that I was entitled to join ... but then again if the reward isn't great enough for the litigation firm to even take the case on then there isn't even a prospect of ANY consequences to the defendant corporation.
Let's not forget that Hybrid/Hyundai was successfully sued recently, for bad EPA / mileage claims. The plaintiff class won. The whole thing happened so fast it was probably a settlement rather than a verdict. Still ... my sister in law will be getting a few $100 out of it - as she has one of their hybrids. (btw her mileage has always been way sucky below the EPA claims) What else can a little guy do, but join the class?

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

That is quite a different case. Hyundai was accused of doing the test wrong, and when the test was tried again with correct methodology the numbers came out lower.

In CR's accusation against ford originally they said that mileage claims were inaccurate, but then rewrote the articles, likely under advice of counsel since it is legally slander, that the cars will not get the claimed mileage on other tests. The hyundai case was settled based on matters of established law, while the case against ford and gm by this lawsuit seem mainly based on poor advertising rules by the government. The government is not likely to pay off these lawyers, but bad enough PR may get these guys a pay day. Hence the term frivolous law suit.

I do think the advertising is misleading, and ford should stop using it, as well as provide drivers like acdii new rims and tires that can get the mileage on the test.

 

First of all, going after Toyota would not get very far, considering that the majority of owners meet and/or exceed the EPA numbers, and there is a ton of documented proof regarding this.

OTOH! There is quite a bit of information coming out that is just the opposite of Toyota on the Fords. Last I counted 5 out of 20 reported cars are getting at or better, the other 15 below with at least 10 at 40 or fewer MPG on the Fusions, and out of 40 reported Cmax, only 2 are at or above it, 12 in the 40's, the balance below 40.

Compared to 2012 Prius, out of 22 reported cars 15 are at 50 or above, the 2 lowest at 44, the rest right around 47. All within reasonably accepted MPG range, 48-51.

This is all data easily obtained of fueleconomy.gov.

 

If they went after Toyota they wouldn't need to reference the EPA tests, just the fairly well documented difference between the MPG displayed in the vehicle and the MPG computed using actual miles and actual gallons. How many drivers take a test drive and rely on the displayed MPG in making their decision to purchase, or not purchase, the vehicle?

Does the EPA, or any other agency, certify the MPG number displayed in the vehicle?

This firm's lawsuits are rooted in the notion that the manufacturer is somehow misrepresenting the actual performance of the vehicle during the sales cycle, independent of the dealer. If they have any success, all the manufactures are probably going to get cajoled into settlements.

 

.... and that's pretty pathetic .... that manufactures can't be truthful about what the consumer can anticipate regarding mileage results. And that's pretty pathetic ... that it's necessary to have successful cajoling in order to get manufactures to do what they ought to do anyways.

 

It used to be that manufactures didn't advertise these things. You got what you got, maybe a sales person would tell you what you wanted to hear to get the sale, but not so much the manufacture.

 

I've got to say, the EPA labels are much closer to reality now then pre-2008. Part of the sue happy charge is led by people like CR and fuelly, tools that were not out there in the past. It is true car companies are advertising this stuff. I wasn't watching in the late 70s-early 80s when gasoline prices were around these levels (adjusted for inflation). I'm sure cars under performed by more back then but they didn't have sky high 47 mpg labels either. If you are getting 15 instead of 20 it feels like less of a lie than 35 instead of 47 even if it is the same percentage.

Advertising is misleading, but follows government rules. Well except for those beer and axe commercials IMHO ford is giving itself a black eye with these mileage claims.

This lawsuit is one of the things wrong with america. Its not as bad as those clowns in congress right now, agreeing to screw america on principle, but its purely bogus.

 

Yes, the EPA tests 15% of vehicles. I wish the EPA had a list somewhere of vehicles where they actually verified the result reported by the manufacturer and found it close enough.

See Car and Driver: The Truth About EPA City / Highway MPG Estimates | PriusChat.