Why Do American Cars Suck?

Factual Questions
1

I was looking at the most recent edition of the ‘Consumer Reports Buying Guide’ where they have reliability records of several different models of cars and trucks. There is a noticable difference in the amount of problems people have with their cars depending on the manufacturer.

The Japanese cars all have outstanding repair records, the European cars are good but not quite as good as the Japanese cars, and the American autos are by far the worst.

So why can’t Americans build cars that are as reliable as the Japanese models? What do they have that we don’t??

Thanks.

2

Do you have a cite for this? I’m not calling what you’re saying into question but I had heard differently…that American cars were essentially on par with foreign cars as regards reliability. This of course didn’t always used to be the case hence the deep penetration the Japanese got into our car market back in the 70’s. Once the Big Three woke up to the fact that they actually had to improve they did so but by the time they managed it the damage had been done. The perception that American cars are crap compared to their foreign counterparts has persisted despite there not being much truth to it (as far as I understood it at least).

I’m basically curious to see if they are comparing apples to apples. E.G. BMW doesn’t sell any low-end cars in the US hence comparing a BMW 3-series to a Dodge Neon may not be a fair comparison.

3

I can’t quote from the Buying Guide directly because all it has is a bunch of little red dots if the car has a low frequency of repair or a bunch of little black dots if the car has a poor repair record. I did find this, although it’s 5 years old-

http://www.theautochannel.com:8080/news/date/19970318/news03514.html

As you can see, all of the best cars are Japanese made, and almost all of the worst cars are American made.

I’ll look for more links.

4

I can’t quote from the Buying Guide directly because all it has is a bunch of little red dots if the car has a low frequency of repair or a bunch of little black dots if the car has a poor repair record. I did find this, although it’s 5 years old-

http://www.theautochannel.com:8080/news/date/19970318/news03514.html

As you can see, all of the best cars are Japanese made, and almost all of the worst cars are American made.

I’ll look for more links.

5

I agree that in the '70’s & '80’s, most American vehicles were lacking, but beginning with the '89 Dodge pick-up I bought new, the '90 Chevy Corsica (except for the paint job), the '94 Ford F-150, '99 Suburban and 2000 Chevy pick-up all were excellent vehicles. Maybe I was lucky, but besides regular maintenance, I had very little problem with any of these newer vehicles. I think American manufacturers are doing better and better. God Bless The USA!!

6
      • The Japanese and European cars tend to have better reliability because (on average) in their native countries it’s relatively more expensive to own a motor vehicle, and reliability/repair costs are scrutinized more closely by customers there than in the US. - DougC
7

Actually Fireman44 it wasn’t that you were lucky; its just that you bought trucks. American-made trucks have always had an excellent reputation that has not always been shared by their compact-car counterparts.

8

Um, Whack-a-Mole, “Consumer Reports Buying Guide” is a citation. You can also look it up in the annual April Car issue. Your public library will have copies. In fact, I strongly urge you to subscribe. You will make your money back quickly following their advice. Copying CR’s data onto the net is Not A Good Thing. Their data comes from surveys considerably larger than just asking FIREMAN44’s opinion. Unlike the other well known surveys, they are independently managed and are not beholden to the car industry in any way.

The “dots” entries for various brands over the years have been quite telling. American cars used to have unbelievably bad ratings. Just plain stinko across the board. Nowadays, they are doing much better but still not caught up to imports overall.

As to the OP: Remember Henry Ford’s “They can have any color they want as long as it’s black.” In the 70’s American car companies insisted that most people didn’t want front wheel drive, etc. American car companies are run by the marketing department. These are the same companies that offer the same car as a Dodge, Plymouth, and Chrysler. An overhead that just adds cost to the car with no benefit to the consumer. Also look at leasing. A horrible idea from the consumer’s position, but look at how many idiots have leased cars. That’s marketing!

These are companies that are not interested in selling you a well made car if they can (and usually do) sell you a poorly made one. It’s all about selling. Making the cars is incidental.

9

Acura = Honda
Lexus = Toyota
Infinity = Nissan

The Japanese repackage stuff too. They share engines, drivetrains, etc, etc.
Reliability: I’m not sure this is as objective as you think. There is a hard bias against American cars, so any ‘reports’ are subjective.

Part of a problem is that American car companies actually had to shift gears over the years to satisfy a changing market, while the Japanese have been doing the thrifty-four-cylinder car and reliability thing for YEARS.

10

Back in the 1980s I had a major North American Automaker as a client and they were really getting burned on quality. I learned that there were a number of factors that contributed to low quality in U.S. cars.

A philosophical idea that an American car could run badly, as long as it continued to run. the Japanese and Europeans, by contrast, believed that a properly maintained car should run like the day it came out of the showroom, at least until something wears out.

Tolerances on U.S. assembly lines were lower than on others. A part with a tolerance of 1/100th inch on a U.S. car might only have a 1/1000th inch tolerance on a European or Japanese model.

A “move the iron” mentality of maintaining production goals, and letting defects and flaws be caught by the customer. “We’ll fix it under warranty” was the term I heard.

Even by the late 80s, U.S. manufacturers were scrambling to catch up in quality. While mechanical quality is now roughly equivalent in many models, the U.S. is still behind in what’s called “fit and finish” – which happens to be a big thing with Consumer Reports.

Considering that the Toyota Corolla is built on the same line and is essentially the same car as the Chevrolet Prizm, and there are other co-branded models, the differences are much less than they used to be.

11

David Halberstam’s The Reckoning is a good, if breathy, read on the decline of the big three in the mid-70s to early 80s and the penetration of the Japanese into the market.

12

ftg said:

That’s interesting. At least as far as GM is concerned, they had several car models in the 1960s (and maybe before) that were front wheel drive.

13

Bologna. The reliability ratings in Consumer Reprots are compiled from reviews by car owners. Presumably, few American cars are purchased by those who are biased against them, and most are purchased by those who prefer them.

14

2001 JD Powers Quality Ratings

A lot more data at the link above. One reason that the US Industry lags behind is that they are playing catch up. Ironically the concept of Total Quality was introduced into post WWII Japan by Dr. W. Edwards Deming*, a mathemetician with new ideas of how to improve products and win consumer confidence via quality control methodologies. US Industry at the time was selling as much as they could make to American families and saw these controls as unimportant. Even after Japanese quality in many areas passed that in the USA (and most other countries) it still took a while to convince executives that it was not some kind of fluke.

As a rule American companies have still not internalized Quality to the extent that Japanese companies have. This may be aided by the desire of many American consumers to “Buy American” as a sort of patriotic duty, without regard to product quality. There is also a strong familial brand loyalty, especially in cars. If you were brought up on Chevy you buy Chevy (gross generalization alert). So, IMO many American companies aren’t as high quality because they don’t have to be.
Ironic side note: If you do a Google on Demming you will get the spellings “Deming” and “Demming” in equal numbers. Nice quality control.

15

Maybe its because american cars use so many foreign parts inside? Look at the PTCruiser, parts of it are made in Cananda & Mexico.

16

handy, that implies two things in my eyes:

A) That both us and Mexico produce lower quality parts; and

B) Since Japan and Europe are foreign locations, and they have better cars, they must use American parts, because foreign ones are flawed. :confused:

17

Also, remember that CR’s reliability/frequency of repair rating is based on a scale of “much better than average” to “much worse than average” . That average quality level has been rising.

So it’s not so much that the American cars “suck” but that those owned by CR survey respondents merely fall on left tail of the curve, even though when compared to the average 1980 car it is a superb product. Now, back in the 70s/80s, Detroit WAS turning out junk (Dodge Aspen, Chevy Vega); today’s Ford Taurus may disappoint when compared to an Acura or Beemer, but it’s a dream compared to a Chevy Citation. (If anything, the rating distribution is getting narrower, there is only so much room for improvement.)

The CR reviewers, on the evaluation tests they do, have been getting much friendlier to the American-nameplate cars – and have tended towards moving from Japanese to German in their import preferences. Still, the Japanese nameplates tend to get big points on their consistent pattern of no-unpleasant-surprises, even if at the expense of excitement (meet my car, the American-Made Toyota Camry) [sub] Honda, Nissan, BMW and others ALSO make cars in the USA[/sub]

OTOH the reliability rating is NOT given by CR staff, but is based on voluntary surveys from CR’s member/readers, you’re going to get responses from people who are motivated to report something about the products they buy (it’s either that, or we CR/CU member are all weenies with an anti-American agenda :rolleyes: ).

18

Kunilou has it pretty close.

Traditionally, the American carmakers’ approach to quality was that as long as a part was within tolerance, it was good and could be used. The Japanese approach was that within tolerances was only minimally acceptable; it had to be as close to the actual specification as possible. This can be achieved by tracking and understanding the sources of variation in the manufacturing process.

From here we could digress into a whole long thread about reducing variability in processes, but you all can Google that and Taguchi Methods for yourselves.

The one really good example I recall off the top of my head was the transmissions that were made both in the US and in Japan by Ford and Mazda respectively (there’s some kind of partial ownership in both by each). Anyway, it was the same design, same specs, same tooling, etc., but the Japanese ones always came out running better with less test failures and so on. Investigation showed what the Japanese were taking as an assumption: that all parts had to be well within limits with minimal variation, very close to the actual specification. All the American built parts were within tolerance, but the variability was much greater. So clearly, it was neither a design fault or a production fault; it was a fault of production methods.

The Japanese track variation and make efforts to reduce it wherever possible as a matter of course. This methodology goes by a lot of names (some were very stylish in business circles in the 80’s), but it’s really quite simple and in fact is largely an American invention (reference Shewhart, Deming, etc.). The methods are used to varying degrees nowadays in US plants; my personal opinion is that Saturn in Tenessee is the most progressive in this regard (and it would appear their cars reflect it).

Of course, Japanese cars produced here in the US are normally built in accordance with the Japanese standards and methods, which would be those described above.

So note that both the domestically produced “Japanese” cars and the Saturns (and some of the other US built cars, too) come out quite well. It therefore must NOT be some kind of secret hand-twist on the assembly lines that they only know and use in the Land of the Rising Sun!

Having said that the achievement of a high standard of quality is quite possible using the methods described above, one has to consider the effect of subcontracting out the manufacture of components, especially where the emphasis is on lowest-bidder and lowest cost. They do subcontract out component manufacture in Japan, but the contract equivalents (AFAIK) always specify that evidence of statistical process controls are provided before bids are considered and throughout the delivery of the products. (I even recall seeing such evidence for cigarette lighter sockets that were sub-contracted out to some very small outfit.) A slip in quality standards is at least as bad as a slip in cost or schedule.

19

Given that the quality of U.S. cars is actually HIGHER now than it used to be, and that U.S. auto manufacturers use more Mexican parts than they used to (the Canadian content has been pretty steady for years) I think you could more logically argue that Mexican factories and producing HIGH quality parts.

I bought a Hyundai. I love it. Never gives me a problem. MY previous car, a Buick, was a piece of shit. So chalk me up in the imports-are-better column.