J.D. Power Generates Metrics that Automakers Pay to Examine—What Does It Mean for Car Buyers?

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J.D. Power’s freshly announced 2014 Initial Quality Survey (IQS) tells us the Porsche Panamera sedan earns its highest quality rating among cars sold in the U.S. in 2014. It also says, based on the same survey of consumers reflecting their experience in the first 90 days of ownership, that the assembly plant that produces the fewest defects—by far—is one in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada where Toyota builds the Lexus RX crossover.

Well-built it may be, but the RX doesn’t figure in the top models ranked in the IQS. The annual study, now 28 years old, is the foundation on which the Westlake Village, California, firm’s reputation rests. And just exactly what it measures remains as controversial as ever.

As has become the custom in the past 10 years, a summary of the IQS results was released to Automotive Press Association in Detroit, one day after J.D. Power delivered the details to its paying customers—auto manufacturers.

It works like this: J.D. Power mails 500,000 invitations to new-car customers that includes a link to the survey so they can complete it online. The questionnaire guides them to examine various elements of the vehicle and report on “problems” experienced in the first 90 days of ownership. More than 86,000 replies had been collected by the end of May, whereupon J.D. Power compiled the statistical analysis.

David Sargent, the company’s vice president for global automotive, said that behind the Porsche sedan, owners of the Hyundai Accent, Mazda 2, GMC Sierra HD, and Lincoln MKX report the highest quality. And the Lexus RX? Not even among the top three in its mid-size premium SUV category. “How can that be?” you wonder. How does the factory producing the “fewest defects” (an astonishingly low 12 per 100 vehicles) not result in a vehicle the pegs the quality-o-meter?

It’s because in J.D. Power’s world, if not the one you live in, “quality” and “fewest defects” are different measures.

Sargent explains that for IQS purposes, “quality” is measured by “problems per 100” vehicles. And a “problem” is whatever a customer says is a problem. It might be a production defect, such as torn upholstery or a poorly attached mirror, but that sort of thing—commonplace when the IQS began in the 1980s—has faded into relative insignificance behind “design flaws.”

These might be a voice-recognition system that doesn’t understand the owner’s commands, or difficulty in pairing a phone with the car’s Bluetooth connection. In fact, those were the top two “problem areas” consumers reported in 2014, followed by interior materials that scuff or mar, wind noise (wind noise ranked number one among “problems” for many, many years), and difficulty using the navigation system.

Note that with the possible exception of poor assembly contributing to wind noise, these aren’t really about how well the factory performs or how well-built or -engineered the car is. Note also that J.D. Power and others conduct separate studies to measure a different sort of quality: long-term durability or reliability over a period of years. Power also has a separate APEAL survey to identify “things gone right,” which is also heavily weighted to well-received design and performance parameters.

It’s the IQS that gets the lion’s share of attention, though, and is oft-cited in advertising by automakers because J.D. Power issues “awards” for the top performing vehicles in each of 23 categories. It will be General Motors and Hyundai/Kia doing the most boasting this year, as GM collected six such awards (Buick Encore; Chevrolet Malibu, Silverado HD, and Suburban; GMC Terrain and Yukon), the Korean duo got five between them (Accent, Elantra, Genesis sedan; Kia Cadenza and Sportage), the VW Group got three (Porsche 911, Boxster, and Panamera), Mazda (5 and Miata) and Chrysler (Town & Country and Challenger) each collected two.

The contrast between the different measures of quality is set in stark relief when considering the nine awards J.D. Power issues for the top quality assembly lines worldwide. Derived from the same IQS data, these awards put the focus back on more traditional “quality-control” measures.

Consider: The IQS says the industry average for 2014 models is 116 problems per 100 cars (up from 113 in 2013). But defects or malfunctions traceable to the top assembly plants range from only 12 at the Lexus RX plant to 28 per 100 vehicles at the third-ranked (bronze award) plant in Europe, Audi’s in Neckarsulm, Germany. The Leipzig, Germany, plant where Porsche assembles the top-rated Panamera (a car that owners say has only 64 problems per 100 cars built) ranks only seventh worldwide, though it’s Europe’s best, at 26 per 100.

In the Americas, the second-ranked plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, where General Motors builds the Chevy Equinox and GMC Terrain produces only 20 problems per 100 cars. BMW’s operation in Spartanburg, South Carolina, scores 21. The three best plants in Asia, two Toyota lines in Kyushu where it makes Lexus-brand products and one Nissan line in Tochigi that builds Infiniti Qx50 and QX70 models, measure in at 18, 18, and 19.

So, on average, consumers seem to be reporting roughly 100 “problems” per car that fit better into the “design flaw” category rather than manufacturing “defects.”

Sargent says that the industry’s earlier complaints about the study’s methodology have largely faded into the background as automakers find the results largely parallel their own consumer surveys. They do tend to want to negotiate some points, though. For instance, he said, if an automaker finds its new model getting a high number of “problems” reported for a new navigation system in the IQS, it might argue that the same “problem” shouldn’t be scored as a “reliability” issue in the firm’s Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS). “I might argue differently: That if the consumer still says it’s a problem three years later, it’s still a problem.”

The slight increase from 113 problems per 100 vehicles in 2013 to the 116 figure this year is largely traceable to an increase in problems identified by consumers in cold-weather states during the extreme winter. “Owners understand that the weather is a factor, but still report that something didn’t perform up to expectations,” Sargent said. Perhaps a defroster didn’t clear the corners of the glass, or an all-weather tire couldn’t cope with icy pavement.

Newly introduced vehicles tend to see a decline in quality in their first year, and scores tend to improve as automakers and consumers both adapt to newer technologies. For instance, where Ford was getting dinged regularly with poor “quality” scores four years ago when it first rolled out the MyFord Touch systems, the company has rebounded to match (Ford rated at 116 problems) or beat (Lincoln rated at 109) the industry average this year.

The top 10 companies: Porsche (74 pp 100), Jaguar (87), Lexus (92), Hyundai (94), Toyota (105), Chevrolet (106), Kia (106), BMW (108), Honda (108), and Lincoln (109).

The bottom 10: Infiniti (128), Volkswagen (128), Acura (131), Mini (133), Subaru (138), Mazda (139), Scion (140), Mitsubishi (145), Jeep (146), and Fiat (206).

Fiat’s exceptionally poor score raised questions, some of which Sargent declined to answer, citing the data’s proprietary nature. However, he said that there was significant improvement in the original Fiat 500 model’s quality score, but that it was offset by the arrival of the Fiat 500L, which, despite similar styling cues and badging, is an entirely different vehicle. Sargent wouldn’t reveal the score for the assembly plant where the 500L is built (the former Zastava factory that, when it last sent cars to America, was affixing Yugo badges to them) but did say the model did not depart significantly from the industry-wide relationship between manufacturing defects and design problems.

From which we may conclude that the 500L has nearly twice as many of each sort of problem.

Sargent’s presentation in Detroit took place concurrently with GM CEO Mary Barra’s testimony before the House of Representatives in Washington. Noting that GM was collecting the most awards for the 2014 IQS, Sargent said “recalls are a really poor or crude measure of quality.” A problem that merits a recall notice because it is safety-related, he noted, might actually affect very few of the cars built. “A consumer might get a recall notice, but otherwise experience no actual problem in his or her own vehicle,” he said. Even in cases with enormous numbers of vehicles that share a common, flawed part, only a small percentage may ever experience a failure.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/questio...or-car-buyers/

[Yellow_Festiva]

I thought Scion was (still is?) a badge engineered Toyota?

Some interesting brands in both top and bottom lists.

[Bossxr8]

No surprise seeing Jeep and Fiat dead last. Not Mazda or Subaru though in the bottom 10.