The days of cars marooned in the breakdown lane and several-day waits for overworked mechanics are long gone — and that's good news for consumers, if not for service bays.
J.D. Power and Associates' latest survey of long-term vehicle reliability, the Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS), found that quality problems have fallen 20 per cent since 2003.
Fewer broken vehicles translates into a cut in service and parts sales, says the U.S. National Automobile Dealers Association. In the United States, service and parts sales fell to $80.5-billion (U.S.) in 2006, from $85-billion in 2005.
Cars and light trucks are better than ever and getting more reliable still. In the past two decades, auto makers have dramatically improved quality and reduced defects. The most trouble-plagued cars today are still far more reliable than the best cars of 20 years ago.
"Over 50 per cent of the vehicles bought 15 years ago — an eternity by any standard for a vehicle — are still on the road today and this is almost double the survival rate from only seven years ago," says Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants in Richmond Hill, Ont., whose firm does an annual study on vehicle longevity.
"Can you imagine how high the survival rate will be when the current vehicles reach their 15th birthday?" he adds.
Naturally this is good news for consumers, who now suffer from far fewer troublesome breakdowns and nagging glitches than ever before. Quality improvements are also lowering warranty costs for auto makers. If there is a downside, better cars are bad news for the auto service business.
Customers used to take their vehicles in for a tune-up every 45,000 kilometres or so. Now many newer models can go without one for up to 120,000 to 130,000 km or more. And parts that had to be changed every 48,000 km now last three times longer. Many auto makers now recommend oil changes every 12,000 km, rather than the 7,000-to-8,000 km levels in the past.
Quality has improved enough for some to call into question J.D. Power's long-running Initial Quality Study (IQS), which has functioned for 20 years as a kind of Oscar award program for new vehicle quality. Most of the major auto makers have made so much progress, in fact, some observers suggest the IQS does not offer a great deal to the consumer.
This is because the IQS compiles consumer complaints, based on a detailed questionnaire, about problems encountered during the first 90 days of ownership. It takes into account such things as the distinction between a "dead by the roadside" failure and a customer's dissatisfaction with certain design choices. Case in point: in years past, some German auto makers were hammered for offering poor cup holders.
In the 2007 IQS, Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln brand scored 100 problems per 100 cars. That means, on average, buyers of new 2007 model Lincolns reported one problem per car to J.D. Power. Mercedes owners reported 111 problems per 100 cars.
Put another way, Mercedes owners identified, on average, 0.1 more problems with each individual vehicle than did the Lincoln owners. Of course, there is no such thing as a 0.1 problem. So the Mercedes score suggests that out of every 10 cars, nine had one problem and one had two.
This isn't such a big deal, considering that Mercedes has a 90-per-cent success rate when it comes to delivering a totally problem-free owner experience during the first 90 days. Not bad at all.
And the industry as a whole is doing a pretty good job. Across all brands, the average for problems per 100 cars in the IQS has hovered between 118 and 124 for the past four years.
Car makers, it should be noted, have cut the average number of problems in half twice in the 20 years since J.D. Power began publishing its survey results. The point is, today's buyer really needn't worry about a new car falling apart during its first three months on the road, which certainly wasn't the case 20 or 30 years ago.
