Everyone in the car industry waits for the once-a-year JD Power Initial Quality Study to come out. The poll looks at how many defects a car has in the first 90 days after the buyer picks it up at the dealership. If the vehicle loses a wheel going of the lot, the vehicle gets a bad grade.
Most of the headlines about the survey this year are that GM (GM) and Ford (F) moved up in the study and Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC) moved down.
The fact of the matter is that most cars and trucks are extremely well built now. More than a decade ago Detroit caught onto the notion that its products needed to work as well as imports.
The JP Power rankings are based on complaints per 100 vehicles. Toyota had 104 and Ford had 112. Although that is not a very big difference, it put the Japanese company in fourth place and the US company in the No.8 spot.
Detroit may make very good cars and trucks now, but it make too many trucks and not enough cars. With gas prices at $4 a gallon, Ford and GM can’t make any money with their current product mixes. Even if their cars got relatively poor grades in Powers, they would be better off if they didn’t sell trucks at all.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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