How Can the Best Car Brands Also Be the Worst?

Who is a potential car buyer supposed to trust when they’re looking for a high-quality car?

In its newly released APEAL study, widely followed research firm J.D. Power and Associates ranked Porsche number one among luxury marques while Mini was named the top “non-premium” brand. Yet, just a month before, another Power survey, the Initial Quality Study, ranked Mini well below average.

The IQS also named Fiat the absolute worst of 33 brands, with Chrysler only slightly better. Yet, in the Total Quality Index published by research firm Strategic Vision last week, Fiat Chrysler was named the industry’s top-ranked manufacturer, with six models, including the little Fiat 500 and the Dodge Charger muscle car, named best-in-segment. And yet another study, the Vehicle Satisfaction Awards, put the Koreans at the top.

If all these various studies are meant to help consumers pick and choose from the industry’s best, what’s a motorist to do? Anyone who follows politics knows voter surveys often conflict, reflecting sample bias and built-in margins of error. But when it comes to automotive studies the results are often diametrically opposed.

A major part of the challenge is to first understand what each study is meant to accomplish. Many of them focus specifically on what are, in industry-speak, “Things Gone Wrong.” That, in itself, generates plenty of controversy because these can be as diverse as a faulty transmission or a balky voice navigation system. Indeed, The Power IQS counts them equally when determining how many “problems” buyers run into during the first three months of ownership.

But are Things Gone Wrong really a good measure of vehicle quality? Maybe not, contends Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision, the firm behind the new Total Quality Index. “Counting problems,” he contends, gives a misleading image of what’s actually happening in the real world because, “In 2015, 100% of all brands had less than half-a-problem on average per vehicle.”

Read more of the original article on The Detroit Bureau.

The post How Can the Best Car Brands Also Be the Worst? appeared first on Fleet Management Weekly.

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