So much for Buy American. And so much for Susan Lucci, the soap-opera actress who complains in new Ford TV commercials that people who think Americans can’t build cars “tick me off.” Lucci and U.S. auto executives insist that Detroit is suffering not from a quality problem but from a perception problem. And to an ever greater extent, they’re right. Over the last decade the Big Three have traveled a long way in making cars that operate day in and day out with relatively few defects-“things gone wrong,” in industry parlance. A widely followed J.D. Power survey shows that the average American car has about 1.5 defects in the first three months-barely more than Japanese cars-compared with the hair-pulling seven defects reported for 1981 in a University of Michigan study (chart). Some American models, particularly Ford’s, are considered superior in reliability to some Japanese cars offered by Nissan and Mazda. American cars are also aging nicely, surveys by Power and Consumer Reports magazine show, with reported defects dropping off sharply after four to five years. What’s more, the domestics can generally claim bragging rights to better pricing, fuel economy and safety features. “As a practical matter you’re not going to get in trouble buying an American car,” says William Jeanes, editor of Car and Driver magazine.
Yet while The Big Three have made major strides, the Japanese have raised the quality standard a few notches. They continue to make their best cars even better, so while the gap in reliability has narrowed substantially, it still exists. American makers, particularly General Motors and Chrysler, have yet to show they can build cars that are trouble free and easy to love throughout their product line. “The Americans are building nice average cars but few ‘gee whiz look at this’ cars,” says Robert D. Knoll, head of Consumer Reports’ auto-testing division.
The Japanese have also upped the ante in what the experts call the more subtle “sensory” side of a car’s quality. George Peterson, a California auto consultant and former Ford engineer, explains: “It’s the turn-signal lever that doesn’t wobble. The door that closes with a thunk instead of a clang. It’s the speed of a power window up and down. The feel of a climate-control knob.” Peterson calls this the “next nuance of customer satisfaction,” and right now the Japanese are leading. Small potatoes? Not to Slade: “These details in my view really provide the satisfaction that most consumers get from a motor car.”
The Ford Taurus is a testimony to the raised expectations that U.S. carmakers must meet these days. By most measures, the Taurus is a grand success, a smartly designed and engineered car that almost singlehandedly revitalized Ford in the mid-1980s. Consumer Reports says it delivers first-rate performance. But car buyers surveying the competition will probably take a look at the Toyota Camry, the Honda Accord and the Nissan Maxima-and they might still consider them better. If they consult Consumer Reports, they’ll find that those Japanese cars, about the same price as the Taurus, have had well-above-average repair records for several years and that the newly redesigned Camry gets a rave review as one of the magazine’s all-time favorites. Meanwhile the Taurus has had, as Knoll puts it, “nicely average” reliability for several years and doesn’t seem to get better. As for the more subtle touches, Peterson calls Taurus’s design excellent but, again, says it falls short on some points. One example, he says: Taurus’s heater controls have a wobbly feel when turned. “You get into a Honda Accord and the ergonomics are absolutely superb,” Peterson says. “The turn signal feels like a knife cutting through butter.”
U.S. automakers understand the need for such fine touches, but in the 1980s they concentrated most of their efforts on improving basic performance. Now they’re beginning to see that’s not enough. “Just having ‘zero things gone wrong’ is not adequate to get complete customer satisfaction,” acknowledges Jim Paulsen, Ford’s executive director of corporate quality. Like the Japanese, the Big Three are doing far more research to try to uncover consumers’ desires. Designers for Chrysler’s new midsize sedan, due out this fall, interviewed nearly 100 drivers for their views on competing Japanese and European models. To de-bug Mercury’s new Villager minivan before full production begins next month in Avon Lake, Ohio, testers drove vans from Michigan to Key West, Fla., and Caribou, Maine (for hot- and cold-temperature evaluations). The trips turned up a variety of problems that had eluded plant detection. For instance, the testers, tired after driving for hours, noticed they had to jump out of the way when opening the van’s rear lift gate. So engineers slowed the door.
The Big Three have also forged entirely new relations with all-important parts suppliers. The supplier base has been winnowed from thousands to only those manufacturers that meet the automakers’ quality standards. Companies that pass the test are now involved in designing the parts early on. Until three years ago, Metal Leve, a Brazilian company, simply made pistons and bushings according to specifications set by GM and Ford. In 1988 the company opened a research center in Ann Arbor, Mich., enabling Metal Leve’s designers to work closely with the carmakers’ teams from the earliest stages of engine design. Carmakers have been similarly disciplined with steel companies, joining with suppliers to develop corrosion-resistant steels-one big reason why today’s cars last longer.
Such steps are a long way from the days when the Big Three built cars fully expecting things to break. But even if the Big Three can wipe out or reverse the quality gap with the Japanese, they will labor under a brand-loyalty disadvantage that won’t easily disappear. Call it a perception problem, but many car owners, particularly younger ones, now hold only bad memories of American cars. Asking them to fork out $17,000 for a car “is a pretty big bet,” says Sean McAlinden, an automotive researcher at the University of Michigan. Carmakers say they will continue hammering on the quality theme and hope that good word-of-mouth for such cars as the Saturn, Cadillac Seville and Taurus will gradually convince people to buy American. That’s why every car coming off Big Three assembly lines is crucial these days. “People are now being asked to buy American cars,” says Knoll. “If they do and have a bad experience I can’t see them ever buying one again.” Will they have a bad experience? Says Knoll: “By and large, maybe yes, maybe no.” That’s probably not what Susan Lucci and the executives in Detroit want to hear. But unlike the old days, this time they’re prepared to listen and do something about it.
Graph: A Gap? Reported Defects
Not much. U.S. cars now rival Japan’s on defects. SOURCE: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE (FRANK O’CONNELL)
title: “The Hardest Sell” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Ellen Smith”
So much for Buy American. And so much for Susan Lucci, the soap-opera actress who complains in new Ford TV commercials that people who think Americans can’t build cars “tick me off.” Lucci and U.S. auto executives insist that Detroit is suffering not from a quality problem but from a perception problem. And to an ever greater extent, they’re right. Over the last decade the Big Three have traveled a long way in making cars that operate day in and day out with relatively few defects-“things gone wrong,” in industry parlance. A widely followed J.D. Power survey shows that the average American car has about 1.5 defects in the first three months-barely more than Japanese cars-compared with the hair-pulling seven defects reported for 1981 in a University of Michigan study (chart). Some American models, particularly Ford’s, are considered superior in reliability to some Japanese cars offered by Nissan and Mazda. American cars are also aging nicely, surveys by Power and Consumer Reports magazine show, with reported defects dropping off sharply after four to five years. What’s more, the domestics can generally claim bragging rights to better pricing, fuel economy and safety features. “As a practical matter you’re not going to get in trouble buying an American car,” says William Jeanes, editor of Car and Driver magazine.
Yet while The Big Three have made major strides, the Japanese have raised the quality standard a few notches. They continue to make their best cars even better, so while the gap in reliability has narrowed substantially, it still exists. American makers, particularly General Motors and Chrysler, have yet to show they can build cars that are trouble free and easy to love throughout their product line. “The Americans are building nice average cars but few ‘gee whiz look at this’ cars,” says Robert D. Knoll, head of Consumer Reports’ auto-testing division.
The Japanese have also upped the ante in what the experts call the more subtle “sensory” side of a car’s quality. George Peterson, a California auto consultant and former Ford engineer, explains: “It’s the turn-signal lever that doesn’t wobble. The door that closes with a thunk instead of a clang. It’s the speed of a power window up and down. The feel of a climate-control knob.” Peterson calls this the “next nuance of customer satisfaction,” and right now the Japanese are leading. Small potatoes? Not to Slade: “These details in my view really provide the satisfaction that most consumers get from a motor car.”
The Ford Taurus is a testimony to the raised expectations that U.S. carmakers must meet these days. By most measures, the Taurus is a grand success, a smartly designed and engineered car that almost singlehandedly revitalized Ford in the mid-1980s. Consumer Reports says it delivers first-rate performance. But car buyers surveying the competition will probably take a look at the Toyota Camry, the Honda Accord and the Nissan Maxima-and they might still consider them better. If they consult Consumer Reports, they’ll find that those Japanese cars, about the same price as the Taurus, have had well-above-average repair records for several years and that the newly redesigned Camry gets a rave review as one of the magazine’s all-time favorites. Meanwhile the Taurus has had, as Knoll puts it, “nicely average” reliability for several years and doesn’t seem to get better. As for the more subtle touches, Peterson calls Taurus’s design excellent but, again, says it falls short on some points. One example, he says: Taurus’s heater controls have a wobbly feel when turned. “You get into a Honda Accord and the ergonomics are absolutely superb,” Peterson says. “The turn signal feels like a knife cutting through butter.”
U.S. automakers understand the need for such fine touches, but in the 1980s they concentrated most of their efforts on improving basic performance. Now they’re beginning to see that’s not enough. “Just having ‘zero things gone wrong’ is not adequate to get complete customer satisfaction,” acknowledges Jim Paulsen, Ford’s executive director of corporate quality. Like the Japanese, the Big Three are doing far more research to try to uncover consumers’ desires. Designers for Chrysler’s new midsize sedan, due out this fall, interviewed nearly 100 drivers for their views on competing Japanese and European models. To de-bug Mercury’s new Villager minivan before full production begins next month in Avon Lake, Ohio, testers drove vans from Michigan to Key West, Fla., and Caribou, Maine (for hot- and cold-temperature evaluations). The trips turned up a variety of problems that had eluded plant detection. For instance, the testers, tired after driving for hours, noticed they had to jump out of the way when opening the van’s rear lift gate. So engineers slowed the door.
The Big Three have also forged entirely new relations with all-important parts suppliers. The supplier base has been winnowed from thousands to only those manufacturers that meet the automakers’ quality standards. Companies that pass the test are now involved in designing the parts early on. Until three years ago, Metal Leve, a Brazilian company, simply made pistons and bushings according to specifications set by GM and Ford. In 1988 the company opened a research center in Ann Arbor, Mich., enabling Metal Leve’s designers to work closely with the carmakers’ teams from the earliest stages of engine design. Carmakers have been similarly disciplined with steel companies, joining with suppliers to develop corrosion-resistant steels-one big reason why today’s cars last longer.
Such steps are a long way from the days when the Big Three built cars fully expecting things to break. But even if the Big Three can wipe out or reverse the quality gap with the Japanese, they will labor under a brand-loyalty disadvantage that won’t easily disappear. Call it a perception problem, but many car owners, particularly younger ones, now hold only bad memories of American cars. Asking them to fork out $17,000 for a car “is a pretty big bet,” says Sean McAlinden, an automotive researcher at the University of Michigan. Carmakers say they will continue hammering on the quality theme and hope that good word-of-mouth for such cars as the Saturn, Cadillac Seville and Taurus will gradually convince people to buy American. That’s why every car coming off Big Three assembly lines is crucial these days. “People are now being asked to buy American cars,” says Knoll. “If they do and have a bad experience I can’t see them ever buying one again.” Will they have a bad experience? Says Knoll: “By and large, maybe yes, maybe no.” That’s probably not what Susan Lucci and the executives in Detroit want to hear. But unlike the old days, this time they’re prepared to listen and do something about it.
Graph: A Gap? Reported Defects
Not much. U.S. cars now rival Japan’s on defects. SOURCE: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE (FRANK O’CONNELL)
