Initial quality always seemed like a silly measure to me. I'm more interested in total cost of ownership through 150k-200k miles. Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results, IMO.
Back in the 70s and 80s, it was common to buy a new American car with a double-digit number of serious defects right off the line; Japanese cars had their initial success in the States when they were generally fine at purchase. Overall quality has been greatly improved since those terrible days, but it's still a useful measure. Nobody wants to have to keep taking their brand new car into the shop.
Also, if you wait until you get any substantial real-world numbers on TCO from owners at 150k-200k miles - collecting several years of data - any given car will likely have been redesigned and have a different quality profile. You can extrapolate by manufacturer, but given the extended timeframe it isn't all that helpful - or even more helpful than initial quality - when buying a brand new car.
Unfortunately, product quality after 150k miles of life doesn't tell you anything about what's coming off the line right now. Most of the company will have churned over in the intervening decade. The car which was built 10 years ago won't even be on the market right now. Even if the brand name is still the same (eg, long-lived pickup truck names like the F150), the vehicle itself will be completely different.
So you might be interested in mid-life or end-of-life quality, but you can't measure it early in the vehicle's life without an accelerated life test of some kind, and you can't measure it statistically without doing so on many vehicles. JD Power's initial quality survey is just that: A simple consumer survey of defects reported early in the vehicle's life. Hence the name: initial quality.
JD Power doesn't create awards categories because they are in the interest of the consumer, they create award categories so that they can sell them to their customers to use in their marketing. They're a marketing data company, not a consumer advocacy group.
I look at the drivetrain as the biggest barometer. When Toyota does iterative design, such as from 20r to 22re to 2rz, they typically make small improvements based on the flaws of prior generations-- so a 250k mile engine may become a 300k mile engine. When manufacturers just start from scratch each generation and skimp on R&D, that is way riskier.
When you look at how many HF3.6 engine vehicles GM sold over the past 15 years vs how many you see on the road now, reliability (or lack of) becomes obvious. There will obviously be outliers, but the fat part of the curve (in terms of miles at failure) is what is relevant. Even when constraining for things like profile of buyer (e.g. subprime buyers will probably skimp on preventative maintenance), it becomes obvious which companies want to make quality cars and those that are mostly subprime finance companies that happen to sell cars (Stellantis, Nissan to a degree).
> Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results
This was not our experience with a brand new GMC we had a few years back, which was about as reliable as the previous one, which we got rid of at ~15 years / 250K+ miles. The older one broke down every year or so, but we'd beaten the heck out of it. The newer one experienced multiple major failures in two years, including stranding itself. The old one only stranded itself once through its entire lifespan.
Initial quality isn't silly. It makes a difference in the ownership experience. If you keep having to take your new car in for service it's a huge hassle, even when the manufacturer fixes it under warranty and gives you a loaner to drive. Considering the average new car price is over $40K now, the lack of attention to quality is just sad. It's pure laziness and incompetence, but I guess consumers are willing to put up with it so nothing will improve.
Reality is that no one owns a car for 200k miles anymore. There are of course outliers, but the vast majority of people are either buying/leasing/trading every 3-4 years, or are at the opposite end of the spectrum buying whatever cheap rust heap they can keep running.
> Reality is that no one owns a car for 200k miles anymore.
Do you have statistics on that?
I purchased my previous car (a Dodge) when it had 8k miles and had it as my primary car until 240k miles. It only started to have serious maintenance issues at 220k miles. I not only paid it off, but saved enough money to be able to pay for a new car in full. I would recommend to anyone, as it is really nice to not have a car payment.
My anecdata says your anecdata is wrong. Everyone buys a car new and keeps it going for 10+ years until the cost to maintain it gets too high. Then they sell it for scrap or donate it for scrap and get a new car. The one person who trades in their car while getting a new one is the outlier in any group of people.
Also, it's not just cost. Sometimes newer models are just worse. There is one car that I thought about getting a little while ago, but the model changed dramatically 5 years earlier (the older version was what I used on a vacation that got me interested), so I had to look at getting a 5 year old car or a different model.
I don't think that's true at all. My experience (which appears to be the same level of 'fact' as you present) is that there are people who lease, who trade out cars every X years like clockwork, and people who buy who keep the car until something happens that clicks 'that isn't worth fixing', which these days is often way down the road. Possible not 200k miles, but far more than 3-4 years.
FWIW, other than one car I bought new, every car I've had I purchased off-lease (so lowish miles and 2-3 years old) and kept it for at least 7-10 years, often getting to 200k miles.
Almost everyone derives value from existing cars either by using or selling it.
I also would need concrete data to believe most people are swapping cars willy nilly. Based on income/wealth statistics, most Americans most certainly cannot afford to.
Of all my friends and extended family, including my wife's family, I know a single person who does this.
The only source I could find said: "The percentage of consumers that are leasing their vehicles has dropped due to the inventory shortage. In December 2021, only 20% of new-car shoppers leased a vehicle, compared to December 2019, when 30% chose to lease, according to Jominy."
What difference does it make if 1 or 4 owners take the car to 200K miles? The cheaper-to-run car is likely to be worth more to the initial and subsequent resales.
I would be shocked if that's true. 30 years ago I remember it being a big deal when the family car reached 100,000 miles. If you kept a car running long enough to get it to 200,000 miles you'd probably get an short article written about it in the local newspaper.
I bought a few new cars. Never again; I don't want to deal with the elevated failure rates in the first 12-24 months. Our most recent car is a used, low-milage previously-leased vehicle. No problems so far. knock on wood
