I'm unfamiliar with the concept of "problems per 100" - is 91 a good thing? To me, it sounds like it would be possible for 91% of the cars to have a problem and still achieve that rating.
91 problems per 100 cars is less than 1 problem per car, over i think 3 years. for some reason the JD Power press release site is down so i can't verify the timeperiod at the moment.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Jun 7 2006, 08:24 PM) [snapback]267689[/snapback]</div> No, this study is for the 1st 90 days. If you read the press release, they've also changed the methodology. In the past, I've found JD's studies to be a little bogus because some vehicles have done poorly due to things like wind noise (err, if it's not a defect and they're all that way.... is that really a problem and/or defect?) or fuel economy (well, if you bought a big SUV, of course fuel economy sucks). 90 days is also too short and many brands which have done will in the IQS have not done well in their "long term" (3 year) studies which to me, isn't near long enough. What % of people get rid of their cars after 3 years? How many people buy used cars >3 years old? Here are two examples of things that Nissan supposedly did to improve "perceived quality" from http://www.nissannews.com/site_library/cor...speech-1.shtml: "So we’re constantly reviewing technologies, processes, organizations – everything – to maintain and improve on our well-deserved reputation for quality. We listen to our customers . . . we listen to our suppliers . . . and we listen to our employees. We ask questions, we evaluate and we analyze on our way to improving the quality of our vehicles – whether actual or perceived quality. For instance, we’re adding more lumbar support to our Frontier truck seats because customers told us that was a quality problem. We also heard that the lack of a map lights in some Sentra models was a quality problem. Maybe that’s not a real quality issue, but for a consumer who wants a map light, it becomes one. So we’re adding map lights across the board in our entry-level sedan." edit: I found some more info and some useful charts at http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic.../606080384/1148.
thanks for the link and explanation... i don't know why the link i posted didn't work since i just copied what was in the address bar... yes, i did see the changes they made this year and i think it's at least an attempt to include more of the overall early-ownership experience. i don't know how effective it's going to be. i guess one could look at the initial quality ratings and say, well, if the car had an average of 3 problems over the first 3 months, maybe i should take a closer look before buying. while i doubt that many people are that inclined to do their own kind of research, at least the info is out there to give them a baseline gauge. you really can't take any of these things as the end-all-be-all of consumer ratings.
