The Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based RDA Group has found that Ford is on par with top-level stalwarts Toyota and Honda when it comes to vehicle quality. Ford managed 1,284 "things-gone-wrong" (TGW) per 1,000 vehicles during the first three months of ownership this year, statistically matching the two top Japanese brands, which are tied at 1,250 TGW. Though it certianly won't be the last word in the ongoing debate as to who makes the best cars, it is at least a good sign for Ford. Perhaps what's most impressive is that 36 of 40 Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo and Mazda nameplates improved this year versus 2007. Ford's performance in this study marks an eight-percent improvement over the previous year, at which time they were tied with Toyota, but trailing industry-leader Honda. While Ford is glad to see quality improving, every automaker would surely like to sit alone at the top of the quality rankings, and Ford is no different.Ford builds some pretty good vehicles these days, but faces a large perceived quality gap, as only 41-percent of consumers consider Ford vehicles according to their own internal data. For that reason, expect Ford to tout these new quality findings as part of their Drive One campaign.
[Source: Ford]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
2004m3driver @ Apr 7th 2008 6:03PM
Hopefully BMW could say the same. My 4year warranty ended and the nightmare is already beginning.
Terry @ Apr 7th 2008 6:13PM
My brother has the same problem. His M3 has a ton of quality & reliability issues that are not cheap to fix.
Back on topic, I think if more people give Ford a chance they will be pleasantly suprised.
jg @ Apr 7th 2008 6:48PM
Sorry to hear that. I bought mine used, with no warranty. No major problems to date almost three years in.
Just don't take the car to the dealer. There has to be a shop in your town that specializes in german cars that will charge half the dealerships labor rate.
I don't know about the M but with my 330Ci I can order parts online and fix most things in my garage too. Even when I had my resevoir replaced I ordered the parts myself and brought them to the shop that did the repairs. I only paid labor. These cars only have high repair costs for lazy people.
epilonious @ Apr 7th 2008 8:15PM
"These cars only have high repair costs for lazy people."
And people with jobs and families and otherwise don't have the time/patience to sit around waiting for the mail-order parts to arrive so they can drive it to a repair shop during the late of night when it's less of an issue should the brakes/engine/suspension let go.
It's nice that you got a BMW that only has a few manageable things falling off of it... but don't act like everyone has the spare time and luck that you do.
Randy @ Apr 15th 2008 7:46PM
Let me guess! The nightmare started on the day after the warranty expired?
Ya know. Any Dell computer I had does that. And everytime my Norton (NIS) expires my computer turns to garbage!
TriShield @ Apr 7th 2008 6:10PM
Considering new Toyotas like the Camry are appallingly trimmed and assembled inside I don't find this all that surprising.
zamafir @ Apr 7th 2008 6:22PM
x2, the camry makes me cringe whenever I get in it. Good job Ford!
Matt @ Apr 7th 2008 11:06PM
I would have to agree, the Camry is nasty inside... about the only car nastier (in it's class/size) would have to be the new Sebring, in my experience.
PaulPaul @ Apr 7th 2008 6:10PM
ford also has another thing in common with honda/toyota and that's boring designs (except Euro i guess). While good quality will win customers over, so will good designs.
JZeke @ Apr 7th 2008 6:12PM
Funny how important perceived quality is to the great unwashed. Whats kind of worrisome here is this data is for the first 3 months of ownership only -- basically the data that JD power initial quality surveys are based on.
Why hasn't there been a more comprehensive study of long-term quality? Its nice that a new car has few problems, but isnt anyone more interested what happens at bigger intervals?
The Luigiian @ Apr 7th 2008 8:47PM
There have been, it's called Consumer Reports. Ford Fusion is currently rated above-average, Mustang average, Focus average, Edge above-average, Ranger average. Ironically, its F-150 and Explorer are two of its least reliable, with both getting half-black dots (recall that the Toyota Tundra is the one that recently got the half-black dot with its 4wd truck.) Escape is also probably going to get above-average. Most of the CR snapshots on msn.com state the reliability at the end of the review.
So in short, overall reliability=not quite as good as Toyota, but pretty close.
Matt @ Apr 7th 2008 11:06PM
"There have been, it's called Consumer Reports"
And Consumer Reports is called biased.
Disgruntled Goat @ Apr 7th 2008 10:31PM
Everybody knows that you never own any European automobile out of warranty. Been there, done that - you're just playing with fire. And I agree. Ford quality is as good as about any Japanese car these days.
CarbonBlack @ Apr 7th 2008 6:13PM
ford has quality equal to Honda and Toyota, yeah, sure, whatever!
I can tell you from my family's personal experiences that I don't believe this report (I do acknowledge I am no expert).
It would be fun to run a equivalent Honda Toyota and Ford vehicles simultaneously to see which lasts longest!
thedude3389 @ Apr 7th 2008 6:40PM
Finally, someone i can agree with!!! You basically took the words outta my mouth!
Mike @ Apr 7th 2008 7:01PM
So everyone in your family purchased a Ford in the last year? This report is most certainly on the '08 models and the blog clearly explains that they have improved over past years. Therefore if your personal examples aren't all of '08 Fords with comparisons of '08 Toyotas and '08 Hondas, your comments hold no water.
Judy Zik @ Apr 7th 2008 7:09PM
Your family's experiences? Do tell us. Would they happen to be about 1990's model Fords. These surveys are to do with what they are building now as in 2008 models. Does your family actually have several 2008 Ford products you can tell us about. Probably not which is why they do these surveys. The reality is anyone who has driven the new Ford and even GM products would not be shocked to know that their quality numbers are improving. But then I also found it interesting in the latest Consumer Reports magazine that the much maligned Freestar had the virtually the same reliability data in 2006 as the Honda Odyssey that everyone brags about. It is all about perception. In the 80's and 90's Ford benefited from the fact that people believed they were building good cars even when they weren't. Now that they are building good cars people don't believe it which is fine by me because it means I wont have to pay full sticker when I buy my next one.
Chris @ Apr 9th 2008 10:54AM
This quality report is for only 3 months of ownership. The better study is the JD Power Vehicle Dependability study that ranks after 3 years of ownership. There Ford is way behind Toyota and Honda. Lincoln does well though, as #8 in the 2007 study, and Mercury ranks #4. But Ford is below the industry average.
Kaptain75329 @ Apr 9th 2008 6:01PM
"ford has quality equal to Honda and Toyota, yeah, sure, whatever!" - CarbonBlack
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the perceived quality gap problem Ford has. I don't deny that Ford deserves some resistance today from the crap they put out yesteryear, but when you have airheads acting like they speak with any sense of authority based on knee-jerk emotional reactions, you get to view human stupidity at it's finest.
Carbon, sweetie, you don't have to give Ford another dime for how they like so completely wronged you and generations of your whole entire family and stuff. Just go away - we're all stocked up in the ignoramus department around here.
iSpec @ Apr 7th 2008 6:13PM
We feel bad we bought our Pilot, the interior being a pile of cheap plastic and materials that are just the bottom of the bin.
After realizing our brother paid less for a Veracruz the interior and equipment levels completely blows ours away, we wish we had looked at Hyundai.
Oh well.