Honda cars less dependable than Toyotas?

At least according to the latest dependability study by J. D.Powers and
Associates. Porsche, Ford's Lincoln and GM's Buick earned the top 3
spots, respectively. Toyota and its Lexus is 4th. Honda follows Toyota
in the list.

<http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=OBR&Date=20100318&ID=11282915&Symbol=F>

I have a hard time believing that Honda is less dependable than Toyota,
even before all this Toyota fiasco happened.

 

And you couldn't convince me, even with a big fat check, that Honda is
less dependable than ANYTHING from Ford or GM.

 

This survey only looks at the first 3 years of ownership. I think the
second and third 3 years are more indicative of reliability.

-RC

 

Most modern cars are very reliable. The differences among most major
brands is in the noise range. The cars are so close that the top dozen
or so are probably in a statistical dead heat. I believe that how you
take care of one of the cars in the upper two thirds of the range has
more to do with depndability than the actual choice of a car.

If you don't count the cars my younger son has abused into failure, I
can only remember a few failures of any note of any car I've owned or
people close to me have owned in the last seven years - my Sister's
Honda needed a muffler, the coil pack failed on s Saturn and the power
window failed (under warranty) on my Expedition. Again, leaving out my
son who can destroy anything out of the discussion and not including
the German cars owned by the SO's children, we've not spent $200 on
car repairs among all of us (5 adults) in the last seven years. My
younger son, the destroyer, has taken out one clutch and one engine
(an beater up Firebird), one horn/air bag and one CVT transission
(warranty - Saturn Vue), one automatic transission (14 year old F150 -
$600 repair). Amazingly he has not been able to destroy a Mustang -
well except for the parts he has replaced with "performance" junk
destined to destroy the car eventually (horrid exhaut, K&N dirt
charger, huge tires and wheels, illegal tint, "performance" chip,
etc.). It must be the most indestructible car made. I keep expecting
him to come home with it in pieces on a rollback.

Ed

 

I also used to be a car destroyer, (those Mustang "upgrades" sound very
familiar, just on a Datsun 280Z instead), but I wouldn't necessarily
hold the 14 year old Ford transmission failure against your son, as that
is not that unusual a lifespan for a Ford tranny, imho, especially if it
was used a lot.

My previous 1990 Thunderbird SC was on the third transmission at just
over 100K miles when I dumped the car, but one replacement transmission
gave out almost immediately after it was installed.

Pat

 

We are in 100% agreement. They can release these reports forever, but
when it comes time for a new car, anyone in my family will be buying
another Japanese vehicle.

This is based on bad personal experiences with Fords and GM's in the
past, and no desire to be a test rat for another expensive domestic car
purchase.

Pat

 

But, but, but, but... That was the OLD GM. Think how much better it
will be now that it's government owned. What could possibly go wrong?
Watch for the recalls to drop dramatically on GM products.<g>

 

1. the only toyota "fiasco" is that of p.r., not anything mechanical or
electronic. it was cooked up by the g.m./sympathetic whitehouse retards
who didn't have the brains to realize that it might have legislation
consequences from which they'd be the biggest losers if the proles got
too upset.

2. if anyone believes that a 3-year [or average 36k mile] "survey" is
indicative of lifetime ownership "reliability", they're smoking some
mighty powerful weed.

 

right ed. the cheapo chinese componentry your client is using our tax
dollars to make their crap with is really /just/ as reliable as anything
made here or in japan...

yeah, washing the car prevents solder joint cracking and changing the
oil extends fatigue life.

yeah, ed. you're a reliable source with no vested interests.

 

It was in a 14 year old farm truck that had led a relatively stressful
life. However, I do blame my Son becasue he was playing truck pull
with it. I had given him the truck, so I guess I can't be too mad. It
turned out the failure was minor. The person who bought the truck paid
$600 to have it fixed and is very happy. He is a meter reader and uses
the truck daly. I sort of wish I had kept it now, but it was old and I
didn't feel like rolling the dice on the transmission. However, I
don't think Ford transmission are particularly failure prone. My
parents, grandparents and various family memebers have owned many
Fords and that was only the third transmission failure ever in the
family (out of something like 34 Ford among various family memebers).
And one of those other failures was a 1967 Fairlane I drove into a
pond (not that submerging the transmission casued it to fail....but it
did stop shigfting out of second the next day).

Your mentioning the Datsun 280Z brought back my memories of the
nightmare problems I had with the clutch/transmission on the one of
those I owned. It never exactly failed, but it never exactly worked
right either. I loved the car, but the clutch/transmission problems
were a constant source of irritation. I replaced the clutch, clutch
master cylinder, pilot bushing, clutch slave cylinder, etc. bt never
solved all the problems. I sold the 280Z to a friend and he eventually
got the problem mostly sorted out (by replacing all the clutch
componets fromt the clutch master cylinder to the transmission input
shaft).

 

Name me one company that isn't purchasing components in China. As I
pointed out to you before, if your goal is to purchase the vehciles
with the highest domestic content, you would, on average, buy from GM.
(see
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2009/07/domestic-parts-content-and-automakers.html
and http://tinyurl.com/yzdsl5e ).

Do you really think that Toyota and Honda are not purchasing parts
from China? If so, you need to pull your head out of the sand.

Maybe not, but changing engine oil and filters in a timely manner can
extend the life of the engine. Addressing small problems before they
become big ones is important. Do you think that proper maintenance is
not important?

Thank you. It means a lot to me that you recognize my worth. You know
you have made it when the delusional are praising you.



We all have interests. I enjoy reading about cars and like to share my
opinions. You are welcome to disagree with them. Your ridiculous
claims that I am posting my opinions as part of a job for some
unspecified entity are just crazy talk.


I don't mind having people disagree with me. I don't like people
accusing me of unethical behavior. My opinions are my opinions. They
are not posted as part of any "job." I never post anything on usenet
related to my actual paid employment. I am willing to post things
related to my farm, since I only have myself to answer to in that
area.

I am particularly offended by your claims that I in some way support
sending US jobs offshore. I have the exact opposite opinion. Over the
last 32 years I have watched as job after job has been sent to the Far
East (Japan, China, India, etc.). People I know and respect have lost
their jobs because money grubbing executives see shifting jobs
offshore as an easy way for them to maintain their bonuses. I don't
take issue with the individual Chinese, Indians, and Japanese - they
are people just like we are. However, I do take issue with
governmental policies (both US and foreign policies) that have made it
easy and profitable to shift jobs overseas.



I think it particularly hypocritical that you attack Chinese suppliers
while defending Japanese suppliers. I can't see how you can
legitimately attack GM for out sourcing while driving a Honda. At
least be consistent.

You need to drop this tag line. It is not correct Latin.

"Dico rutila rutila" is probably "more" correct.

Ed

 

Can't say as I haven't had a GM since about 1980 or so and that was
the worst car I ever owned so I'm biased against GM and will always
be. Best car I ever owned was Honda tho my Toyota Corollas come
close so far. So I favor Honda from my ownership of cars.

Are you sure you want me to answer this question now <g> ?

 

Let's see -



If I bought based on the best car for the money I ever owned, I'd be
driving a Pinto.

If I bought based on the most reliable car I ever owned, I'd be
driving a Mercury Sable.

If I avoided buying cars because of the worst car I ever owned, I'd
never buy a Toyota or a Plymouth.

If I bought based on the favorite car I ever owned, I'd have to find
another low mileage 2004 Thunderbird.

If I bought based on the safest car I ever drove, I'd have to find a
1969 Ford Country Sedan Wagon.

If I could buy based on what I'd like to have, an Audi R8 looks
awfully good.

If I bought based on what I should be driving, I think it would be a
Prius.



All cars are much better now than in 1980 (including Hondas - I
remember my Sister's original Accord rusting away around her - that
doesn't happen any more, at least not here). I think saying you won't
buy this car or that car because of a bad experience (or even a good
experience) from 30 years ago is probably not the smart thing, but I
do understand it. I even suffer from it



I don't have anything against Hondas (my Sister has had two and both
were mostly reliable) but I can't find any reason for particularly
wanting one either. I liked the S2000 but they have quit making those.
Accords are like Camrys...too uninspiring to buy except on price and
they lose out on that to other cars. Civics are OK, but I want
something larger. The CR-V seems overpriced. The Pilot is nice enough
but way overpriced. And since I actually need a truck, I can't
understand why I'd want a Ridgeline. I am not saying Honda products
are unreliable or ugly, just uninspiring. I see some cars in ads and
think, I'd love to at least test drive one of those. That never
happens during a Honda ad (well except for the fuel cell car, but they
don't offer those in my area).



One other thing - the best riding lawn mower we ever owned on our farm
was a twin cylinder water cooled Honda. It was the quietest smoothest
lawn mower I have ever used. We finally parked it because the parts
got to be hard to find and expensive, but the motor, except for the
carburetor, was in great shape. I'd buy another, except they quit
making them like that. The Kubota we have now is probably a more
rugged mower, but it is also twice as noisy.


Ed

 

I don't know ... I really liked my '72 Olds Cutlass. But I also liked my
'84 Corolla coupe with rear wheel drive. However, I like my current '94
Accord even more.

 

Get back to me when those cars are at least 5 years old, and have higher
miles on them. That's how I measure how reliable they are.

I will never buy GM, Ford or Crapsler. The only makes I would consider are
Honda, Toyota and, believe it or not, Hyundai.

 

Had a 75 280Z, the 1st yr with fuel injection. Never had a lick of
problems, except for a thermotime switch at about 15k miles which made it
run rich like a stuck choke. A friend with a 76 model had the same
experience.

 

It's hard to ignor experiences regardless what you read. Some people
here say this and that as well as elsewhere so in the end, I rely on
my own judgment and past experiences.

 

You say GM has improved but others say not so in the end, it comes
down to judgment and experience. Tho my experience may be dated, I
still consider it worthy to a degree tho I don't rely solely on it. I
don't care if you disagree, that's your opinion.

 

Primarily I agree these would be my main choices as well. Should I
want to spend a tad more, I might include Infiniti and not sure about
Lexus.

 

I've owned both Honda and Toyota vehicles that my wife and I have
driven to about 200,000 miles, two Hondas and one Toyota. We currently
have one new Toyota, one 10-year old Accord and my daughter owns a
2004 Accord.

Overall, our Toyotas required fewer dollars to keep; less expensive
repairs and maintenance. From a dependability standpoint, I've
experienced very few failures that prevented using any of the cars but
my score is zero failures of this sort from my Toyotas vs. a few from
my Hondas.

On the other hand, my Toyotas are appliance-like; they keep on
running, provide great service but offer no joy in driving them.
Frankly, some newer Hondas aren't much better in the fun-to-drive
category.

It goes without saying that cars with fewer options/accessories have
fewer things to break and are cheaper to keep.
You didn't mention it but my Toyotas were less expensive to insure
than my Hondas; lowering the total cost of ownership. I've been able
to exceed EPA MPG estimates in both Honda and Toyota cars so that's a
wash in my book.

YMMV