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I've been thinking recently about the stickiness of reputations among brands, and about whether it's something that companies really have the power to shift or not.
Here's the specific example in my mind. You know how, if you browse the Internet for many years, you'll see certain apparently-organic consensus points occur again and again? Reddit is especially known for this, but it happens elsewhere too. Well, in all my years online, the one I've seen the most often, in the most places, is:
A. Cars are mentioned. B. "Get a Toyota or Honda. Those are the best cars."
The corollary of this line of thinking is: "(Not-Toyota/Not-Honda) is junk." I've probably seen this statement about every manufacturer, but it's most commonly applied to the cars of the former Fiat-Chrysler group, including Fiat itself and Dodge. Ford, GM, and Nissan also get it a lot.
I've driven many Toyotas and Hondas. They are indeed very good cars. I have nothing to say against them. However - based on modern manufacturing technology, on any given metric, how much better are they likely to be than the equivalent car by Subaru? Or even Chevrolet or Dodge? What's the base rate of mechanical failure across these marques? Does anyone know? More to the point - is anyone looking? I would imagine they are not at all, based on typical shopper behavior. I think they mostly go by reputation.
What I find interesting is that in some cases, reputations created long ago stick around forever; and in some cases they don't. For example with Dodge, I'm specifically aware of a big problem they had with a 2.7 L V6 in the '90s which had big sludging problems and hence an elevated rate of engine failure. Prior to that, as I understand it, their main reputation was making fairly staid, uninteresting, but fine commuter cars like the Plymouth Sundance, Dodge Aries and so on. They also made a nice line of minivans. Anyway - at least since the 2.7 L V6 problem, I feel like, subjectively, people no longer trust them; and may never trust them again. Say that Consumer Reports announced that a hypothetical 2025 Dodge Journey was the best in its segment for reliability and features. Would you even consider looking at one?
Conversely, some companies like Audi (the sudden unintended acceleration debacle) and Subaru (head gasket failures) seem to have mostly shaken off their negative reputations; at least, I don't see them taking serious stick online over those things, and the products sell as well as anything else.
Is this just locked in now? Even if Toyota and Honda just made 50th-percentile-reliable cars from now on, would anyone ever notice? If the best car you could possibly get at a given price point was actually a Volkswagen or a Volvo, and remained that way for a decade, how long would it take for sales figures to change? How long would it take for me to stop seeing "get a Toyota or Honda" in every /r/personalfinance thread about cars?
N.B. I'm not car shopping right now. In the past, if I talk about this topic online, people will genuinely reply, "Just get a Toyota or Honda, man," as if that's what I were asking about. I'm not getting anything any time soon. My current car is fine.
I had a similar thought and looked at a new dodge due to its appealing price compared to other vehicles in its segment. I was shocked at the plainly apparent inferior quality, down to the door handles being super bendy and shitty feeling. So in a sense it confirmed that Dodge/Chrysler products are still shit.
On the other hand I have recently rented two different Kias and my partner owns one as well. I have consistently been pleasantly surprised at how good the quality is on those cars, from the physical product to the software and electronics. So in my mind, Kias have definitely redeemed themselves.
I think a big factor is that people just don’t encounter all that many cars regularly enough to get a sense for their quality and longevity.
I’ve owned a number of different brands of cars and the best for me was an old mid-90s Chevy half ton. Reliable as hell and cheap to fix when something wears out. The worst was my Audi, which was actually my favorite by far up until it grenaded in the middle of the desert and left me in a pretty sticky situation. That experience has put me off from the brand basically forever.
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Even after 65 years, Edsel still has the connotation of "lemon".
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If you get the Consumer Reports online data, that's going to get you the closest to a real, reliable, useful dataset for most cars. CR is very good and very objective, though they have some limitations (they rarely test multiple engine configurations, and they make certain assumptions about consumers' needs). Data in general shows that cars have become vastly more reliable on a problem/mile basis
That said, I think the problem with brand reputation is that reliability means different things to different people. Here's a lightly fictionalized version of my experience with car brands, representative anecdotes:
Chevy: Things break all the time, but they're easy to fix, the parts are cheap, and any mechanic can do it. The belt on my Avalanche went, I picked up a new one for $80 at NAPA down the road, a buddy of mine who is handy put it on in his garage for free in exchange for hunting privileges on some land we own. Will keep on like this, with every small part being replaced, for another 200,000 miles.
Toyota: Nothing ever really breaks. It runs forever, beyond wear items. I have a 2005 Camry, nothing has ever been needed on it but a battery, tires, and the speaker covers on the back shattered in the sun. Random interior parts are beat, but who cares.
BMW/MB/Audi: Runs absolutely beautifully, better than anything else, until it suddenly breaks a little after it is out of warranty. No one will be able to tell you what's wrong with it, at the dealership or elsewhere. When they get some idea what widget that lunches the engine might be, the parts are $3,000 and they have to be special ordered from a single Bavarian trappist monastery, where they only make them in the Spring. Fixing that widget might or might not actually fix the car, hard to say.
I'm not so much standing by this as truly representative data, it's just my anecdotal experience. My point is that reliability can mean different things. For a handy guy who doesn't mind doing a bit of work, he'll say the Chevy just runs and runs; while for a woman who has everything done at the dealership it will seem like a hassle. For a rich insurance salesman who leases every four years, he won't care that his BMW will break down at 6 years/80,000 miles because by then it will be two years since he owned it, as far as he's concerned the car was great, even if it broke down he took it to the dealership and they gave him a brand new loaner so it was no skin off his back. So the anecdotes on the topic won't be consistent from actual people, you have to consider a hundred different factors, then discount them by context and probability.
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IMO people will keep saying "Get a Honda/Toyota" as long as 15-20 year old Corollas and Civics (and Camrys/Accords) are still superior to their competition, and IMO they mostly still are (With that, IMO some Ford and GM models are underrated.). Reputations will remain stickier as the average car continues to get older, and the average vehicle in the US is nearly 13 years old (and the average car is 14 years old!).
With that, for Chrysler it wasn't just the 2.7 V6, but the Neons that blew headgaskets, 4 speed auto transmissions made out of paper mache throughout the 90s and early 2000s, LH and cloud cars that just fell apart in a hurry, and pickup trucks that, Cummins diesels aside, are the worst of the big three (They're nice, but they fall apart fast and have relatively poor resale value.). The 300s/Challengers/Chargers are reliable as far as I'm aware, but guzzle gas so they aren't really economical and are police magnets in certain areas.
Subaru IMO is unique enough (AWD in all their cars) that their customers are willing to tolerate issues like the EJ's headgaskets that other brands couldn't get away with. VW/Audi IMO have improved a lot since the crap they were churning out in the early 2000s, and German car buyers are less sensitive about long-term reliability since they are the most likely to lease their vehicles instead of buying them.
As someone who drives a checks notes 17yo Corolla, I endorse this statement. They haven’t added anything meaningful to its market niche since the aux cable became standard. There are improvements in fuel economy, but most everything else is the same. Some UX has gotten worse with touchscreens and peanut-butter-lid knobs!
Backup cameras, prox sensors, etc. are a different story, but they haven’t yet percolated to this price point. I think.
Eventually, I’ll need a replacement, and I’ll buy in a higher niche. Hopefully self-driving has gotten much better by that point.
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This site claims to have analyzed millions of used-car auctions to determine long-term mechanical reliability. Its overall "manufacturer quality index" looks like this:
Oddly enough, I'm Facebook friends with the guy who operates that site. I think it's a great effort, but it's still less valuable, to me, than knowing the actual rates. It's like your likelihood of being murdered in Dallas vs. in Des Moines: if it's a difference from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 55,000, how does that weigh against, say, the value you would've gotten from that extra cupholder?
These are imaginary numbers, but hopefully you see what I'm saying.
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