Hyundai reliability and JD Power

J D Power 2006 vehicle dependability survey:

http://www.jdpower.com/studies_jdpower/pressrelease.asp?StudyID=1160

It rates reliability over 3 years, meaning this rates 2003 model vehicles.
Industry average is 227 probs per 100. Hyundai is 253, well below average.
Hyundai has only one car in the top 3 rankings, in the subcompact category.
That's because in 2003, there are ONLY 3 subcompacts on the market.

So despite Hyundai's good showings of some models in the JD Power initial
quality surveys (2003 Sonata was 2nd in its class) and the Consumer Reports
surveys, the company as a whole does lousy here. Why? Discuss.

Chris

 

If you look at the data this way, the Initial Quality Survey did a
remarkable job forecasting the Vehicle Dependability Survey:

2003 Hyundai Initial Qual Survey 152
2003 Industry Average IQS 133

2006 Hyundai Veh Dep Survey 2003 models 253
2006 Industry Average VDS 2003 models 227

Now look at this year's IQS

2006 Hyundai IQS 102
2006 Industry Average IQS 124

Clearly a significant improvement for Hyundai. If the pattern holds we
can expect the 2006 models to do very well in the 2009 VDS survey.

 

I suppose I should then junk my "unreliable" 1996 Accent which has 213,450
miles on it. Thank you JP Power for the enlightenment.

Jozef

 

As the owner of a 2006 Sonata, I'm certainly hoping that is the case!

Matt

 

Your words are so in comflict with the data it could be considered
funny, or someone trying to spin the facts.

"..well below average.." If you consider that if you owned a Hyundai
you likely had between 2 and 3 problems in three years, 2.53. Just
like the industry average, between 2 and 3 problems 2.27. Or your
Hyundai had an 11% chance of having one more problem than the average.
Not exactly well below average given that this was a consumer survey
and the demographic differences in the groups of people who buy
different new vehicles makes for a large error. I think it is plus or
minus 3 to 6% for a survey like this. "Well Below" is a subjective
term, but it has long been considered that it takes a 25% difference to
be considered well below on these types of surveys.

"..the company as a whole does lousy here. WHY?" You say they do lousy
here, but yet they did better here than the initial quality study. The
initial quality study was 14% below industry average, the 3 year study
was only 11% below industry average. This just flies against common
sense saying that they did lousy here, referring to the initial quality
survey where the results showed them slightly further below average.

It is still deceptive for JDPowers to call this a vehicle dependability
study. Dependability in peoples minds means that the car had a problem
and wouldn't get them from point A to B. In the study though they are
rating number of problems that required an unscheduled trip for
service. Most problems in cars today are quality problems, not
dependability issues. The study should be called the 3 year vehicle
quality survey.

 

Absolutely! It could fall apart any day now...


Matt

 

Just think, if you owned 100 Accents you would have been to the dealer
at least 250 times by now!

 

If they don't tell what the problems are then one cannot judge the
usefullness of the report. I have no faith in Consumer Reports
because the criteria I have seen them use is often not relevant to my
decision making. I expect JD Powers has the same problem - a fixation
on numbers with little correlation between volume of complaints and
the severity of the problems.

 

I will second that. I lost all faith in ConRep after receiving one of their
vehicle surveys (I was subscribing at the time) and despite having a couple
of serious problems with the vehicle in question, there was no clear
category in which to place the issues. Some of them had no place at all to
address them. Thus, a serious issue in one area may be diluted across a
couple of categories and, instead of drawing a poor mark, only show up as an
average mark.

Well, that coupled with a couple of specific instances where I made
appliance purchases based on their ratings and ended up with a sub-par
product that was a huge disappointment.

In addition, I read their "reviews" and "ratings" on items about which I had
a great deal of familiarity and found time and again that they missed the
mark by a large margin (especially in the areas of
high-tech/computer-related items).

 

So, what kinds of problems did you have that would defy CR's categories?

Chris

 

To be precise I would have to dig back in my records (it was a number of
years ago now), but I distinctly recall 3 separate types of issues, I
believe one was a cooling issue which involved electrical components in the
cooling system (maybe fan). Basically, the survey categories were not
a) Complete
b) Orthogonal
It was quite frustrating and eyeopening at the same time.