http://www.jdpower.com/news/releases/press....asp?ID=2003050
The European brands as a whole have lost a ton compared to American cars. Japanese car makers are the most durable as a whole, followed by American cars.

The top five automakers:
Porsche
Toyota
Honda
Nissan
BMW

Bottom five automakers:
Isuzu
VW
Suzuki
Diawoo
Kia

The top 5 brands:
Lexus (#1 for the last 9 years)
Infiniti
Buick
Porsche
Acura

The bottom 5 brands:
VW
Suzuki
Daewoo
Land Rover
Kia

I find this much more interesting then initial quality. Mercedes Benz as a brand has fallen the most since 1990. It was number 1 then and is well below avg now. It is a good thing for Toyota and Honda they don't count Asian brands, but instead only group japanese automakers together!!

 

Those ratings are interesting, but JD Power has several different rankings that can be used to compare manufacturer quality. I think the most reliable is the initial quality study (a one-time survey), because owner participation in the long-term dependability study is erratic and inconsistent.

I'm amazed to see Porsche so high in the rankings. People have told me how trouble-prone the Boxsters are to the point where I really began believing it. That should give all of you a good indication of how dependable anecdotal "word of mouth" evidence is, especially compared to its relative influence on buying patterns...

 

Notice Cadillac is almost the same as Toyota and far above BMW, Audi, MB, etc.

 

http://www.autonews.com/files/jdptop2003.ppt

The link above ranks the top 3 vehicles in each category (Premium Mid-size, Fullsize Van, Luxury SUV, etc.) for vehicle dependability. The rankings for Premium Sportscar:
911
S2000
Boxter

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by protokultur
[B]Those ratings are interesting, but JD Power has several different rankings that can be used to compare manufacturer quality.

 

Also, keep in mind that not all problems are the same.....I remember a study awhile back that ranked vehicle manufacturers based on recalls. On paper domestics looked the same as imports, but when I dug deeper I found that Honda's were being recalled to fix things like intermittent windshield wiper-speed and Fords were being recalled because fuel lines were catching on fire. Ford=1; Honda=1. Numbers sometimes don't tell the whole story.

 

I think 3 years is too short. Whats that about 45k miles? That's not long enough to measure "durability" IMHO. They should've left it at 5 but JD bowed to "certain" automakers. Now just about every measure they take is a joke.