The UAW has announced that it has agreed to concessions with Ford; GM and Chrysler are still negotiating. This stuff matters, to be sure, but I think it’s really all a side show. The deciding factor in whether these companies survive is whether they are able to manufacture good cars. You don’t have to be a car guy (I’m not) to know that Ford is the only major American car company that’s not building crap.
The latest Consumer Reports has graph of car reliability by make. Starting from the worst, the bottom dozen are:
- Land Rover (Easily the worst on average.)
- Saturn (GM)
- Chrysler (They make the worst cars by far — their range bar sticks off the bottom of the graph — but many of their cars are almost average, moving them up to third-worst overall.)
- Cadillac (GM)
- Dodge (Chrysler)
- Pontiac (GM)
- Jeep (Chrysler)
- Mercedes-Benz
- GMC (GM)
- Volkswagen
- Chevrolet (GM)
- Saab (GM)
It’s not hard to see that the automotive crapulence industry is dominated by Chrysler and GM. After that there are several foreign companies (Audi, Suzuki, BMW, and Porsche) and then Buick, which is by far the most reliable GM brand, being almost average. On the other hand, all four Ford brands (Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo, and Ford) are above average. Ford and Volvo are only barely so, but Lincoln actually beats a few Japanese companies. Ford did own Land Rover for several years, but unloaded it last year.
POSTSCRIPT: Although Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW, and Porsche score poorly in reliability, they do score well in initial quality (especially Porsche). The same cannot be said of the other makes in the bottom dozen, all but one of which are GM or Chrysler. On the other end, the most reliable makes are Scion (Toyota), Acura, Honda, and Toyota.
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