TrueDelta

March 2008 is just now ending, and already a number of 2009 models are available. Legally, a car can be a 2009 as soon as the 2008 calendar year begins. Some people will take exception with this. Why can’t the model years match the calendar years, or at least come close?

Well, before make this request, consider the alternative. Some manufacturers when they introduced a redesigned or updated model in the first half of the calendar year don’t change the model year. Instead, they have two sometimes totally different products that share the same model and model year.

The solution in this case is to refer to the new vehicle as a half year model. For example, Volkswagan introduced the current Jetta as a 2005.5 and Volvo introduced the current S40 as a 2004.5.

The problem I have with this approach is that the owners of such cars often don’t know about the half-year desigation, especially if they’re not the original owner.

This complicates the task of providing reliability information on these cars. And, if you’re a used car shopper looking to buy such a car, you’ll need a photo to be certain you’ve got the right one.

Buyers can also benefit from the early start of a model year; down the road a 2009 will be worth more than a 2008.

So, personally, I’m all in favor of starting the model year early whenever an updated or thoroughly redesigned model is introduced early in the calendar year.

People tell me the site could be easier to use. A more thorough redesign is coming, but in the short term I’ve made some tweaks, and they seem to be helping.

1. Reduced wordcount on the home page and the main reliability page.

2. Removed some extraneous design elements.

3. Placed text about the on-site surveys below the log in, so the latter is now above the fold even on low-res displays.

4. Added car photos (randomly generated, so no model gets favored) and the flash banner to more pages.

Nothing fancy. But the rate at which people are joining has jumped, so even these tweaks appear to be effective.

I’m a few days late in posting this…

Anyway, on the 16th the 200th 2007 Nissan Versa was enrolled in the panel. Big thanks are due to Nissan-Infiniti forum NICOClub.com.

I thought this was the first model / model year combination to reach 200. However, a couple days later I noticed that if you combine the 2008 Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook, which are nearly identical under the skin, then there were 204 of them in the panel. Thanks to Buick Enclave forum EnclaveForum.net, GMC Acadia forum AcadiaForum.net, and Saturn forum SaturnFans.com, the number of GM’s Lambda crossovers has been growing rapidly.

I had not noticed that this number had been growing so rapidly that it might have reached 200 a day or two before the Versa. Or maybe on the same day. Or a day after.

Both achievements deserve recognition, so I’ll call it a tie.

For first to 300, though, the safe money is on the 2008 Lambdas. It took the 2007 Versa a couple months to get from 190 to 200. And the 2008 model year is only about half way over.

For years some people have avoided sunroofs because they can be a source of leaks. Personally I’ve never had one leak. But now that I’m conducting this research, I’ve learned that some of them do leak.

Actually, it seems that sunroofs are designed to leak a little, just not into the car. Instead, a tube is fitted to the gutter below the seal, to drain any water that does get past the seal. When water nevertheless ends up inside the car, the reason is often that this drain tube has become crimped or plugged up.

Every once in a while I come across an evaluation of TrueDelta’s Vehicle Reliability Survey results that reads, “Man, the X must be junk.” Such evaluations are always based on noticing that the repair rate for the model in question is among the highest reported for the model year.

But it’s important to also consider the absolute repair rate. Sure, a model might require 50 percent more repairs than the average car. Sounds bad, right? But the difference is probably still less than half a repair trip per year for at least the first few years.

This is why TrueDelta, unlike others, provides the absolute repair rates. This way, people can get a sense of how many repairs a car will require, and decide whether they are comfortable enough with this number to buy the car they most like to look at, sit in, and drive.

We had a member quit in a huff last month because of TrueDelta’s “obvious bias” against domestic cars. He hasn’t been the first–there have been a handful of others–and he won’t be the last.

His evidence: most of our Vehicle Reliability Survey results are for cars made by foreign-based manufacturers. And, for some reason, when rabid fans of domestic cars see something they don’t like, “bias” is their preferred accusation. (Saner fans tend to be capable of more nuance.)

As plenty of people will attest, I post on just about any active auto forum that will give me permission to do so. And I post on plenty of forums that focus on domestic cars.

The problem, as far as I can tell: owners of domestic cars are much less likely to actively participate in these forums. The 2008 Chevrolet Malibu is a hot product judging from the low inventories. But good luck finding an active forum for the car.

Or course, most of TrueDelta’s members come from other sources: my reviews at Epinions, word of mouth, search engines. But owners of domestic cars also seem to be less likely to learn of our research through these sources.

There are exceptions. A very active forum exists for Saturns at SaturnFans.com. And owners of GM’s large crossovers have made EnclaveForum.net and AcadiaForum.net into thriving communities.

And, guess what? We have excellent sample sizes for these vehicles–over 100 in a few cases.

Bias has nothing to do with it. TrueDelta will report results for any model we have enough data on. One of my motivations for starting the research was to enable more accurate comparisons between domestic and foreign cars. But I can only put the research in place; I can’t personally provide the data. That part is up to owners.

For reasons that ought to be obvious, withdrawing from the study isn’t the best way to make this happen.

Spring is almost here, so Consumer Reports’ annual auto issue is out. A few thoughts now that I’ve had a chance to glance through the 2008 version.

First, some old news. Many people assume that because the issue is new and Consumer Reports makes such a big deal out of it that the reliability information in the issue is based on recent data and is also new. I’ve read many forum posts where the author said, “Well, the new auto issue is out, so now I can buy a car.”

I find this mildly amusing, since the reliability information in this issue is always nearly a year old, based on a survey conducted the previous spring. The results have even been available since last fall.

So why the big deal with an issue in the spring? Well, as one of my grad school advisers used to advise, “Why publish once what you can publish twice?” Or more. They initially publish the results in the fall, but only in an issue available on newsstands. This issue is then repackaged a few times. Finally, in the spring, print subscribers are finally provided with this now old information.

In general TrueDelta’s results track with those of Consumer Reports. But in some cases they differ. Sometimes this might be because we ask different questions. But another reason is that TrueDelta’s results are currently based on the year ending December 31, 2007, while theirs are based on the year ending last April or so. A lot can change with a car in eight months. With older cars, at some point they hit a point where repairs start piling up. With TrueDelta’s method, this information will be available much sooner.

One thing I’ve never accused Consumer Reports of is a bias against domestic cars. But this is the charge they hear most often. As I’ve been learning myself, people who don’t like a result love to claim its the product of bias.

Lately, Consumer Reports has been going out of its way to try to change this perception. They recently made a big deal about the high road test scores earned by the new Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac CTS. On the cover of the issue they place a photo of a Chevrolet Silverado next to the “Top 10 Picks of the Year” blurb. (It’s the only non-Asian product among the picks.) When discussing “reliability trends,” they highlight the Ford Fusion at the top of the page, and have a section on Ford’s recent improvement. In the “vehicle ratings” section, where they provide recommendations, they have photos of six vehicles–and three of them are domestic models.

What they aren’t doing: countering any of the critiques I have made. It’s easier to counter the false accusations, after all.

One of those recommendations is iffy. Last fall they stopped recommending Toyotas before they have reliability data on the model. And yet in the new issue the 2008 Scion xB is recommended, with a predicted reliability of “above average.” That prediction is based on the totally different first-generation car. What’s the deal? Well, it seems the new xB was reviewed before the new policy went into effect, and they didn’t reverse earlier recommendations when the policy changed. The new xB got grandfathered.

This isn’t the way I would have done it, as it risks recommending a car that shouldn’t be recommended. And TrueDelta’s limited data on the new xB suggest that its repair rate is worse than average owing to a number of minor exterior trim issues.

They do have an interesting section on extended warranties that demonstrates that these warranties are rarely worth it. TrueDelta has long advised that most people will not recoup their investment in such a warranty. Consumer Reports does better, providing some actual numbers. Overall, 22 percent of those surveyed came out ahead; the other 78 percent did not. On average, the average person lost $300 on the deal.

One especially interesting number they divulged: among owners of cars that were four to six years old, only four percent had repairs totaling over $1,700 during the previous year. (They don’t explain why this number was chosen.) In other words, expensive repairs are rare.

Consumer Reports’ members are asked to only report serious problems on the survey, but since the percentage reporting such problems is way over four for cars over four years old, clearly some number well below $1,700 tends to qualify as “serious.”

Finally, there’s a blurb about reporting specific common problems in the future. They give the example of the 2004 VW Touareg, where the mosts common problem–with the tire pressure monitoring system–was reported by 19 percent of owners. My take in this particular instance: does a TPMS issue truly qualify as a “serious problem?” Generally it’s just a nuisance–the light stays on. This is the sort of problem that some owners will report but others will not given how Consumer Reports asks the question–”report only problems you considered serious.”

I must also wonder whether their data are clean enough to report problem rates for specific issues. The number of anomalies in their overall results makes this a bit dubious.

Still, it’s good to see them finally doing something new and providing additional information. We’ll have to do that much better here at TrueDelta.

Just a brief announcement: TrueDelta’s panel now includes 25,000 vehicles! Way back when I started this was the number I thought I needed to provide accurate results for the most popular models. And the latest results included nearly 100 model / model year combinations.

The most popular model in the panel: the Honda Accord, with 742 enrolled. The next most popular: the BMW 3-Series, with 579. For a single model year, the 2007 Nissan Versa continues to be on top, with 192. Among 2008 models it’s the Buick Enclave, with 127.

Everyone who’s helped get us this far, thank you. Now if you could each go out and get one friend involved…

First popular in Japan, navigation systems that are built into the vehicle have become a must-have option in the U.S. as well. Very common in luxury cars, they’re increasingly common in mainstream models. But do they even make sense?

The advantages of built-in navigation systems are clear: you get a larger screen, a cleaner installation, and less risk of theft.

The disadvantages aren’t as clear, but could easily outweigh the disadvantages. First off, built-in navigation systems are expensive, costing at least $900 and sometimes over $2,000. These days, you can get a cheap portable navigation system for $100 and a top-line portable system for $400 (which is what I recently paid for a Garmin Nuvi 680).

Second, it’s easier and cheaper to update the maps and firmware of the portable navigation systems; just hook them up to a computer, and the updates are often free. To update the maps for a built-in navigation system, you must buy CDs for $200 or so or, with newer systems, get an update from the dealer. Which won’t be cheap. For firmware, it’s going to be the dealer. If there’s any firmware update at all.

At worst, with a portable navigation system you can simply buy a new unit–perhaps for about the same cost as the maps for a built-in system. I’ve never heard of anyone replacing a built-in navigation system with a newer one. Even if this was possible, the cost would be in the thousands.

Finally, portable units use newer technology. In-car navigation systems are subject to lengthy vehicle product development cycles. So even when they’re “new” the technology can be old. Portable units are heavily revised a number of times a year, with much less lag from the lab to the store shelves.

Already, many people realize that portable navigation systems simply make more sense. If this number becomes significant, vehicle manufacturers might have to make some changes to make the built-in navigation systems more competitive.

What could they do? Three things come to mind. They could find ways to get the newest technology into new vehicles sooner. And they could make it easier and cheaper to upgrade the hardware and software of the built-in navigation systems.

Finally, they’ll probably have to reduce the price of these build-in navigation systems. Auto makers aren’t used to producing a product where the price falls dramatically over time. But this is typical of high-tech industries. With portable navigation systems, it has only recently become possible to buy a high-end system for $400 or so. The cost was over a thousand not long ago.

The prices of built-in navigation systems have not declined to nearly the same extent, and in many cases haven’t declined at all. This even though the manufacturing cost has no doubt come way down. A pricing adjustment is needed, and my suspicion is that one is coming.