TrueDelta

Each month I send out an email asking people to check their list of cars for accuracy, and also with information about the latest improvements to the site.

Invariably I receive a few dozen requests to be removed from the panel in response. Not many considering there are about 25,000 members. But still more than I care to see. 

The most common reason: not enough time to continue. (Usually from people who never responded to the brief surveys.) The next most common: just not interested in the information I’ve been working so hard to provide. Thanks…

To be fair, I receive quite a few more responses thanking me for developing the site. But it’s in my nature to focus on the first group.

One very good thing about this email: it reminds people to add new cars. I tweaked it a bit this month. And the response was huge: 202 cars were added on Tuesday (a daily record), and another 175 were added yesterday.

Last month I announced that the panel would pass the 30,000 vehicle mark in June. Looks like it will also pass the 31,000 mark before the month is over.

And in August: results for about 150 models.

Those of you who have been making this possible, thanks, I truly appreciate it.

One reason luxury car sales have surged in recent years is that leases have become more and more attractive. And one way manufacturers manage to offer low lease payments is by lying to themselves about how much their cars will be worth when the lease is over. After all, when those leases come due some other exec will be responsible (but not accountable).

This can be a problem for manufacturers even when the market is flat. When the market turns downward, as it’s currently doing, resale values drop. This will leave auto companies with huge losses on their leases. One member informed me today that BMW offered him $5,000 off his buyout if he’ll keep the car. But even with such a large discount, he’s not planning to.

Multiply that by hundreds of thousands, and even millions of vehicles, and we’re talking huge losses.

I’d especially hate to be the lessor of hundreds of thousands of large SUVs right now…

Back in 2001 the Toyota Altezza arrived in the U.S. as the Lexus with a price in the low 30s. The interior didn’t seem worthy of a Lexus, and the price was beyond the reach of many who would otherwise buy a small rear-drive sedan.

Ever since then I’ve been waiting for a manufacture to fill an obvious hole in the market by offering a compact, affordable rear-drive sedan. Better yet, for me, a compact rear-drive foor-door hatch or wagon. I’d like to see a curb weight around 3,000 pounds, 225 horsepower, and a reasonably equipped price in the mid-twenties.

With gas prices up and people suddenly interested in compact cars and far less interested in brute power, the time is ripe. Just because gas is pricey, doesn’t mean cars have to become boring. They just have to become smarter.  

A compact, relatively light rear-drive sedan wouldn’t only be more affordable and economical than the 3-Series wannabes that have attracted so much attention in recent years. It would also handle better than these cars. It would be the family car of choice for driving enthusiasts in the age of $4+ gas.

Now who’ll deliver such a car first?

Sometimes when I have an idea, I wish I’d implemented it much earlier. This is one of those times.

I’ve been planning all along to eventually analyze results of TrueDelta’s Fuel Economy Survey to generate figures for straight city driving, straight highway, the impact of A/C use, and so forth. Problem is, with so many variables, this is going to require a lot of data. And quite a bit of money to pay an analyst.

Then, the other day, I had a blinding flash of the obvious. While there aren’t yet enough data (or funds) for such an analysis, why not make it possible for people to simply filter results based on their own responses to the survey questions? This is relatively simple, and can be done right now.

So I did it. Members can now specify their driving style and their driving mix (traffic/city/suburbs/highway). You do have to be logged in to use the filter–so we also have another way to reward those who’ve been making everything possible.

There have been nearly 10,000 responses to the Fuel Economy Survey so far. This is enough to provide some results for many likely combinations of driving style and driving conditions, but no doubt many others will get a “no data for this combination” response. In this month’s email I’ll ask members to submit responses.

Thanks for helping me create the best Fuel Economy Survey on the Internet.

In the week after J.D. Power released the results of its 2008 Initial Quality Survey (IQS), I’ve come across quite a few forum posts that went like this: “Great news: our car did very well. But why is BMW’s quality so bad?”

Yes, BMW again scored below the average on this year’s IQS. But this isn’t because the cars suffer from many defects. What people easily forget (if they ever knew it): in recent year’s J.D. Power’s IQS has measured two very different things: “design quality” and “mechanical quality.” The latter measures what most people think of when they hear “quality”: things that break and needed to be fixed. “Design quality,” on the other hand, concerns problems with driveability and usability that are designed into the car: the smoothness of the engine, the ease of operating the audio system, and so forth. These aren’t things that can be repaired.

BMW’s low score is largely due to one thing: the make’s iDrive control system. Auto reviewers have been criticizing it from Day One, and it seems owners don’t much care for it, either.

But it’s a mistake to infer from complaints about iDrive that BMWs are unreliable. Of course, this wouldn’t happen if J.D. Power didn’t combine the two areas into a single score. 

Starting this month, I’ve added a new outcome to the repair survey: successful repair without replacing parts.

I’ve done this because a small but not insignificant portion of repairs involve cleaning, lubricating, adjusting, or otherwise improving the function of a part rather than replacing this part.

Months ago I wondered whether these should be considered repairs. I’m still not sure. Maybe I’ll eventually post results with and without such repairs included. Using a different outcome to classify them is a first step.

I’ve also added a couple new systems to the list of what was repaired: “fuel, ignition, and intake” and “interior trim.” I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable about including the former in “engine.” A few other new categories have been added, but for internal use. I don’t want the list on the survey to get too lengthy, so we’ll recode these as necessary. Justs be sure to give us a clear description of what was repaired!