TrueDelta

We start each round of surveys on the first Tuesday of the month. So a few days remain to gather responses for the August results, which will cover members’ repair experiences through the end of June.

This has been a difficult month. Response rates have been down compared to previous quarters. Just a few percentage points, but that represents hundreds of responses. The reasons are unclear, but the worsening economy might be having an impact. Many people might be worried about their jobs, so they feel they don’t have time to deal with relatively minor concerns like TrueDelta’s survey. And they probably feel that their next car purchase is now much farther off, so no need for reliability information any time soon.

We also appear to be having more trouble with over-zealous spam filters. TrueDelta has never sent spam, and the better filters recognize this. But many email providers use imprecise filters. If only everyone used gmail…

Even with the lower response rate, nearly 6,700 responses have been returned so far. If not a single additional response came in, we’d still have results for 134 model / model year combinations, and results for another 148 with asterisks.

But we’ll have more. At the end of each quarter, I note which models are just a response or two short of a minimum, and send special emails to members who own them. A couple dozen models are this close, so we’ll hopefully end up with full results for about 150 of them and asterisked results for another 140. This has been the goal since the beginning of the month, and it is within reach, even with the lower-then-expected response rate.

This morning I received an email from Britain’s Auto Express magazine, announcing that the results to “Britain’s top car reliability survey” had been posted here.

Intrigued, I clicked through to check it out, and found that some European models do quite well. At the model level, the top four are the Skoda Octavia (related to the VW Jetta), Land Rover Discovery (LR3 in the US), Mercedes E-Class, and MG ZT (not sold here). The Lexus IS manages fifth. At the manufacturer leavel, Skoda (part of VW), Jaguar, and BMW rank second, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

Much different results than I’ve seen in any US vehicle reliability survey.

Once again, it pays to look at what was measured by the survey. I couldn’t find the actual questions, but “results by category” are posted. Categories include, in addition to reliability: performance, build quality, running costs, comfort, practicality, ease of driving, braking, handling, and ride quality.

When a survey includes ten categories, only one of which is reliability, how is it still a “reliability survey?”

If you look at reliability alone, 18 of the top 20 models are Asian, the Skoda Octavia ranks 20th, and the Land Rover Discovery (LR3) ranks 39th.

On top of this little sleight of hand, I suspect that the survey measures reliability by asking something along the lines of, “How reliable is your car?” Such wording makes the results highly subjective. It’s measuring owner opinions, not actual repair rates.

The results are still quite interesting, just realize what they actually measure.

Last year GM introduced a “mild hybrid” variant of the Saturn Aura sedan. A relatively simple hybrid powertrain improved fuel economy by a couple miles per gallon on the EPA cycle compared to the regular four-cylinder. Not much of a gain, but then GM only charged $2,400 more for the “Green Line” version of the Aura. And this extra cash included alloy wheels, stability control, automatic climate control, and a $1,300 tax credit. TrueDelta calculated an apples-to-apples price bump of about $200.

Not much of a bump. But then the regular 2008 Aura has a $1,250 rebate currently (and had a $2,000 rebate earlier in the month).

These rebates kick the price difference up to $1,500+, and might explain why the Green Line has sold poorly. How poorly? A mere 30 were sold in June.

For 2009, GM adds a six-speed automatic and stability control to the base Aura, and bumps its price by $1,600 (over last year’s intro price) in the process. The new transmission does make the EPA highway rating nearly the same as the hybrid’s. The Green Line gets no new standard equipment other than one-inch-larger alloys and a new name–it’s simply the Aura Hybrid now. The new tires must have very low rolling resistance, as both city and highway EPA ratings are up by two, to 26/34. Overall, these are minor changes. And yet, the base price is up by a whopping $2,790.

Even with today’s gas prices, I don’t see more than a handful of people paying about $2,500 (after adjusting for feature differences) for a four mile-per-gallon improvement in city driving, and a miniscule improvement in highway driving. How did GM’s beancounters figure they could get away with such an increase? Beats me, unless they think discarding “Green Line” in favor of “Hybrid” will ignite interest in the car.

Note: The Malibu Hybrid has received a similar price increase.

From ehsnils at Subaru Legacy forum LegacyGT.com I just learned of another source of vehicle reliability information. The Swedish government agency that inspects all cars three or more years old posts its results to the web, here: Bilprovningen Inspection Results.

They post not only the percentage of cars that failed the inspection, but which part was responsible for the failure. Thankfully, they’ve even translated their results into English.

Great info. But, as always, it’s important to know what’s being measured.

In this case, you’re not likely to learn of problems that make the car undriveable–because the owner would have fixed those before driving to the inspection. At the other extreme, you won’t learn of problems that don’t threaten safety, because those parts of the car aren’t inspected.

So, Bilprovningen provides a good record of problems that don’t render the car instantly undriveable, but that do threaten safety. Good to have, but not everything.

Their major weakness, though, is that cars are only inspected when they are three years old, or older. Also, they don’t seem to update their posted information regularly: the results currently shown are from 2006. So the most recent model year covered is 2003.

This is a problem because all of the cars surveyed are now two years older. So their reliability could have declined substantially.

In contrast, TrueDelta:

–provides a record of all repairs, from the most major to the most minor

–updates promptly four times a year