TrueDelta

A few months ago I provided my initial impressions of the Hyundai Genesis. I concluded that the specs were impressively competitive, but that the car didn’t bring anything new to the game aside from a low price.

Last week I finally found the time to take a Genesis for a test drive, and found that the large sedan drives very well. While no sport sedan, the handling is never sloppy, and the ride is always smooth and silent. Hyundai has achieved a remarkably high level of refinement with the car, nearly matching the best.

Still, nothing new for the industry, just new for Hyundai.

And yet, the very fact that Hyundai managed to create the Genesis at this point in time says something–because even though Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes have been offering similarly excellent cars, and Infiniti is getting back into the game for 2009 with a new V8 and new transmission, General Motors and Ford haven’t managed to. Worse, at the present time they’ve just about given up trying.

On the platform front, GM’s current rear-drive luxury car chassis can’t match the leaders in providing composed, precise handling together with a smooth ride. And the replacement platform, currently on hold, is less sophisticated, with a focus on reducing cost rather than improving performance. Ford no longer has such a platform, and a planned future rear-drive platform is now on hold. It wasn’t aiming to match the leaders, regardless.

In terms of engines, GM’s Northstar V8 is now over 15 years old, and is at best a generation behind the leaders. GM was developing a replacement, but canceled it when corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards were clearly going way up. The recent surge in fuel prices put a final nail in the Ultra V8’s coffin, if one were still needed.

Any program Ford had to develop a class-competitive DOHC V8, and any such program was not as far along as GM’s, died for the same reasons. Ford has decided to use a turbocharged V6 in place of a V8, and GM will likely do the same.

So why did Hyundai develop a new, class-competitive DOHC V8 and a rear-drive chassis to go with it? They’re hardly more likely to turn a profit on the new engine and new platform than GM or Ford would have been. But they have more money to spend, not being in danger of insolvency, and a need to prove what they are capable of. Which is exactly what the V8-powered Genesis does, more than anything else.

Meanwhile, Ford has just introduced the new Lincoln MKS with a price similar to the Hyundai’s. I drove one the same day I drove the Genesis. The MKS was developed after a new rear-drive platform was scrapped. The Taurus-derived front-drive chassis can’t begin to match the handling or ride quality of the Genesis. The engine sounds far less refined. In general, the MKS feels like a tarted up mainstream car. No surpise, actually. With little to spend, Ford aimed for a passable luxury car, not a class-leading one. And that’s what the MKS is.

Ultimately, the Genesis is a symbol that Hyundai’s financial and technical capability has surpassed that of General Motors and Ford.

It’s been six months since I last updated the list of the most popular price comparisons. Why so long? Partly because I’ve been buried in other work for the site. But also because it rarely changes much from one month to the next.

Go six months, though, and you’ll see a few changes.

The top five comparisons are now all between a Honda and a Toyota. Before, one of the five was between the Honda Accord and Nissan Altima–which has fallen all the way to sixth.

Last time, ten of the 40 comparisons included at least one domestic model–two even included two domestic models. But the Buick Enclave, Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion, and Chrysler minivans have all dropped off the list. It seems visitors’ interest in these once-hot domestics has cooled.

The only domestics still on the list: the Pontiac Vibe, in a 7th-ranked comparison with the Toyota Matrix, an dthe Saturn VUE, in a 37th-ranked comparison with the Honda CR-V. And I’m not sure the Vibe counts: it’s engineered and manufactured by Toyota.

New to the list: Subaru, with the Impreza/WRX being compared to the Mazda3 and the Forester being compared to the Toyota RAV4.

Models that appear the most times on the list: the Honda Accord and Mazda3, which are each in six comparisons, followed by the Honda Civic and BMW 3-Series, which are each in five.

GM started a new “employee pricing for everyone” sale today, and it will run through at least September 2nd. I still had the formula to calculate GM’s employee prices laying around from the last time this sale was run, three years ago.

So, with a few tweaks, it’s now on the site, making TrueDelta the only non-GM site I’m aware of to provide these prices.

About those tweaks: the “employee discount” is $75 less than it was three years ago–no big deal. But Saab and Saturn now share the regular GM formula. This means slightly higher prices for Saabs, but prices about $400 lower for Saturns.

Rebates were shaved by $1,000 and even $1,500 in a few cases, but still this sale looks like a good one.

The most heavily discounted vehicle: the Chevy TrailBlazer-based Saab 9-7X, which carries an $8,000 rebate on top of the employee price.

Today the Detroit News reported on the latest results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, specifically the fact that Detroit brands did worse this time around and ranked near (or at) the bottom.

Claes Fornell, the professor who heads the study, noted, “The gap is extending. Detroit is falling. It’s all foreign at the top and all American at the bottom.”

To Fornell’s the the newspaper’s credit, they do note a major reason for Detroit’s decline: people are unhappy with the fuel economy of their large SUVs and pickups–most of which were made by Detroit.

In other words, people are unhappy that the vehicle type–not brand–they decided to buy as much as three years ago uses more gas than they’d like it to–now that gas costs about $4 a gallon. This doesn’t really reflect badly on Detroit.

A key problem with these results: they’re only reported at the brand level. It would be nice to see how Detroit’s CAR models compare to the foreign-based competition, but the numbers needed to do this weren’t released.

Finally, the absolute differences are small. Every brand except Jeep is within five points of the average, and even Jeep–the worst–is only six points worse than the average.

As they stand, these results don’t tell us nearly as much as they pretend to.

The results of the Vehicle Reliability Survey will be updated next week. Actually, members have been able to view provisional results for about a month now, but next week they’ll be 99 percent finalized (a few very late responses or corrections might still trickle in) and be publicly released.

A number of milestones have been reached with this release:

Total number of full results: 152 (compared to 119 in May)

Total number of results: 300 (compared to 242 in May)

Earliest we’ve ever had a full result for the new model year, with the 2009 Nissan Murano. A big thanks to partner forums NissanMurano.org and NICOClub.com.

There will also be a partial result for the 2009 Jaguar XF, which is quite an achievement since this is not a high volume car.

Other 2009s are likely with the next update, in November: Dodge Journey, Subaru Forester, Toyota Corolla, and (maybe) Honda Pilot.

First model with over 200 responses: the 2008 Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook. Thanks are due to EnclaveForum.net, AcadiaForum.net, and SaturnFans.com.

Also the first model with over 1,200 months (100 vehicle-years) of data–the same trio.

The 2007 Nissan Versa passed the 1,000-month mark. Another thank you to NICOClub. A couple of other models are close to it.

First model with seven years of full results: the 2002 through 2008 Honda Accord. Partial results also provided for 1997 through 2001, for a total of twelve years. Credit here goes to DriveAccord.net.

Another bit from J.D. Power’s press release for their 2008 Vehicle Dependability Study: “on average, customers report experiencing 75 percent more problems in the third year of ownership than during the first 90 days.” They refer to this increase in reported problems as “quality deterioration.”

One big problem with this logic: the VDS covers an entire year, while the IQS covers only 90 days. In TrueDelta’s survey, problems occur fairly linearly for the first three years or so. Cover twice as many months, get twice as many repairs reported.

So a 75 percent increase is surprisingly low given that 300 percent more time is included. How might this be explained?

To begin with, JD Power includes design issues as well as reliability issues in their studies, especially in the IQS. Since design issues cannot be fixed, they’re present from the day the car is made, and never go away. They don’t increase linearly with time.

But respondent memory might also be a factor. TrueDelta conducts a monthly survey for one big reason: after a few weeks have passed, people start forgetting things. I send out emails to people with gaps in their responses. One of these people, asked to fill a hole last December, replied, “Are you kidding?” So when a survey covers an entire year, problems that were resolves earlier in the year are much more likely to be forgotten.

Finally, we have overload. J.D. Power’s surveys require much more work than TrueDelta’s, both because they cover a whole year and because they include far more questions. After reporting a problem or two, many people are likely to figure that will do and not mention problem three. Or four.

Ask every month, and you also avoid this factor.

Put all of this together, and we have far more deterioration in J.D.’s data from the IQS to the VDS than I see deterioration in the cars being studied.

J.D. Power released the results of its annual Vehicle Dependability Survey today, and one item has me scratching my head. They report that the fifth most commonly reported problem is “excessive window fogging.”

I’ve personally reviewed about 8,000 repair reports submitted by TrueDelta’s panel members over the last few years, and cannot remember a single report of “excessive window fogging.” But apparently it’s quite common.

TrueDelta’s survey does collect data on repairs–cases where a part needed to be adjusted or replaced to fix a problem–and not simply problems. Perhaps there’s no cure for “excessive window fogging?” Or is this more an annoyance than a problem, and people realize it doesn’t make sense to ask the dealer to fix it?

Why would this be a problem more in the third year than when a car is new? Maybe the interior surfaces of the windows need to be cleaned?

If someone has a clue about this apparently common problem, please enlighten me.

These days, just about any new car has a chance of going a year or two without a single problem. But there’s also the chance with any new car that it will have a problem the dealer just can’t sort out, at least not right away. Especially if it’s a new design in its first model year.

What to do? Most people will just keep taking the car back to the dealer until they resolve the problem. A few of these will end up going through the lemon law process and having the car bought back.

But one thing I have learned from conducting this research is that more people than I ever would have expected simply trade the problem car in for a new one. They generally take a large financial hit in the process.

My initial reaction: this lets the manufacturer off the hook and leaves the buyer with the financial cost of the manufacturer’s mistake.

But for buyers who take this route, life is simply too short to waste on the hassle of a problem car. And they’re not ones to complain. Just dump the problem car and buy a new one, quietly eat the cost, and move on.