While entering the pricing for Volvo’s new compact hatch, I came across a surprising item: a $300 “Custom Build” charge is assessed if one or more options are ordered. Only a handful of options are exempt from this charge. Want the the base car, but with the optional $40 rear seat armrest? It’s going to set you back an extra… More →
Month: May 2007
No, tilting the camera does not make the car look cool
The TrueDelta site has not been friendly to the visually oriented. In other words, it has lacked photos of the cars it provides information about. Well, I’m finally doing something about this. Beyond making the site prettier, photos should help those who haven’t a clue what the name of Kia’s minivan is (Sedona). Thumbnails will be attending the model selection… More →
Avoid decimals in reliability stats? Yes or no?
All along I’ve been planning to report repair rates per vehicle, rather than per 100. My reasoning is that doing the usual thing and reporting rates “per 100 vehicles” yields larger numbers that can give the impressions that repair rates are higher than they are. Sure, if people think through it they’ll realize that 62 repairs per 100 cars is… More →
Fold-flat front passenger seat: every vehicle with a hatch should have one
My wife keeps buying books, so every once in a while I must buy another 84×30-inch bookcase. The last time around I avoiding paying delivery by taking her car. Which happens to be a Chrysler PT Cruiser. The store employees took one look at the car and suggested that I’d better pony up for delivery. No way a seven-foot bookcase… More →
Reflashes – should they count as repairs?
The systems in cars are increasingly computerized. Partly as a result, when one of these systems is misbehaving the fix these days is often a software update, or “reflash.” This is especially true when a model, engine, or transmission is in its first year. Three months ago the Repair Survey started including such reflashes as a separate outcome. At that… More →
May results, now with graphs!
The May results have now been posted. As with the earlier two sets of results, some results are official, while others are asterisked because the number of responses was low. The official May results include 33 models, up from 26 three months ago. This understates the increase, as this time I required 25 responses for the results to be official.… More →
Fusion beats Camry and Accord?
For a few months now Ford has been touting the “Fusion Challenge.” In a pair of Ford-sponsored events, 1,000 subscribers to Car and Driver and Road & Track rated the Ford Fusion higher than the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. I can’t decide what concerns me more, that the magazines had Ford pay them to conduct the events or that… More →
Honda and Toyota – no longer risk averse?
Not so long ago and you could count on nearly every Honda and Toyota having about the most bland, conservative styling on the road. Critics charged that the cars were boring and mere appliances. But car buys didn’t seem to mind, sending many of these appliances to the top of the sales charts. Still, these companies learned from Detroit’s failure… More →
A nation of torque junkies
Back in the Golden Age of Detroit, owners of imported sports cars viewed the drivers of big block domestic “muscle cars” as unintelligent unsophisticated knuckledraggers. After all, true connoisseurs of the automobile knew that the real joys were in skillfully working the pedals, shifter, and steering, not in being able to deprive one’s frontal lobe of oxygen through the simple act of putting one’s… More →
A milestone: the 100th 2007 Nissan Versa joins the panel
When TrueDelta.com started collecting vehicle reliability information, plenty of people asserted that it would never succeed. These doubters said there’s a reason car buyers have only one flawed source of such information: it’s far too difficult to gather a sufficient number of participants. Actually, all it takes is an active, enthusiastic forum. NICOClub.com, the Internet’s most vibrant Nissan and Infiniti… More →