Every once in a while when I follow up with a participant in TrueDelta’s Vehicle Reliability Survey, I’ll be told that the car in question required “no significant repairs.” At which point I ask, what about the insignificant ones?

Unlike with Consumer Reports, every repair beyond routine maintenance and wear items (which are explicitly listed) should be reported. Even if it seems insignificant.

Why? Because different people are going to have different interpretations of what should count as “significant” (or “serious,” in CR-speak). Not only this, but extraneous factors will shape these interpretations. Was a loaner provided? Did the dealer provide good service? Has the car been reliable in the past? Does the owner generally like the car? How much of an inconvenience was it to take the car to the shop? And so fon.

TrueDelta’s method strives to minimize the roles of subjective interpretations and extraneous factors. So we ask that all repairs, even minor ones, be reported. Responses to some of the questions on the survey can be used to determine which repairs were truly serious when there are large enough sample sizes to make such an analysis viable.