Toyota Quality

People who assume anything about a car just because of the brand don't deserve to drive.  Consumer Reports (laughable magazine as it is) wound up kicking themselves in the teeth by finally admitting that they gave Toyota vehicles a pass because of the "recognized brand reliability" and not a single actual piece of objective data.

 

The vaunted "import reliability" is strongly founded in the 70s and 80s, when those companies were producing exponentially fewer cars than they are today, and they built that reputation by building cars that did absolutely nothing particularly well, and did nothing particularly well in an exceptional manner; the analogue of unbuttered white toast.  As their sales grew, they ran into the same mass production quality issues that Ford, Dodge, and Chevrolet had already hit and dealt with.  Yeah, domestic manufacturers have their problems, but today, every single import car maker has the same problems, too. 

 

Funny thing to note. My uncle was a domestic guy for years.  When I got my current job, I needed a gas-sipper commuter, because my Trans Am wasn't quite light on gas use (to be fair, it's not quite stock).  My uncle sold me his 2005 Sunfire as a daily beater, and bought a 2010 Camry for his daily.  Three months later, he tells me he wishes he had the Pontiac; and the Sunfire is, even by daily driver standards, not even a mid-level car.  He despises the Toyota so much, he drives his Mercedes to work most of the time, even though it gets horrid gas mileage.

 

There are good imports, and good domestics; there are horrible imports, and there are horrible domestics.  Each car, truck, or SUV (or any of the innumerable cross-hybrid-things on the road now) should be judged on its own merits, not using a generic stereotype of the manufacturer brand.

Edited by DemonicLemming - 4/30/11 at 9:48pm

I haven't spent much time in Corollas, but I know several owners who swear by them. Maybe not exciting, but they still run.

I bought my first non-Ford a few years back - a 2007 Scion tC Spec model (I did not want that troublesome sunroof and it was $2k cheaper) with a 5-speed. It's closing in on 78k and still runs like new. Just do the routine maintenance and add gas. It needs an alignment (my fault) and new tires, which I'll do at 80k.

When it turns 100k, I'll give it a good DIY going-over. I plan to replace the belts, hoses, wires, plugs, brake pads, filters, and maybe drop in fresh shocks and springs, and a full detail. I'm planning to keep it for the long term. All the wear parts are inexpensive and Toyota did an outstanding job of making these easily serviceable.

Anyhow, yes, I'd buy another Toyota.

Also, don't sell your Focus short. That and the Civic were on my list - I liked both a lot and think I would have been happy with them. My family has owned about 90% Fords, and we've had good luck with them. I've had four and still have an old Mercury Comet. The only dog was a 1984 Lincoln Mark VII. I don't know what I was thinking. The drivetrain was fine, but the windows and sunroof stopped working. So did the mirrors and the radio turned schizophrenic. The HVAC system had loads of personality. Then there was the horror of its airbag suspension. Sometimes it would take several minutes to inflate. Sometimes only one side would inflate and you'd drive around listing 15° to port, and it would completely deflate when parked. It sort of looked like a stalking cat.

Enthusiast/mainstream disconnect.

 

Same reason why sports cars and manual transmissions are dying.

 

 

That's not really the case. Consumer Reports' records consistently showed that Toyotas had a great reliability record. The "pass" was for redesigns where Consumer Reports traditionally puts a TBD until the redesign has enough of a record to stand on it's own. They stopped that bit after Toyota's 2007 fiasco with their new 3.5L V6 and redesigned Toyota Tundra.

 

I suspect that Consumer Reports gets a bad rap when it comes to cars since their evaluations come from a "mainstream" buyer's perspective instead of the "enthusiast" perspective that most car rags push.

Edited by marvin - 4/30/11 at 10:09pm

Magazine reliability and real-world reliability are two different things.  And, I have issues with a magazine that would give an automatic "recommended" check-mark to any vehicle from a manufacturer, based on nothing but vague "past performance".  It's also laughable that the electronics issue with the throttle problems (not an issue with the physical design of the pedal) was known about for years in earlier Toyota models, but Consumer Reports couldn't be bothered with real-world problems...until the NHTSA put the hammer down and Toyota openly acknowledged the issue.  And then, boom, Toyota is right back to being automatically recommended by Consumer Reports, without any objective data to support that move at all.

 

Ever since I read a CS article about a Corvette, and at the end they recommended people look at a Toyota, for the increased trunk space, I could never take anything they said seriously.  Enthusiast car magazines are just as bad; the preferred car in those is typically the one that pays the highest advertising fees.  There was a shootout - I think in Motor Trend - between the GTO and the newly-redesigned Mustang; the GTO won in every single objective category, so Motor Trend threw in an imaginary "Gotta Have It" category and ranked the Mustang above the GTO.  Guess which car they recommended?  The Ford, even though the GTO was a superior car in every single aspect.  Guess Ford paid their bills early that month.

 

Consumer Reports gets a bad rep from people who actually know about the stuff they're buying, because that magazine is full of thoroughly digested and excreted cattle feed.
 

 

Edited by DemonicLemming - 5/1/11 at 5:25am

 

Consumer Reports has the closest thing to objective data when it comes to available reliability information. They have by far the largest sample size and look to have little competition unless manufacturers voluntarily cough up their repair databases. While there are questionable aspects about their algorithms (with major oddities showing up in cars with small sample sizes), it's about as good as it gets for consumers. For the enthusiast, forums may offer better information about specific aspects of reliability, but even there, it's difficult to get "big picture" reliability information.

 

 

The NHTSA found nothing.

 

Consumer Reports pulled their recommendations for all Toyota models when the SUA fiasco started, and reversed that move when it was clear that there was no electrical issues. That seems reasonably fair to me. The only "issue" was a government witch hunt based on fear, not data.

 

 

 

 

I read the same article. While there are plenty of difficult to defend recommendations and outright strange match ups, this wasn't one of them. The GTO lost because it's an ugly car compared to the Mustang. Perfectly reasonable conclusion given that looks is certainly a criteria, very often the main criteria, that people use when they buy a car. The market agreed as GTO sales were lethargic and Mustangs continued to sell well.

Performance isn't the be all end all of purchasing criteria. If it were, Corvettes and GT-Rs would dominate every sports car match up in their respective price brackets.

I really do dislike hyperbole much as what was stated at the top of the quote (I realize that this is not necessarily the OP's personal opinion, and merely an interpretation of an observation).

 

Personally, I've never owned a Toyota myself but I have noticed that while they do make good, reliable cars (I've never thrown them off the option list when considering car options, and the FJ Cruiser is on my list of cars I have an interest in), I have noticed that while many of their cars get rave reviews for reliability, there are differing real world opinions about them. I have two sets of family friends. One moved from India to the US just 4-5 years ago, and at the time, they bought two Toyota Corollas. These are their first cars and their first Toyotas and they have nothing but rave reviews about everything about them. On the other hand, I have a family friend who bought a Toyota 4Runner back in the 90's and loved it to death until he hit some black ice on a freeway a few years back and totalled it. He was so happy with it that his new car was a new model 4Runner which, he has been a bit disappointed with. He says (in his opinion), instead of fixing what needed to be fixed in the older 4Runner, and keeping what worked alone,

 

In any case, when it comes to standing by reliability and durability of a car, I will stand buy Suzuki and Jeep any day of the year. In the last 12 years, I've had the chance to play with an 80's model Maruti Suzuki 800 (still running, still in use), an '00, Maruti Suzuki Esteem VX (still running, still in use), '95 Suzuki Sidekick (still running, still in use), '01 Jeep Cherokee (still running, still in use) and my current '09 Jeep Wrangler and while I've beaten the c**p out of all of them (my dad moreso than me in the case of the two Maruti Suzukis), they keep running and they keep coming back for more. We were the 3rd owner on the MS 800 and we drove that thing hard on Indian roads, up and down the state (anyone who knows what rural roads in India are like knows what I'm talking about), and the car had nearly 200,000+ miles on it when we bought it. The Sidekicks is still running strong - I gave it to my sister last year as her car, with 15 years on its life and counting, and minus a rear bumper that was totalled in a rear-ending when my mom was driving, all the parts (including the windshield wipers and the tires, depressingly enough) are the original parts. Same deal with the Cherokee- I was rear-ended once in it and that put a pretty decent dent in the rear bumper, but beyond that, never had a problem with it either.

 

Consumer Reports, unless what I've read is wrong, only samples data from their readers, and no other sources.  Given the demographic of Consumer Reports readers, it's safe to say that it's not an unbiased source, let alone objective.

 

There have been quite a few reports on Toyota forums - for years - about acceleration problems unrelated to "improperly-designed gas pedals".  And, myself being in the safety testing industry, having looked over what the NHTSA did for their testing, it was an absolute joke.  Their sample size was tiny, the manufacturing date range was tiny, and the tests weren't inclusive at all of real-world reliability and use methodology.  The "fix" from the third-party pedal manufacturer was nothing but a publicity stunt on Toyota's part, and the scapegoating of the manufacturer served its purpose quite well.  The media is as much at fault for Toyota's faux-unblemished facade, as you'll see article after article about issues with domestics, from recalls to consumer complaints, but even though there are just as many, if not more of those same recalls and consumer complaints for import manufacturers, the media doesn't like to report those.  Horrible editing and highly biased articles against domestic manufacturers doesn't help anything, either.

 

And regarding CR giving Toyota automatic ratings - you don't see any issues with that?  Oh look, a major issue that could have potentially killed quite a few people, but Toyota blamed it on a US manufacturer, so now we'll go ahead and add them back to the "always recommend without reservation" list?  It's not even just CR's method of gathering data; it's the people submitting data.  The average driver today doesn't even know where their oil drain plug is, or when to change the oil until their car tells them to; these are not the people I want giving me advice on real-world reliability, or anything car-related.

 

The GTO being ugly compared to the Mustang has nothing to do with a supposedly objective test designed to show the consumer which car is better, not which car is prettier (which is completely subjective, and not even inclusive of the "Gotta Have It" BS aspect Motor Trend was peddling).  The Mustang has always sold better, especially in the V6 secretary car form; the GTO was a poorly-modified Holden import (that sold very well in its home market), but regardless of all that, the GTO was objectively, in every category, the better car.  Motor Trend, and almost every other car magazine out there, is nothing but a marketing money scam; the performance numbers they publish are so out of touch with what the cars do in reality, it's honestly laughable.

 

I would never buy a Toyota, why not support American cars??? If i were to get anything foreign it would be a VV, Audi, or someother high end car.

 

Vintage? lol, i know its pretty sad. Always trying to cut profits, while the quality goes down.

 

I have a 98 Civic and I was told by a mechanic at my local Firestone that he owns the same model of Civic (96-99) that I do because Honda made better quality cars during that time than they do now, and that the current lineup has more reliability issues on average. I thought that was interesting.

 

It seems like all of the new cars out on the market today are ridiculously plastic-ey in a bad way. My Civic is like 99% plastic, granted, but it doesn't have any rattles or anything in it, and everything still feels solid. When you sit in a new Focus, Civic, or Corolla, it's hard to figure out why the plastic paneling and various interior knick-knacks feel less solid, but they do.

 

The new Focus is nice, my grampa has one and the clutch on it is so smooth, it absolutely puts my Civic to shame, that, and it has lots of features that you'd have to buy a mid-size instead of a small sedan to get. Seems like American cars are making a comeback. Now, if they could just ditch the solid rear axles... :)

All Toyotas are not Toyotas, so to speak. Some are manufactured/partially manufactured in the U.S., some in Mexico, a few in Japan. My 07 mexican Prerunner has noticeably lower quality control than my former 03 Prerunner. I was initially pretty disappointed.

Quite a few Toyotas are assembled in the US these days while quite a few American brands are assembled in Mexico. Which do you think is better?

My car made a long boat trip - it has the Japan code in the VIN. As I said earlier, I considered the Focus. But it was difficult to turn up one with a 5 speed and without a bunch of accessories I didn't want.

And reconsider VW, Audi, and a bunch of other European cars. They have high-end advertising budgets and that's about it. Image doesn't mean much when you're on the side of the road. People poke fun at old British cars with Lucas electrics, but I'd take an old MG or Morgan any day over a new BMW. At least with the old Lucas rigs you can tinker with a few tools and get it to run. A new BMW or Audi will sit at the dealer for a week while proprietary parts come in and then you get a four-figure repair bill. Hell, it'd probably be cheaper to maintain an old Ferrari or Lotus (they'd be much more fun, as well).

If you want an efficient car with modern conveniences, buy Japanese. If you want something that will run forever and is dead cheap to maintain in your driveway, buy old American iron. The last thing my old Comet needed was a master cylinder. About $50 at Pep Boys and we installed it in about an hour. It's mileage is ugly, but the engine and transmission have never needed anything but routine maintenance - and they're over 40 years old.