Toyota UK's Warranty Accelerates Past (Most) Of The Competition
Many people (especially on this site) worry that Toyota might become the new old GM. I beg to differ. Toyota is a well run company, it turns a profit and builds good cars (not great, but good ones). When GM was swirling around the porcelain throne, people were desperately seeking ideas to recall lost customers back to GM. One thought was the “5 year, bumper-to-bumper warranty.”
The logic was watertight. Stop saying that your cars are as good as the competition (I’m looking at you, Mr Lutz) and put your money where your mouth is. Why should a customer commit tens of thousands to a car, if you can’t commit to a measly 5 years? But GM never did it. We had a powertrain warranty, but not a bumper-to-bumper one. Now compare this to Hyundai, who where, and let’s not mince words here, a joke in the car world. A commitment to quality and a 5 year bumper-to-bumper warranty (in the UK) later and Hyundai is up there with the best of them. So, if it’s good enough for Hyundai….
…it’s good enough for Toyota. The witch hunt sudden unintended acceleration issue has caused a big dent in Toyota’s reputation. Toyota needs to restore one of the key reasons to buy a Toyota. Reliability. Autocar reports that Toyota is to roll out a 5 year warranty as standard, on all of its vehicles, from June the 1st. In the UK.
Miguel Fonseca, Toyota UK’s managing director gushed that “Our new five-year warranty is tangible evidence of our commitment to quality and to our customers – both those who are loyal to the brand and those who are considering switching to Toyota for their next car,”. Well done, Toyota! Great idea, just badly executed. You see, there’s two problems with Toyota’s new warranty. The first problem is that Toyota’s warranty comes with a 100,000 miles limit. Hyundai and Kia don’t state a mileage limit. Problem number two, Kia’s warranty is seven years, not five. Nice try, Toyota, but Hyundai and Kia still have the edge over you. Double or quits?
N.B: If you’re interested, Kia has provided a nice little table which shows all the competition’s warranties here.
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To get me into anything GM, I'd want to see 5yrs bumper-to-bumper, 7yrs powertrain, and at least 4yrs all routine maintenance paid. With synthetic oils, you'd take it in once a year with damn near everything paid for. There is another benefit... I'm convinced that the one thing that improves vehicles the fastest is long warranties the force the automaker to eat its own dog food (as Microsoft calls it). Nothing reaches them faster as when the money comes out of their own pocket. Short warranties = golden profits = stiffed customers. Chrysler put out many years of poorly designed, failure-prone transmissions. They and the Chryser dealers danced all the way to the bank making a mint of it. May they burn in hell on their way to bankruptcy.
I don't own a Kia, but a few coworkers have mentioned the difficulty of claiming problems under warranty. I wouldn't be going down that road just yet.