TrueDelta Updates Reliability Survey

by Michael Karesh

Published: December 1st, 2010

Thanks in part to the help of people from TTAC, TrueDelta received a record number of responses to October’s Car Reliability Survey—nearly 19,000. Updated car reliability stats have been posted to the site for 488 cars, up from 459 three month ago. There are partial results for another 370. These stats cover through the end of September 2010. Other sources of car reliability information will not cover the third quarter of 2010 until the summer or even fall of next year.

Among early 2011s, we now have full results for the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Sorento. Though in its first model year, the thoroughly redesigned Sonata has been better than average. This is not a given for Hyundai—the Genesis sedan with tech package and the Genesis Coupe both had glitchy first years. The Sorento has been about average so far.

We’ll have full results for a few more 2011s with the next update, in February. Early data on the Ford Fiesta is not good.

TrueDelta also has updated “nada-odds” and “lemon-odds” stats. These report the percentage of cars with no repairs and the percentage with 3+ repair trips in the past year, respectively. Among the covered 2010s, the Aud Q5 and Hyundai Genesis Coupe were the most likely to require repairs, and by a substantial margin. Only 35 percent of Q5 owners and 42 percent of Gen Coupe owners reported no repairs. The Jaguar XF would likely join them t the bottom if we’d had enough responses for it.

Or is the glass one-third full? Even with the worst 2010 (by this stat), your odds of a repair-free car were better than one in three. Look at much older cars, and even with the worst (the 2001 Volvo S60 and V70) your chances of a repair-free car are about one in four. This explains why, whenever a model gets a poor reliability rating, plenty of owners can honestly claim they’ve had no problems. On the other hand, with the most reliable models (Toyota Prius, Toyota Yaris, Honda Insight, Honda Fit, Honda CR-V) your chances of a repair-free car are about nine in ten.

Only among the least reliable cars (generally 8+ years old and European) are your odds of 3+ repair trips in a year greater than one in ten.

We’d like to provide these stats for all cars—just a matter of getting more owners involved.

To view the updated results:

Car Reliability Survey results

Nada-odds

#Quality #Reliability #TrueDelta

Michael Karesh

Michael Karesh lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan, with his wife and three children. In 2003 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. While in Chicago he worked at the National Opinion Research Center, a leader in the field of survey research. For his doctoral thesis, he spent a year-and-a-half inside an automaker studying how and how well it understood consumers when developing new products. While pursuing the degree he taught consumer behavior and product development at Oakland University. Since 1999, he has contributed auto reviews to Epinions, where he is currently one of two people in charge of the autos section. Since earning the degree he has continued to care for his children (school, gymnastics, tae-kwan-do...) and write reviews for Epinions and, more recently, The Truth About Cars while developing TrueDelta, a vehicle reliability and price comparison site.

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4 of 20 comments

Ian Williams on Dec 01, 2010

How about "Peaches" rather than Nada ?

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- Michael Karesh on Dec 02, 2010
  
  I considered peaches, plums, and cherries. None of them seemed to communicate "zero repairs" well. And each had critics.
  
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Hreardon on Dec 02, 2010

Question for you: how are you classifying "repairs"? It says that the Q5 and Hyundai required more repairs than average, but what does that mean? Eg: check engine light or unable to drive the car?

Like Reply
- Michael Karesh on Dec 02, 2010
  
  All reported repairs are posted to the "repair histories" section of the site. I haven't looked closely at these two cars, but the great majority of all reported repairs are minor to moderate. Few render the car undriveable.
  
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