Kia (0 for 34)
Suzuki (0 for 12)
Saab (0 for 6)
Land Rover (0 for 20)

The following only had one…

Lincoln (1 out of 40)
Jaguar (1 out of 14)
Cadillac (1 out of 40)

Compared with…

Acura (14 out of 39) 36%
Volvo (11 out of 37) 30%
Jeep… No Wrangler (25 out of 78) 32%

and two of my favorites….

Camry (27 out of 73)
Accord (27 out of 78)

Which still aren’t as good as a 1990’s Volvo… but pretty damn close.

Chrysler brand vehicles

Trade-in’s with 150k+ miles* = 13 out of 99 (13.1%)

Trade-in’s with less than 100k = 56 out of 99 (56.6%)

If you negate the Chrysler Town & Country, the spread between the two expands from an unfavorable 4 to 1 ratio to a gulf like 7 to 1 ratio. This supports the widely held belief that Chrysler tends to make lousy cars.

Dodge brand vehicles

More than 150k : 32 out of 196 (16.3%)

Less than 100k: 82 out of 196 (41.8%)

Cars did far worse than trucks… the Neon’s ratio was a highly unfavorable 13 to 2.

Jeep Brand Vehicles

More than 150k: 26 out of 103 (25.2%)

Less than 100k: 42 out of 103 (40.5%)

There’s a nice contrast in the data between a low quality model like the Neon and higher quality models such as the Cherokee and Grand Cherokee.

15 Cherokees and Grand Cherokees were traded under 100k while 23 were traded with over 150k. A 60.5% favorable ratio for the pair vs. only a 13.3% for the Neon.

If we remove the Wrangler model, which is usually used in a seasonal manner and therefore has fewer miles on average, the trade-in ratios become dead even. 25 out of 77 for both. Any brand that has a 30% or higher trade-in% for vehicles over 150k+ tends to be in the top five on the CTI. Jeep, Honda, Toyota, Acura, and Lexus are usually the tops in that measurement.

What can we conclude? Measuring the mileage of vehicles traded-in could actually help customers figure out whether a given vehicle will offer a quality product to their customer. For Chrysler, only the Jeep brand has excelled over the last decade and change.

Right. Does anyone know whether GM ever sent out such a candid letter about product quality?

Yikes. I frequent a Jeep Patriot forum (I am not an owner) and a major lament is leaky roofs, regardless of whether they have a sunroof or not. Leaky roofs in a brand new vehicle!! Ruined headliners, multiple visits to befuddled dealers, the works. I would never risk buying a used Patriot as a result, and fans (I think it’s a neat vehicle in its Platonic Jeep Patriot Ideal) are bracing to see if the 2009s are all reliabily dry.

And what makes a “successful” visit? The problematic ones are the unsuccessful visits, when the poor dealer doesn’t even know how to fix the damn thing.

What he said (Schmitt)

TrueDelta doesn’t yet have results for many Chrysler vehicles. The people who tend to participate in our research are those who care about reliability, and people who care about reliability and look at the existing information on Chryslers don’t buy Chryslers.

I disagree, not every Chrysler model is a unreliable when it leaves the showroom. One of my cars is a Chrysler and one is a Toyota, and I am a participant of your website. If you saw at least average reliability according to CR, combined with a low initial cost, and low cost of maintenance (ever paid for Camry struts? Rip off.) even if you cared about reliability would you want to pay an additional $5-6k to Toyota or Honda to roll the dice anyway? That is $5k that is in my pocket now, so I can afford to gamble later.

My experience has been that Chrysler quality is improving, although not on models that were refreshed recently by Daimler. I was surprised however to see that some Toyota models last year were in the CR doghouse.

Of course I do not tend to keep my cars all that long anyway, but I will with the lifetime warranty assuming Chrysler corp has a lifetime.

Wolf

Based on our aggressive focus on warranty claim rate reduction, we know that the cars we are building today have a much higher standard of overall quality.

One big problem is that the cars currently on Chrysler lots are 2007 models and 2008 model year vehicles that were built about one year ago.

And even if the cars they are building today have a much higher standard of overall quality, they aren’t building that many of them.

Even with all of that set up, they couldn’t make the stupid instrument cluster lights work reliably. We eventually got all of our purchase cost back including taxes, registration fees, insurance and the lawyer’s fees. We did so without going to court. It was simply a matter of hiring (on 100% contingency) a lawyer who specializes in these cases. He contact Chrysler, did the paperwork shuffle for about two months and then gave us instructions as to where and when to meet the Chrysler regional rep. to turn over the vehicle in return for a check.

Needless to say, we have told the story to hundreds of friends and acquaintances and have never even considered buying another Chrysler product.

How could they be so dense as to not be able to fix a dashboard light problem?

P.S. We replaced the Town and Country with an Oldsmobile minivan … which was another nightmare.

Very interesting. You’ve put your finger on the core metric for customer satisfaction: Workshop visits. In my former work we found a direct correlation between the number of workshop visits and satisfaction. After 4 visits, customers usually walked away from the brand. Kinda obvious, but it felt like preaching celibacy to drunken sailors. The number of visits in your data strike me as low. We tracked actual visits, and found 3 -5 per year for new models that had problems. And what makes a “successful” visit? The problematic ones are the unsuccessful visits, when the poor dealer doesn’t even know how to fix the damn thing. Not because he’s stupid. Because the factory is still scratching their heads, or because the failing part hasn’t been made yet.
Unsuccessful visit = new visit from a grumpier and grumpier customer.

Workshop visits = warranty costs = a huge drain on profitability. A monster. No wonder that Toyota, the company with the highest CSI, is also financially in good shape. Happy customers, low warranty costs.

That said, the results we do have have led me to wonder if Chrysler’s quality has declined in the past year. With the Jeep Compass and Patriot and the Dodge Caliber our limited data suggest that the 2008s have more problems than the 2007s did.

What this might mean: that even these bright spots in CR’s ratings would be less bright if their ratings weren’t so slow to react.

Conversely, if Chrysler does manage to improve its vehicles quality, this will show up in TrueDelta’s results first. They can start with the minivans:

http://www.truedelta.com/latest_results.php

It would be interesting to know other automakers’ durability specifications.

However, I must say that although my several Chrysler ownership experiences have been mixed in terms of quality, my only Honda was a lemon.

For CR’s part, though, they never saw a Japanese car they didn’t like. I wouldn’t call them “fair and balanced”.

I was on a team to improve VeeDub’s (Germany) J.D.Power CSI when it was in the basement a few years ago. Some may remember the days when VW vas down & nearly out in the U.S. also. My heart goes out to Chrysler: Tough job. Real improvement takes many years and a lot of money. They have neither.

I could teach them some tricks on how to goose ratings without touching the car itself, but it would have to be cash upfront ….

Good point re: Ford, Davey. When I drove an Expedition, I always gave my dealer’s shop the best marks, because I never had seen it from the inside.

More of a question than anything…

Even if CRs methodology is wrong, they apply the same methodology to all the manufacturers. So if Chrysler falls precipitously in the rankings it is a sign of a real problem? Your thoughts?