If You Are Buying A New Vehicle Based On Reliability - Then You Are Probably Doing It Wrong

Way back in the twentieth century, it wasn’t a question of whether a new car would need anything fixed in the first few months of ownership, but of how many things would need to be fixed. If you rely entirely on the most common sources of car reliability information, it won’t be evident how much more reliable cars have become in the past two decades. These sources don’t provide actual repair frequencies. Instead, they provide dot ratings relative to the average. No matter how much the average improves, there will be some cars above it and some cars below it, “good ones” and “bad ones.” But what if the “bad ones” aren’t all that bad? And how good can the “good ones” possibly be?

With this thought in mind, I started conducting TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey a decade ago. Unlike others, we’d post the reported repair frequencies to make it much clearer how often cars had needed repairs, and how much they actually differed in this regard. The usual outcome: in absolute terms, they didn’t differ nearly as much as people expected. Some still require repairs twice as often as others, but twice very few is far from many.

TomM - 9/3/2015 8:00:08 PM

0 Boost

I would want to see the questions asked in the survey before I believed them

Frequency of repair is meaningless it does not indicate the type of repairs - cost of repair is far more important. As an example - the Chrysler 4speed Automatic Transaxles and the Honda 5 speed Auto Transaxle in the MiniVan - have been particularly troublesome - for years. And the cost of these repairs are in the $2000-4000 dollar range if you have to pay for them. Yet - these would qualify only as a single repair - as does a bad gas cap - which is cheap to replace. And - of course - did the survey take into consideration warranty repairs - separately. Warranty repairs - being free - generally happen more often at dealers.

jameswisrik - 9/4/2015 7:12:05 AM

+2 Boost

When a car has character it means ,..... Get ready to pay for some major repairs! Audi Vw Bmw Chevy Ford Chrysler Jeep has lots of character!

MrEE - 9/5/2015 9:03:30 PM

+2 Boost

No surprise here that Honda and Toyota leads these results. I though prefer long term reliability as important and without high cost repairs. CR surveys are the best.

iamdabest1 - 9/7/2015 12:39:34 PM

+1 Boost

wasnt too crazy about being in the shop every 6 weeks for little annoying things in my Ghibli SQ4.