Monday 3rd November 2003

Britain's Most Reliable Cars

How does your motor fare in the Fleet News reliability survey?

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THE most reliable cars in Britain are revealed in a new survey unveiled today covering nearly 800,000 vehicles.

Japanese manufacturers have hammered home their reputation for reliability in the survey carried out by Fleet News.

The survey of Britain’s biggest contract hire companies reveals that Toyota, Honda and Lexus compete for the top honours in both the most reliable manufacturer and the most reliable model in this year’s survey.

Only multi-marque leasing companies were included in the survey, covering the most reliable cars according to the lowest number of breakdowns per 100 models on their fleet. The number of vehicles covered in the most reliable manufacturer survey has topped 790,000 vehicles.

MOST RELIABLE MANUFACTURERS 2003

1. Toyota
2. Honda
3. Lexus
4. BMW
5. Mercedes-Benz
6. Nissan
7. Ford
8. Mazda
9. Audi
10. Mitsubishi 

MOST RELIABLE MODELS 2003

1. Honda Accord
2. Toyota Avensis
3. Lexus IS200
4. Toyota Yaris
5. Mercedes-Benz E-Class 
    

[homer]

This "survey" takes no account of mileage ! There are thousands of Fords and Vauxhalls thrashing up and down the M-ways, whereas a few low mileage Lexii (Lexusses ?)get a higher score because they stay for longer in the driveway. What a load of ballcocks !

[Japes.]

Can someone tell me what the Japanese do so right ? Is it at the on-paper design stage...is it the way they screw it together...or is it the components they use ? Because I can't see why, if you make unreliable cars, you can't identify the area that's wrong and fix the problem. Good designers are not expensive...train your staff to screw it together properly...use good quality components. Easy peesy.

This isn't actually Japes, I just copied across his posting from an identical thread on here and then deleted the other one.

>> Edited by FourWheelDrift on Monday 3rd November 12:56

[dcb]

homer said:

This "survey" takes no account of mileage ! There are thousands of Fords and Vauxhalls thrashing up and down the M-ways, whereas a few low mileage Lexii (Lexusses ?)get a higher score because they stay for longer in the driveway. What a load of ballcocks !

Life isn't as simple as that.

If you look at the cars in the top three, none of them
I'd call posh cars.

And any car that doesn't get used much will tend
to be unreliable. Look at TVRs. Only used at weekends,
and notorious for breaking down a lot.

Not only have the Japanese taken on board Deming's
post war work on process improvement, but also they
work to a very high standard till they drop.

18 hour shifts with company songs, bowl of rice every
two days ...

I'd like to see any British manufacturer get away with that.

It's also interesting that Japanese cars built in UK
tend to be very good too. Look at Nissan in Sunderland
& Toyota in Derby.

PS pleased to see BMW best of the Europeans.

[gt5s_1985]

Japes. said:

Can someone tell me what the Japanese do so right ? Is it at the on-paper design stage...is it the way they screw it together...or is it the components they use ? Because I can't see why, if you make unreliable cars, you can't identify the area that's wrong and fix the problem. Good designers are not expensive...train your staff to screw it together properly...use good quality components. Easy peesy. >> Edited by FourWheelDrift on Monday 3rd November 12:56

Well you asked... The Japanese invented a different method of fabrication, generally refered to as "Lean Manufacturing". It arose as an accidental side-effect of the post-WW2 economy in Japan, and in a nutshell means that they can build more, with less, hence the "lean" name. It is the opposite of traditional Mass-production with huge lot sizes, and loads of inventory before and after each work station.

If you really want to know what the Japanese do, read a book called "The machine that changed the world", by Jones and Womack. It is the first study of this manufacturing method, and talks about the history of the auto manufacturers from an industrial point of view. It is fascinating, and talks about the difference in mentality between the Japanese, the Americans, and the Europeans.

Ford was the first real Western manufacturer to try Lean Manufacturing, as a result of their partnership with Mazda. You may remember about 2 months back, a study being published on PH relating the number of defects reported on new cars, the cost of repairing those defects, and an aggregate "score" of the various manufacturers. Ford had the lowest number of reported defects in the UK last year, followed by mostly Japanese companies. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the top 5 use this other method.

The traditional companies of "quality", Mercedes, BMW, Audi, etc, rely on a team of experienced problem-solvers to straighten out the problems with the cars before delivery. The Japanese say this is a complete waste of time and money - if the mistakes didn't exist in the first place, you wouldn't have to fix them. Or if you fixed them right away, you wouldn't have to tear half the car apart to get at the problem. And the German companies were all in position 10-18 or so, if I remember correctly. They spend three times as much time to assemble the cars, and even this isn't enough to bring them up to the quality level of a car that was assembled correctly the first time.

The Japanese can produce in much less time because they don't work in large batches. How long does the average part actually spend being transformed from raw material to finished part, compared to how long does it spend in the factory? Typically, 1% of the time in the factory it is actually being converted. If you could eliminate all that waiting time in queues, instead of taking a month to go through the factory, it could go through in a day.

This is a huge oversimplification of the theory, but to answer your question, the Japanese use a different philosophy, some Americans have caught on, Porsche hired a Japanese guru to help them turn around and had some spectacular results, from an industrial point of view. Porsche actually now has a booming side-business consulting for other German companies on Lean Manufacturing. Last I heard, Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and most of the other European companies said that they didn't need help from the Japanese - they could straighten out the problems by themselves.

The quality surveys say otherwise.

[superlightr]

gt5 Good post.

[zumbruk]

Actually, much (all?) Japanese manufacturing quality theory was invented by Americans in the 1940s. No-one in the USA was interested, so the quality gurus went to Japan, where their ideas (lean manufacturing, Just in Time, quality circles, etc.) were taken up wholeheartedly. And now the Americans are having to swallow their pride and take back the ideas from the Japanese.