AUTO INDUSTRY Big Three raise reputation for quality

American cars are nearly even in quality with Japanese cars, experts say.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
When Sajida Bhatti set out to buy a new car recently to surprise his girlfriend, he considered Toyotas, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes. He ended up with a Mustang convertible.
The reason: He thought a Detroit product would be more reliable than any of the big-name imports. "Reliability was very important to me," said Bhatti, a grocery-store owner in Medford, Mass. "I did some research on several sites and came to the conclusion the Ford was best in overall quality."
Whether or not he's right, more and more consumers like Bhatti are coming to a conclusion that would have seemed heretical just a few years ago: that Detroit is, in fact, building cars that are equal or superior to imports from Europe and Japan.
Quality rankings
That breakthrough in perception has been a long, potholed road for the Big Three U.S. automakers, who lost out to Asian imports in 25 years of quality surveys by J.D. Power and Consumer Reports magazine.
Meanwhile, Japanese companies, led by Toyota, made quality -- measured by a lack of defects needing repairs -- a priority. They built their reputation -- and millions of sales of small, economical cars, SUVs and pickups -- on these studies. Ultimately, they grabbed more than 30 percent of the U.S. car market.
Now Detroit is making substantial gains on the factory floor and in public perceptions. In one widely respected study, for instance, Ford and General Motors fell behind only Toyota in the number of cars ranked most reliable in their class over a three-year period. Similarly, Consumer Reports magazine, in its annual April auto guide, almost gushed about U.S. manufacturers this year.
"The domestics have made a strategic decision that they have to make quality a priority if they're going to win back a share of this market," said Gabriel Shenhar, a program manager at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.
Bit by bit
Improvements for Detroit have largely come the hard way -- through lots of incremental steps. Automakers have developed tighter relations with suppliers, at the same time insisting they warranty their parts for longer and provide them at lower costs. Factories have been modernized and workers empowered. Better design has made cars easier to assemble. And more parts-sharing among models has increased production of the most proven axles and alternators.
Although U.S. cars don't quite match up with Japanese name plates across all models, they have passed most European vehicles in quality surveys and gained enough to put Ford, GM, and even Chrysler back on Americans' shopping lists.
But if domestic manufacturers are making significant improvements in reliability, consumers' perceptions haven't completely caught up. In a 2002 study by Allison-Fisher International, researchers determined that GM increased quality by 30 percent, but that more than 50 percent of American car buyers wouldn't consider GM vehicles because of reliability concerns.
In truth, the reliability of cars is improving among all manufacturers, both foreign and domestic. Overall, reliability is increasing 5 percent to 6 percent a year, said Brian Walters, senior director of vehicle research at J.D. Power and Associates in Westlake Village, Calif. "So if you're not improving by at least that amount, you're going to fall behind in the rankings."