Ranking the durability of cars

The other day, an American research company published the result of their survey. They asked more than 46,000 Americans who had bought brand new cars 3 years ago if they had problems with them 3 years later. Here is the list of car manufacturers with the least complaints.

1. Buick & Jaguar
3. Lexus
4. Toyota
5. Mercury
6. Infinity
7. Acura
8. Lincoln
9. Honda & Cadillac

The top were GM’s Buick which came 5th last year and with the same points, Jaguar, which has been bought by India’s Tata Group and was the 9th last year.
Japanese cars, popular because they do not easily break, had been the top for the last 14 years, but have dropped to 3rd: Toyota came 4th, Honda’s prestigious brand Acura came 7th, Honda came 9th. In total, Japanese cars were still strong and 5 of the top 10 brands were Japanese car brands.
In their model ranking by car types, Toyota was the top in 5 different segments, Lexus in 4 segments and Lincoln in 2 segments.
In the USA, during this severe recession, people are keeping their cars longer than before. In 2006, it was 65 months but in 2009 it became 73 months. To keep cars for a longer time, the durability of cars is getting more important. Not only does it raise the satisfaction of the users who have them for a long time, it affects greatly when they choose a new car and need to decide on the brand and model of the car to buy later on.
This survey revealed that, how often they had to change the parts or had troubles with their cars affect the loyalty to cars. Out of the users who said that they would choose the same brand cars again, 40% were the people who had never had the engine changed or any other minor troubles with their car but only 11% would do so if they experienced some troubles.
The company also found that, the users of Buick, Lincoln, Mercury and Jaguar had lower numbers of parts changes. There was not much difference in the number between expensive brands and fleet cars but was greatly different depending on the segments. The least parts change needed were luxury sport cars and vans required the most parts change.
For all of us in the world, trouble-free cars are the best. It seems a bit strange that luxury sport cars need the least parts changed but I guess because it is expensive, the drivers drive them carefully. I sometimes have a chance to drive a Mercedes Benz and Porsche, because they are such an expensive car, I tend to concentrate more on my driving. On the other hand, the reason for commercially used vans require more parts changes is because it is used commercially and people tend to drive rough and not to worry about its maintenance.
This survey did not include the history of the car maintenance but I can tell you that if you regularly maintain your car, it should not breakdown easily.


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