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Has GM Abandoned All Effort and Hope of Significantly Improving Quality?
By James B. Bleeker
General Motors Corporation has announced plans to encourage its dealers to include a Toyota Camry in their showrooms and to invite a comparison with GM's Chevrolet Malibu. Detroit News provides this quote by Mark LaNeve, head of GM sales, "The fact is, when you look at the hard data, we have a product that is not only every bit as competitive, but also beats out the competition."
So, let's do exactly that - look at the data.
By Consumer Reports 2007 reliability verdicts, based on results from its annual membership survey, the 4-cylinder Toyota Camry (the Camry edition for which CR's 2007 Used Car Buying Guide offers data) achieved CR's highest reliability verdict for 8 of the preceding 10 model years (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005) and achieved CR's second-highest verdict for the remaining 2 (1997 and 2006). By contrast, the 6-cylinder Chevrolet Malibu (the Malibu edition for which CR's 2007 Used Car Buying Guide offers data) received CR's worst reliability for 5 of the past 10 model years, second-worst for 1, average for 3, and second-highest for the most recent model year, before GM's speedy dilapidation has had an opportunity to take effect. (See "Speediest Dilapidations: General Motors Accounts for 16 of the 20 Worst," Auto on Info, August 2005, "The 2006 Updates: Toyota and Honda Account for 4 Most Durable Vehicle Lines; General Motors - 4 of 10 Worst: Will a Typical Toyota or Honda 1998 Model Be More Trouble Free at 20 Years of Age Than a Typical 1998 GM Model at 3?" Auto on Info, October 2006, "The 2006 Updates: Toyota Age-Equivalent Estimates: Estimates of When a Typical 1998 Model of Toyota Motor Corporation Will Be as Troublesome as Typical 1998 Models of General Motors Corporation and Its Several Marques Were Circa 3 Years, 4 Years, ..., and 7 Years of Age," Auto on Info, November 2006, "The 2006 Updates: Honda Age-Equivalent Estimates: Estimates of When a Typical 1998 Model of Honda Motor Company Will Be as Troublesome as Typical 1998 Models of General Motors Corporation and Its Several Marques Were Circa 3 Years, 4 Years, ..., and 7 Years of Age," Auto on Info, November 2006, "True Value Estimates of GM's 2007 Vehicles," Auto on Info, November 2006, and "Filling the Quota at the Consumer's Expense? How CR's 1998 GM Recommendations Fared," Auto on Info, December 2006.)
For a more composite reliability measure, the 4-cylinder Camry has a 1998-2002 Reliability Percentrank average of .88 and the Chevrolet Malibu has a 1998-2002 Reliability Percentrank average of .20. For family cars, this puts the 4-cylinder Camry 4th from the top and the 6-cylinder Malibu 4th from the bottom. (See Table I-FAMCRP.)
The tack of suggesting Malibu parity with the Camry invites two conclusions:
1. GM has substituted a misinformation campaign for an effort to improve the lot of its vehicles.
2. As the campaign runs the risk of prompting scorn, ridicule, and deep and abiding contempt for GM vehicles, it seems rather an act of desperation, and desperation suggests that it has abandoned all hope of significantly improving the lot of its vehicles and significantly narrowing the reliability and durability gap between its vehicles and those of the Reliable Two. (See "Toyota Expands Dominance on Durability Measure," Auto on Info, January 2007, "GM Maintains Leadership in Much-Worse-Than-Average: A Guide to Making Sales Challenging," Auto on Info, March 2007, "GM Expands Lead on CR's Used-Cars-to-Avoid List, a Tad," Auto on Info, March 2007, "Chevrolet Upholds a Tradition: GM's Chevrolet Line Worst by CR's 2007 Vehicles-to-Avoid List," Auto on Info, March 2007, and "Toyota and Honda Increase Dominance of Consumer Reports' Good Bets List: Toyota's Best Widen Quality Gap," Auto on Info, March 2007.)
How accurate be the conclusions time will tell.
In any case, each year, as the 2008 Malibu ages, we will be able to see how far the reliability of the 2008 Camry and the reliability of the 2008 Malibu part company, provided that (1) GM is able to sell enough of the 2008 Malibu to generate early CR reliability tables and (2) the 2008 Malibu does not dilapidate so quickly that enough CR subscribers hold on to them for 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years to generate later CR reliability tables.
Source for GM plans: "Chevy Calls out Camry," Detroit News, May 24, 2007, at http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070524/AUTO01/705240375/1148
Sources for reliability verdicts: "CR Vehicle Profiles," Consumer Reports Used Car Buying Guide: 2007, pp. 84-216
Source for Reliability Percentranks and Percentrank averages: Table I-MVRP
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