28th Jan 2009, 13:12
"It's hilarious how the thousands of seriously defective Toyota engines has magically dropped to "20"."
It's even funnier if the opposite is true, wouldn't you say?
Let's face it...we're jousting at ghosts. We don't know if these figures are accurate; The 20 is Toyota's figure (for the 2007 Tundra), the "thousands" figure is based on other model years taken cumulatively and anecdotally. The truth may be somewhere in the middle. So let's stop arguing. OK?
28th Jan 2009, 12:09
I'm the one (at least the main one I think) who has been promoting "Consumer Reports" data here on the forum. I didn't promote them simply because they support any particular claim about overall reliability.
This is a (ostensibly) 2002 Tundra forum. Back in 02 the Tundra was recommended because, while it was imperfect, the problems were still below the average pickup. However the new 07+ Tundra isn't recommended for the converse reason.
Consumer Reports has been reporting for a couple of years about the improvement of American makes and the more hit-and-miss quality (than has been true in the past) of Japanese-based imports. Ford has indeed improved... so has GM. Toyota has had several major introduction stumbles. Nissan has experienced very poor ratings on their Titan and Armada. They've also had a significantly lower corporate reliability average.
On the other hand -- just to cherry pick a bit -- the Fusion and Malibu have had few problems in their first years. Corporate quality averages still are better for Japanese based companies but since we don't buy companies --- we buy cars --- we need to be more informed than the customer who simply looks at country or company of origin to determine if the vehicle is reliable.
As I mentioned before, GM took out an advertisement basically apologizing for allowing their quality and innovation fall below industry standards. Who are WE to disagree with THEM? Toyota and Honda are widely seen as SETTING the industry standard for reliability. But...
They haven't been perfect as of late. This has been true of core products -- especially for Toyota. And Ford and GM are improving. So watch the reliability ratings data closely before purchase because "times -- they are a'changin'".