15th Jun 2011, 03:05

You are still missing the point. I agree that Ford are doing very well and has "reinvented itself" in the quality department, and personally I'm glad that Lincoln (and Ford) are churning out high quality cars.

What I'm reacting on is all the people bad mouthing Toyotas and claiming there's a slide in quality. There's no documentation (from JDP VDS or elsewhere) anywhere that can document this. What has happened is that Ford has made a major step forward in the quality department. And instead of saying that Ford is making better cars, people are claiming that Toyota is sliding. The fact is that Toyota is making cars with consistent quality, and it's Ford that are making progress. Toyotas PP100 numbers is quite consistent over the years as a brand. All we can hope for is that Ford can keep up the good work, and that they won't revert to old sins. Maybe then I'll go back to Ford from my current Toyotas. Personally I have very bad experiences with Ford, GM and Chrysler in the 80ies and 90ies when they were making very poor cars. I could go on forever about poor cars "made in Detroit", but I'll stop here. Maybe this is changing and maybe this is a trend. We can only hope so.

Still these good numbers mainly relate to Ford only. Not GM. Not Chrysler. Both these companies are still struggling in the quality department, even if there are some improvements even here. Finally, a quote from JDP illustrating this:

"The study finds that while domestic brands have closed the gap in initial quality with import brands, there is still a considerable difference between the two in vehicle dependability, with import brands outperforming domestic brands by 18 PP100 in 2011."