Ford: Quality equal to Toyota

[Ford Jellymoulds]

I wouldn't say that the Mustang is better built than the Camry. Far from it, most likely. The difference is that many Mustang owners are passionate about cars and passionate about Mustangs specifically. Because of that passion, many Mustang owners are going to take care of their cars long past their expected lifespan so future generations can enjoy them. On the other hand, the Camry is seen as nothing more than transportation; a throw-away car. They are built well and they are reliable, but nobody buys a Camry out of passion for the nameplate and therefore nobody has no desire whatsoever to keep it around for longer than it serves its purpose as basic transportation.

 

Then it's about time Ford started to build character cars again right across the entire range then Nick, It would be better for the environment better for Fords reputation, building boring bland dull throw-away jellymoulds is wasteful. Its about time Ford binned all it's CAD pens & computers and let car designers rule again, win win for Ford at last.

Edited April 20, 2007 by Ford Jellymoulds

[retro-man]

Trivia question for you Ford Jellymoulds: Do you know where Kiichiro Toyoda got the seed money to start Toyota in the automobile business?

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Trivia question for you Ford Jellymoulds: Do you know where Kiichiro Toyoda got the seed money to start Toyota in the automobile business?

No l am not into Japanese culture like you are Retro Man, if you had asked me where Berry Gordy earned his money to start his business up l might know the answer. If you want to start a thread on all things Japanese, then please start another thread on it because l am not interested.

[Noah Harbinger]

Why are they perceived as reliable, probably because most car test reports are based on new cars coming out of the Factory with fewer defects due to a better quality control, long term they are no better than any other manufacturer

 

Got any numbers to back that up? Please don't tell me about your friends, I would like to see some reasonably well conducted research about 15 year old cars -- 1992 Taurus vs. 1992 Camry. Sounds like an exciting matchup.

[Noah Harbinger]

A quickie: A study of vehicle registrations in Canada showed that of vehicles registered between 1985 and 1990, Toyotas were 50% more likely to be on the road in 2000.

 

Link

 

Anyone have comparable data for the US? Maybe broken down by model?

[F250]

Trivia question for you Ford Jellymoulds: Do you know where Kiichiro Toyoda got the seed money to start Toyota in the automobile business?

 

Toyoda (before they changed the name to Toyota for some strange superstitious/marketing reason) got the money the old fashoned way...he bummed it off of his dad. The family was in the textile business building looms but junior Toyoda became interested in cars so he made several trips to America because that's where the cool cars were. He copied American car engineering and designs and even used the very original name "Model-AA" on his first little copy of a real car around 1933 or so.

 

Of course that was about 3-decades after Henry Ford designed, built and drove his own race car to win which earned the attention and respect from investors to get the money to start his company.

Edited April 21, 2007 by F250

[F250]

A quickie: A study of vehicle registrations in Canada showed that of vehicles registered between 1985 and 1990, Toyotas were 50% more likely to be on the road in 2000.

 

Link

 

Anyone have comparable data for the US? Maybe broken down by model?

 

Interresting stats.

 

In this catagory (vehicles registered between 1985 and 1990 still on the road in 2000) by percentage.

 

Lincoln: 74.8%

Toyota: 66.0%

[retro-man]

Toyoda (before they changed the name to Toyota for some strange superstitious/marketing reason) got the money the old fashoned way...he bummed it off of his dad. The family was in the textile business building looms but junior Toyoda became interested in cars so he made several trips to America because that's where the cool cars were. He copied American car engineering and designs and even used the very original name "Model-AA" on his first little copy of a real car around 1933 or so.

 

Of course that was about 3-decades after Henry Ford designed, built and drove his own race car to win which earned the attention and respect from investors to get the money to start his company.

Substantially correct - except the first car was the 'A1', of 1935. The 'AA' came in 1936. The first two cars bear a strong resemblance to the Chrysler Airflow, which was introduced in 1934.

 

I wanted to tweak Jellymoulds because there was a British connection:

In 1924, Toyoda invented the Type-G Toyoda automatic loom with non-stop shuttle change motion, the first of its kind in the world. The Type-G Toyoda automatic loom was a groundbreaking invention containing a number of features such as automatic thread replenishment without any drop in the weaving speed. Platt Brothers & Co., Ltd. of England, a world leader in the loom industry of the time, paid the 1929 equivalent of 1 million yen for transfer of the rights to the Type-G loom. Toyoda later used these funds as seed money to found Toyota Motor Co., Ltd.

 

(This despite the well-known fact that the Japanese are congenitally incapable of inventing anything - it was probably a fluke.) So! It was Jellymoulds countrymen that were responsible for this scourge upon the world! :poke:

 

Back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

 

p.s. Had to Google Berry Gordy. Cool.

Edited April 21, 2007 by retro-man

[LincolnFan]

It would have been a good day if that guy was roadkill for a Ford IMO.

 

Atleast I won't have to see bland Camries and German idiots.

[grbeck]

I cant see any crappy Toyota holding it's price like a Mustang, and selling for the sought of price a Classic 60's Mustang will fetch at Barrett Jackson auction, or outlasting an old Motown Monster, like thousands that are still going strong and being used everyday in Cuba.

 

The price of a vintage Mustang at Barrett Jackson - or the price of any vintage Detroit car - is irrelevant to new car buyers.

 

If there were any connection between the success of car company today and demand for its older vehicles as collector cars, then Chrysler Corporation would be burning up the sales charts. Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars from the 1960s are the hottest vehicles out there (although those values are the result of a bubble driven by speculation and hype).

 

That's hardly the case, as recent headlines show. Four months into the 2007 calendar year, and Chrysler is still selling a hefty number of leftover 2006 models, because no one wanted them. And Plymouth is dead.

 

I've seen people fuss over vintage Fords and Chevys at classic car shows here in central Pennsylvania - and we've got the big Hershey Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) show and the Carlisle Events shows less than a half an hour from my front door - and leave in a Camry or an Accord.

 

As for those American cars being used in Cuba - they have been so modified by the locals to keep them running that they have very little connection to what they once were, except for the body. They bear little relation to an original 1950s vehicle of the same type - let alone what is sold in the showrooms of GM, Ford and Chrysler today.

 

What people use as a guidepost in buying a new vehicle is either their recent experience with vehicles, or the recommendations of their friends and neighbors. The simple fact is that during the 1990s and early 2000s Ford built too many passenger cars and minivans with serious reliability problems, which have soured many buyers on Ford, Lincoln and Mercury.

 

Ford earned its bad reputation - as Honda and Toyota earned their good ones. It's going to take more than one survey to erase those bad memories.

 

As for Consumer Reports - interestingly enough, I've noticed that the problems with our vehicles have tracked the problems identified in its reliability surveys pretty closely. And a comparison of recurring complaints on the Edmunds.com message boards also correlates with the black dots on the Consumer Reports survey results.

 

Anyone who reads the magazine - as opposed to merely criticizing it - will note that the testers generally like new Fords, and rate them rather highly. And Ford scores the best of the domestics in the magazine's reliability survey.

Edited April 23, 2007 by grbeck

[grbeck]

Substantially correct - except the first car was the 'A1', of 1935. The 'AA' came in 1936. The first two cars bear a strong resemblance to the Chrysler Airflow, which was introduced in 1934.

 

I wanted to tweak Jellymoulds because there was a British connection:

(This despite the well-known fact that the Japanese are congenitally incapable of inventing anything - it was probably a fluke.) So! It was Jellymoulds countrymen that were responsible for this scourge upon the world! :poke:

 

If I recall correctly, at some point - I believe immediately after World War II - Nissans were based on British Austin designs.

[retro-man]

Don't know about Austin - but attached is a scan from August 2006 "Old Timer" magazine (a Japanese publication for old car enthusiasts) that acknowledges a debt to Crosley! (Notice that the Datsuns have bigger, more normally-proportioned wheels than the Crosleys, which were really really small.) Hope you can see the scan ok. And Isuzu produced Hillman designs under license in Japan in the 1950s. I have seen an Isuzu Hillman (Minx) at the Transportation Museum in Osaka.

Edited April 23, 2007 by retro-man

[retro-man]

Here's another scan of the Crosley-based Datsun delivery van from that article. Pretty dang hip. The text in the B&W page above refers to "American micro-car Crosley".

Edited April 23, 2007 by retro-man

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Nothing beats the sweet sound of BDA growling its way through the forests stages at the Pirelli International Rally - British Historic Rally Championship last weekend, with a near 50/50 mix of Porsche 911's and Escorts it was an epic battle of the worlds greatest cars in snow, rain and sun, and on just about any terrain, a 50 mile race through the car killing Kielder forests of NE England, with only one winner pure magic. Much more fun than looking at posters on museum walls. What no Toyotas, they had all been crushed about 25 years ago.

 

Results

 

http://www.pirelliinternationalrally.co.uk...s/clseol2gb.php

 

Photos

 

 

 

Video

 

http://s121.photobucket.com/albums/o206/ts...2007_0002-5.flv

Edited April 23, 2007 by Ford Jellymoulds

[F250]

I've seen people fuss over vintage Fords and Chevys at classic car shows here in central Pennsylvania - and we've got the big Hershey Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) show and the Carlisle Events shows less than a half an hour from my front door - and leave in a Camry or an Accord.

I think the same thing when I see all of the posers riding their "All-American Harleys" on the weekend trash talking anyone on a Japanese brand bike (even an American built Honda) and then those Harley purists drive their Toyotas to work during the week.

 

Ford earned its bad reputation - as Honda and Toyota earned their good ones. It's going to take more than one survey to erase those bad memories.

 

It is impossible for any Japanese car company to earn a bad reputation no matter how many oil sludge engines the courts force Toyota to clean out or how many grenade transmissions Honda has to replace.

 

As for Consumer Reports - interestingly enough, I've noticed that the problems with our vehicles have tracked the problems identified in its reliability surveys pretty closely. And a comparison of recurring complaints on the Edmunds.com message boards also correlates with the black dots on the Consumer Reports survey results.

Anyone who reads the magazine - as opposed to merely criticizing it - will note that the testers generally like new Fords, and rate them rather highly. And Ford scores the best of the domestics in the magazine's reliability survey.

 

I've said it before, I have purchased brand new cars, trucks, boats and motorcycles and have never once received a survey from those rags on anything. I wonder who gets their surveys.

I did get surveys from the manufacturers though.

I stopped reading those rags in the '90s when Toyota V6 trucks were having massive head gasket failures and the rags were listing them as having "above average-excellent engine reliability."

Edited April 23, 2007 by F250

[grbeck]

Don't know about Austin - but attached is a scan from August 2006 "Old Timer" magazine (a Japanese publication for old car enthusiasts) that acknowledges a debt to Crosley! (Notice that the Datsuns have bigger, more normally-proportioned wheels than the Crosleys, which were really really small.) Hope you can see the scan ok. And Isuzu produced Hillman designs under license in Japan in the 1950s. I have seen an Isuzu Hillman (Minx) at the Transportation Museum in Osaka.

 

Thanks for the scan...very interesting. Those Crosleys really are very diminutive in real life.

 

I remember that our neighbor's kids had a 1960s Datsun (not a 510) in the early 1970s. It looked a first-generation Corvair with a mesh grille.

[grbeck]

It is impossible for any Japanese car company to earn a bad reputation no matter how many oil sludge engines the courts force Toyota to clean out or how many grenade transmissions Honda has to replace.

I've said it before, I have purchased brand new cars, trucks, boats and motorcycles and have never once received a survey from those rags on anything. I wonder who gets their surveys.

I did get surveys from the manufacturers though.

I stopped reading those rags in the '90s when Toyota V6 trucks were having massive head gasket failures and the rags were listing them as having "above average-excellent engine reliability."

 

Nissans do not have a good reputation, so not all Japanese cars are viewed the same way.

 

Also remember that it took GM and Ford over 30 years to really lose their audience.

 

At GM, for example, quality problems started showing up in Chevys in the mid-1960s (read contemporary road tests of the 1964 Chevelle, 1965 Impala and post-1965 Corvairs - you'll see increasing notes of shoddy quality control). And Chevy was tarred with the massive recall for defective motor mounts on millions of 1965-69 V-8 equipped vehicles.

 

Fortunately, the other GM marques were pretty good until the late 1970s, when GM began widespread component sharing among the divisions. But GM didn't really go into a freefall until 1986, and then it was the ill-conceived downsizing of the big Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs and the failure to properly respond to the Taurus/Sable that really started the process. So it took almost 20 years of mounting customer complaints for GM customers to rebel, and in the end GM still did most of the damage to itself with poor product decisions.

 

Ford is still feeling the effects of millions of front-wheel-drive vehicles equipped with the combination of the 3.8 V-6 and automatic transimssion, both of which were virtually guaranteed to grenade before 80,000 miles. It will take a long time to erase those memories.

 

As for why you haven't received a Consumer Reports survey - it is only sent to subscribers. They aren't sent to the general population, or even everyone who buys a new vehicle.

Edited April 23, 2007 by grbeck

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Nissans do not have a good reputation, so not all Japanese cars are viewed the same way.

 

Also remember that it took GM and Ford over 30 years to really lose their audience.

 

At GM, for example, quality problems started showing up in Chevys in the mid-1960s (read contemporary road tests of the 1964 Chevelle, 1965 Impala and post-1965 Corvairs - you'll see increasing notes of shoddy quality control). And Chevy was tarred with the massive recall for defective motor mounts on millions of 1965-69 V-8 equipped vehicles.

 

Fortunately, the other GM marques were pretty good until the late 1970s, when GM began widespread component sharing among the divisions. But GM didn't really go into a freefall until 1986, and then it was the ill-conceived downsizing of the big Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs and the failure to properly respond to the Taurus/Sable that really started the process. So it took almost 20 years of mounting customer complaints for GM customers to rebel, and in the end GM still did most of the damage to itself with poor product decisions.

 

Ford is still feeling the effects of millions of front-wheel-drive vehicles equipped with the combination of the 3.8 V-6 and automatic transimssion, both of which were virtually guaranteed to grenade before 80,000 miles. It will take a long time to erase those memories.

 

As for why you haven't received a Consumer Reports survey - it is only sent to subscribers. They aren't sent to the general population, or even everyone who buys a new vehicle.

 

Datsuns in the 70's were complete rust buckets within a few years, no one would touch them with a barge pole in the UK, l do wonder if we were living on the same planet at the time. Nissan do make good cars now, but so does everyone else, l really don't really think you can pick on any car or any make today and call them a bad egg, all brands are very reliable. If you buy a cheap high MPG Nissan car, and it does 100,000 miles trouble free why are you ever going to come back to Ford. How will Ford ever win back this kind of customer ever again? Ford of Europe are offering $5,000 discounts on most of its cars so winning over new customers from other brands and taking away market share from others, most will sell the car after a few years and be looking for another car? They will be the most difficult ones to win back, most will find Fords are reliable enough but some will be looking for a bargain price. Long term owners of the Fords with the $5,000 discount will find the Ford just as reliable and will stay loyal to Ford as the Nissan or Toyota driver will, If l was running Ford, l would offer huge discounts to folk trading in a nearly new second hand Nissan or Toyotas on the quite, as these are owners that Ford need to hook and change their perception of Fords, not existing Ford owners. Once hooked they would soon realise that a Ford will go on for 180,000 miles, and can be just as reliable as a Nissan or Toyota, and spare parts are a lot cheaper. Ford need to keep things simple and so keep production costs down. Just have a couple of models of each car type, the cheaper model must have the best MPG in its class, and the other must have the best BHP & top speed in its class, and only have a model in the middle if required, with optional extras being offered and available to both types.

 

Markets change yearly, sometimes daily but mostly when a model changes, it can be for the better or for the worse, when VW changed its Mk2 Golf (Rabbit) to a jelly moulded Mk 3, the sales dropped so badly that it had huge job losses due to nobody liking what they had done, it also lost it's No 1 spot in Europe for ever since, if you had to pay $10 a gallon like we do in the UK your taste in cars would change overnight in the States.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cars/story/0,,1990501,00.html

 

Toyota is No1 in the world "TODAY" not because not they are any more reliable than Ford or GM they are just beating you to death on "MPG". Wake up to it Ford for God sake.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6586679.stm

Edited April 24, 2007 by Ford Jellymoulds

[Daryll40]

I have been saying for a long, long time that, yes, as you pointed out, the beginning of the end was when GM quit the RWD full sized cars for the FWD mid-sized cars trying to be sold as full size. Ford, to it's credit, kept the large RWD cars IN ADDITION to creating the Taurus for the mid sized FWD gang. Where Ford lost it's way was when gas prices dropped in the 1990s and they bet the farm on trucks and SUVs while letting their auto languish. The Contour/Mystake was a major blunder too. The styling was decent enough and if it had been a quality vehicle, people like my "Ford for life" 70 year old mother would not now be driving a Camry or Corolla (as she is after her "Mystake" fiasco).

[Edgy Girl]

Ford Quality on par with Toyota - check out the video link

 

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=H1FaJ9P2vXo

[goinbroke2]

I'll tell you part of the problem,

I'm sitting waiting for my allergy shot today and overhear a lady and a guy talking about cars. So I heard the girl say a couple friends had probes and they were junk, etc, etc. She said her tempo was a great car and had over 300,000km's on it when she sold it(or junked it, I don't remember) The guy said he has a Saturn with 4 hundred and whatever km's on it and although it's leaking oil everywhere it still is very dependable. He said he bought a new toyota the other week because he wanted a 4 door saturn with standard tranny and air and the salesman was a jerk said it wasn't available. She's driving a nissan I think she said.

I came right out and asked, "excuse me, but if your tempo was so great of a car, and your saturn is so reliable, why did you guys buy japanese cars"?

Their answer?

He said the toyota was cheaper than a saturn and "they're good cars anyway aren't they"?

She said she got a great deal and the salesman/dealership has excellent service.

 

So, if the mindless fucking idiots who buy cars today and get 500mpg, last for 800,000km's and still have no brand loyalty except to buy the "best deal" or "cheapest car", what do we do?????

 

I mean really, what the hell more can any company do when people have zero loyalty except to their own wallet's?

 

I was dumbfounded when they said what they bought and their answers to my question of why, it was like the thought of buying the same brand because the last one was so good never entered their mind. They couldn't grasp the connection.

 

Unreal!

[RichardJensen]

Look at it this way: If Toyota is competing on price, that's no better for their business than it is for the Big Three.

[suv_guy_19]

I'll tell you part of the problem,

I'm sitting waiting for my allergy shot today and overhear a lady and a guy talking about cars. So I heard the girl say a couple friends had probes and they were junk, etc, etc. She said her tempo was a great car and had over 300,000km's on it when she sold it(or junked it, I don't remember) The guy said he has a Saturn with 4 hundred and whatever km's on it and although it's leaking oil everywhere it still is very dependable. He said he bought a new toyota the other week because he wanted a 4 door saturn with standard tranny and air and the salesman was a jerk said it wasn't available. She's driving a nissan I think she said.

I came right out and asked, "excuse me, but if your tempo was so great of a car, and your saturn is so reliable, why did you guys buy japanese cars"?

Their answer?

He said the toyota was cheaper than a saturn and "they're good cars anyway aren't they"?

She said she got a great deal and the salesman/dealership has excellent service.

 

So, if the mindless fucking idiots who buy cars today and get 500mpg, last for 800,000km's and still have no brand loyalty except to buy the "best deal" or "cheapest car", what do we do?????

 

I mean really, what the hell more can any company do when people have zero loyalty except to their own wallet's?

 

I was dumbfounded when they said what they bought and their answers to my question of why, it was like the thought of buying the same brand because the last one was so good never entered their mind. They couldn't grasp the connection.

 

Unreal!

 

I've had similar experiences with people, i completely agree...they go from one brand to the other, jsut to try it.

[grbeck]

I've had similar experiences with people, i completely agree...they go from one brand to the other, jsut to try it.

 

If that is the case, it should help GM and Ford. The most recurring complaint I see on this site (and others) is that once people buy a Toyota or a Honda, they refuse to consider another domestic, no matter how good their vehicles are.

[suv_guy_19]

If that is the case, it should help GM and Ford. The most recurring complaint I see on this site (and others) is that once people buy a Toyota or a Honda, they refuse to consider another domestic, no matter how good their vehicles are.

 

 

it shouldn't help anyone....but it seems that people are drawn to imports as a rule...because its part of the culture now.