I’m currently car shopping for a recent model year sub-compact crossover SUV.
I was perfectly willing to evaluate vehicles from all manufacturers. Part of my search also includes looking up the available models on JD Power reliability ratings, consumer reports, and other testing agencies, and what I’m seeing is that the US-made vehicles in this category have reliability ratings that are significantly worse than the reliability ratings for the Japanese models.
Since I don’t have the money to go out and buy one of everything, I’m forced to have to accept the findings of other 3rd parties who do the evaluations.
So to answer your original question: Japanese cars actually are more reliable that US cars based on the conclusions of objective test results. There’s no “considered to be” about it. It’s not a matter of subjective feelings on the issue.
I was looking for the same thing just recently! I ended up choosing a 2023 CX-30 Select. The other options I had considered were the mazda3 hatchback, Toyota CH-R, and Subaru Impreza. All Japanese, but that’s not by accident.
Back in the 80s, 90s and early 00s, Japanese brands were indeed more reliable. That isn’t really the case any more. Not saying they aren’t reliable, but they aren’t the leaps and bounds better than anyone else anymore. But the marketing for Toyota (especially) as well as Honda really leans in on the reliability angle. It is kind of like how Volvo leans heavily on safety in their marketing material. Their cars are indeed safe, but I wouldn’t say they are much safer than any other similar category vehicle, but since their marketing pushes that topic so much laypersons equate them to safety.
When it comes to Japanese quality, it also really helps them that their used cars from their heyday are still around. You still see 90s era Camrys and Corollas once in a while, but not so much cars from other brands. So people see those, much more simple and thus more reliable vehicles and think modern Japanese today vehicles are way more reliable than everyone else.
The automotive press doesn’t help too much in dispelling the myth either. I was looking at the results of a recent quality survey. All you hear about from these lists are the rankings, but no one ever talks about the scores themselves. You don’t know if the rankings were really close or really far apart. These quality surveys list number of problems per 100 vehicles. The top ranking brands are usually around 140 or 130 problems per 100 vehicles (or 1.4 to 1.3 problems per each vehicle). In 2022 JD Power Initial Quality survey ranked Buick, Dodge and Chevy top 3 in their quality survey with Lexus down to 6th place and Toyota in 14th place.
So if you go just by the ranking, you’d think that Lexus has totally lost it in quality. Well they might have slipped a little, but when you look at the problems per vehicle, Lexus has 1.57 problems per vehicle, while the top ranking Buick brand had 1.39 prblems per vehicle. That’s pretty darn close even though the ranking for Lexus is way further down the list. The industry average is 1.80 problems per vehicle so that might go to show you how the top ranking brands are not that much better than average.
I also don’t think the domestic brands get the credit they deserve for their quality. They are typically right up there with the Japanese brands in terms of quality these days, but all everyone talks about is how their uncle’s 1984 Camaro had a window motor issue and then an alternator problem and then a bad diff.
Me, planning to go to the service with my almost 6 years old Honda, for the first time outside the scheduled inspections (to replace break pads) vs my friends replacing engine in a 4yo French car, and faulty suspension in a 6yo German car…
Have a European car and a Japanese one, one is 6 yrs old, one is 8. The Japanese one has only got regular service so far with no additional work done, besides a battery change at year 4. The European one, I have changed small obscure electronic parts to rebuilding the engine head from a donor engine, that essentially cost 1/5 of the insurance value of the car. The European one rides well, is nicely tuned, but I am going all jap in my next change lol.
European car parts are also about 3 times the cost of the Korean ones, and at least double of the Japanese ones, so servicing the car in the company workshop costs about 3 times as much as servicing an Asian car (in my country). If your country has a good service network for Japanese cars, like a Toyota, Honda or Suzuki, consider them, the total cost of ownership can be much lower in my opinion. If your country doesn’t have that advantage, then the point is moot.
I don’t know why you got downvoted so hard, lol. I think this is definitely a factor, whether it’s fair or not. Maybe not the primary one, but an important one nonetheless. American perceptions of foreign cultures certainly bleed into how we perceive the products they manufacture.
It might be a “chicken and the egg” sort of thing, but classic stereotypes match up pretty well imo. Americans think the Japanese are fastidious and hyper focused on reputation; Germans innovate but over-engineer things to to a fault; Italians are passionate but put aesthetics and performance first, and the French just don’t want to work. Those stereotypes are still rampant in all our media and absolutely influence how we perceive the products they sell us, true or not.
i think this got downvoted for being a plain wrong answer.
while this sounds kind of believable, i bet some stereotypes play a very minor role. compared for example to some japanese cars being awarded excellent scores in crash tests and winning in comparisons of car magazines for years in a row.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I would still argue that generalized culture perceptions play a role, but early Japanese cars and other products certainly earned their good reputations.
Haha damn I’m not downplaying the quality of those cars, it’s just a general stereotype I see a lot. I’m really happy with my own Japanese car, and yes it’s because of the genuine quality of it.
You’re right this is the stereotype with ‘japanese people’. But you got to be careful with stereotypes. Even if you hear them a lot.
People don’t like if you tell them “that’s the two character traits we’ve assigned for you”. Or it may be something that has been wrong for a long time and you’re the one helping to repeat false information. It may cause all sorts of misunderstandings. Especially for the person in the group who doesn’t comply to that… Just be careful with stereotypes. It’s kind of okay in this case, because we’re discussing the stereotype on a meta level, and it’s not that much of a deal to talk about stereotypes, but in real life i’d just keep it to myself.
Exactly that, it’s a question I answered, therefore I can’t ignore the fact that “people” have these stereotypes. I get what you mean with repeating these stereotypes, but it would be weird if that would make an answer more or less incorrect/insufficient.
Emphasis on “people”, I myself don’t have any strong feelings about these stereotypes.
Having said that, these are things that will always exist in my eyes, people will try to get an indication of a person as soon as possible, even without the proper information, but that is a whole other psychological discussion.
It’s just a generalization that in my opinion is not true. The only time that statement would be true is when talking about Toyota or Honda, but Nissan or Subaru for example, I would not say they’re more reliable than a lot of more reliable US and Euro cars just because they are Japanese.
There is a long and very simple history here. Japan had an entirely different assembly process from the US when they started making cars and simply were at first universally more reliable than all American cars, by huge margins too, for many decades. This is not as true as it used to be but still holds in some cases and has been true for so long that it is accepted as true.
Kaizen, or “continuous improvement” is a process within the full method of “lean manufacturing” made by Toyota, which Agile is derived from if you tech friends here are familar with that. I think waste reduction techniques like JIT inventory management and kanbans are probably more relevant to the car quality discussion.
In the US, there is a consumer magazine Consumer Reports. This magazine is published by a non-profit who takes no advertising dollars and pays full price for anything they review so as to avoid any appearance of bias. Every year, CR sends out a survey to all of its members (8 million+) about the cars that they own, asking specific questions about problems & repairs their cars have had over the last year. They aggregate this data and present it as reliability ratings. In the past, Japanese cars have had overwhelmingly better reliability ratings than US cars. I recall in the late 90s / early 00s US cars rarely did better than the middle value of their 5 bubble scale for overall reliability, while Japanese cars almost always got the top value. (German cars also rated highly for reliability as well, but are much more expensive in the US than Japanese imports)
The difference may no longer be as large or uniform, but this is certainly where the generalized view came from.
I just noticed that in general the Japanese make good quality products and they put a lot of passion into a lot of things they do. Car manufacturing included, I suppose.
My dad has a 14-year old Mitsubishi and it’s had zero problems except when the brakes broke once (it was fixed easily though). It’s in almost perfect condition.
It’s definitely true in the States. Due in part to import costs, we don’t get many of the bare bones reliable models from pretty much anyone but Volkswagen. Other European brands either don’t manufacture in the States, or only manufacture a small range here. For example, Mercedes-Benz and BMW pretty much only manufacture SUVs here because we can’t get over huge ass cars, so it makes more sense to make those here since we buy so many. But our economy class market is too competitive for the good cheap Euro stuff. Additionally, Americans automatically assign European brands a level of prestige, which they want to maintain, so we get the fancy over-engineered stuff that costs a lot to maintain and fix.
Depends somewhat on the brand, but for something like Toyota or Honda, it’s because they really are just more reliable and more easily maintained on average. Nissans or Mazdas, not so much (especially Nissan).
Nissan engines seem to be really reliable. The CVT transmission is hot garbage but really, anything with a CVT is. I’d take a Nissan (without CVT) over any GM or Ford 4 banger. (not including the 2.0 turbo and that new truck 4 banger, haven’t seen enough of those to determine if they’re crap or not)
Toyota was more or less forced to start building cars in the US in the early eighties and did so in an unlikely joint venture with General Motors. GM was very interested in learning how Toyota build their cars. Bottom line: the Toyota Production System or TPS is mostly a way of management thinking that is completely different from the way most companies in the world manage people.
It is based on trusting employees, enforcing employees by training them, allowing employees to report errors as soon as possible, viewing the production proces as a manager with your own senses, understanding the production proces, truly following a vision and more.
Toyota actually does what most managers learn in management schools but don’t practice. Most managers outside Toyota want to be a boss and not a leader. But Toyota wants leaders that are being followed by employees based on intrinsic values.
Interestingly, the Toyota Production System is heavily influenced by the Training Within Industry program developed by the US Army during WWII and taught in post-war Japan by the US. And statistician W. Edwards Demming who showed Japan what true PDCA looks like.
Although an initial success, the production plant ultimately stopped operating. It was purchased by Tesla, and AFAIK, as of today Teslas are being build in the same plant in Fremont. But I highly doubt TPS is used to build Teslas.
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I’m currently car shopping for a recent model year sub-compact crossover SUV.
I was perfectly willing to evaluate vehicles from all manufacturers. Part of my search also includes looking up the available models on JD Power reliability ratings, consumer reports, and other testing agencies, and what I’m seeing is that the US-made vehicles in this category have reliability ratings that are significantly worse than the reliability ratings for the Japanese models.
Since I don’t have the money to go out and buy one of everything, I’m forced to have to accept the findings of other 3rd parties who do the evaluations.
So to answer your original question: Japanese cars actually are more reliable that US cars based on the conclusions of objective test results. There’s no “considered to be” about it. It’s not a matter of subjective feelings on the issue.
May I ask what you ended up choosing and what some of the runner-ups were?
I was looking for the same thing just recently! I ended up choosing a 2023 CX-30 Select. The other options I had considered were the mazda3 hatchback, Toyota CH-R, and Subaru Impreza. All Japanese, but that’s not by accident.
Good marketing.
Back in the 80s, 90s and early 00s, Japanese brands were indeed more reliable. That isn’t really the case any more. Not saying they aren’t reliable, but they aren’t the leaps and bounds better than anyone else anymore. But the marketing for Toyota (especially) as well as Honda really leans in on the reliability angle. It is kind of like how Volvo leans heavily on safety in their marketing material. Their cars are indeed safe, but I wouldn’t say they are much safer than any other similar category vehicle, but since their marketing pushes that topic so much laypersons equate them to safety.
When it comes to Japanese quality, it also really helps them that their used cars from their heyday are still around. You still see 90s era Camrys and Corollas once in a while, but not so much cars from other brands. So people see those, much more simple and thus more reliable vehicles and think modern Japanese today vehicles are way more reliable than everyone else.
The automotive press doesn’t help too much in dispelling the myth either. I was looking at the results of a recent quality survey. All you hear about from these lists are the rankings, but no one ever talks about the scores themselves. You don’t know if the rankings were really close or really far apart. These quality surveys list number of problems per 100 vehicles. The top ranking brands are usually around 140 or 130 problems per 100 vehicles (or 1.4 to 1.3 problems per each vehicle). In 2022 JD Power Initial Quality survey ranked Buick, Dodge and Chevy top 3 in their quality survey with Lexus down to 6th place and Toyota in 14th place.
So if you go just by the ranking, you’d think that Lexus has totally lost it in quality. Well they might have slipped a little, but when you look at the problems per vehicle, Lexus has 1.57 problems per vehicle, while the top ranking Buick brand had 1.39 prblems per vehicle. That’s pretty darn close even though the ranking for Lexus is way further down the list. The industry average is 1.80 problems per vehicle so that might go to show you how the top ranking brands are not that much better than average.
I also don’t think the domestic brands get the credit they deserve for their quality. They are typically right up there with the Japanese brands in terms of quality these days, but all everyone talks about is how their uncle’s 1984 Camaro had a window motor issue and then an alternator problem and then a bad diff.
Me, planning to go to the service with my almost 6 years old Honda, for the first time outside the scheduled inspections (to replace break pads) vs my friends replacing engine in a 4yo French car, and faulty suspension in a 6yo German car…
No idea… It is a mistry!
Because my japanese car is more reliable that my other cars :P
They’re considered to be more reliable because they are. Simple as that.
Have a European car and a Japanese one, one is 6 yrs old, one is 8. The Japanese one has only got regular service so far with no additional work done, besides a battery change at year 4. The European one, I have changed small obscure electronic parts to rebuilding the engine head from a donor engine, that essentially cost 1/5 of the insurance value of the car. The European one rides well, is nicely tuned, but I am going all jap in my next change lol.
European car parts are also about 3 times the cost of the Korean ones, and at least double of the Japanese ones, so servicing the car in the company workshop costs about 3 times as much as servicing an Asian car (in my country). If your country has a good service network for Japanese cars, like a Toyota, Honda or Suzuki, consider them, the total cost of ownership can be much lower in my opinion. If your country doesn’t have that advantage, then the point is moot.
There’s a big difference between European brands though.
French and Italian cars, for example, are generally not that reliable. However, BMW’s (German) are known to be quite reliable. Same goes for Volvo.
I think Volvo gets overlooked when discussing cars and reliability.
BMWs outside their warranty go for almost a tenth of their new cost.
This probably has to do with the assumption people have that the Japanese are very punctual and focussed on perfection.
I don’t know why you got downvoted so hard, lol. I think this is definitely a factor, whether it’s fair or not. Maybe not the primary one, but an important one nonetheless. American perceptions of foreign cultures certainly bleed into how we perceive the products they manufacture.
It might be a “chicken and the egg” sort of thing, but classic stereotypes match up pretty well imo. Americans think the Japanese are fastidious and hyper focused on reputation; Germans innovate but over-engineer things to to a fault; Italians are passionate but put aesthetics and performance first, and the French just don’t want to work. Those stereotypes are still rampant in all our media and absolutely influence how we perceive the products they sell us, true or not.
i think this got downvoted for being a plain wrong answer. while this sounds kind of believable, i bet some stereotypes play a very minor role. compared for example to some japanese cars being awarded excellent scores in crash tests and winning in comparisons of car magazines for years in a row.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I would still argue that generalized culture perceptions play a role, but early Japanese cars and other products certainly earned their good reputations.
Haha damn I’m not downplaying the quality of those cars, it’s just a general stereotype I see a lot. I’m really happy with my own Japanese car, and yes it’s because of the genuine quality of it.
You’re right this is the stereotype with ‘japanese people’. But you got to be careful with stereotypes. Even if you hear them a lot.
People don’t like if you tell them “that’s the two character traits we’ve assigned for you”. Or it may be something that has been wrong for a long time and you’re the one helping to repeat false information. It may cause all sorts of misunderstandings. Especially for the person in the group who doesn’t comply to that… Just be careful with stereotypes. It’s kind of okay in this case, because we’re discussing the stereotype on a meta level, and it’s not that much of a deal to talk about stereotypes, but in real life i’d just keep it to myself.
Exactly that, it’s a question I answered, therefore I can’t ignore the fact that “people” have these stereotypes. I get what you mean with repeating these stereotypes, but it would be weird if that would make an answer more or less incorrect/insufficient. Emphasis on “people”, I myself don’t have any strong feelings about these stereotypes.
Having said that, these are things that will always exist in my eyes, people will try to get an indication of a person as soon as possible, even without the proper information, but that is a whole other psychological discussion.
It’s just a generalization that in my opinion is not true. The only time that statement would be true is when talking about Toyota or Honda, but Nissan or Subaru for example, I would not say they’re more reliable than a lot of more reliable US and Euro cars just because they are Japanese.
This is it, Toyota/Honda built that reputation and mostly still live up to it.
There is a long and very simple history here. Japan had an entirely different assembly process from the US when they started making cars and simply were at first universally more reliable than all American cars, by huge margins too, for many decades. This is not as true as it used to be but still holds in some cases and has been true for so long that it is accepted as true.
One reason is a specific manufacturing process known as Kaizen. Here is a quick blog I found that describes it.
Kaizen, or “continuous improvement” is a process within the full method of “lean manufacturing” made by Toyota, which Agile is derived from if you tech friends here are familar with that. I think waste reduction techniques like JIT inventory management and kanbans are probably more relevant to the car quality discussion.
In the US, there is a consumer magazine Consumer Reports. This magazine is published by a non-profit who takes no advertising dollars and pays full price for anything they review so as to avoid any appearance of bias. Every year, CR sends out a survey to all of its members (8 million+) about the cars that they own, asking specific questions about problems & repairs their cars have had over the last year. They aggregate this data and present it as reliability ratings. In the past, Japanese cars have had overwhelmingly better reliability ratings than US cars. I recall in the late 90s / early 00s US cars rarely did better than the middle value of their 5 bubble scale for overall reliability, while Japanese cars almost always got the top value. (German cars also rated highly for reliability as well, but are much more expensive in the US than Japanese imports)
The difference may no longer be as large or uniform, but this is certainly where the generalized view came from.
IIRC though, American manufacturers have cut the distance to the point where it’s nearly negligible in some categories.
I did edit to add a note to that effect. I think the perception continues due to that long established history.
I just noticed that in general the Japanese make good quality products and they put a lot of passion into a lot of things they do. Car manufacturing included, I suppose.
My dad has a 14-year old Mitsubishi and it’s had zero problems except when the brakes broke once (it was fixed easily though). It’s in almost perfect condition.
Is that true? I’d say in the UK the most reliable brands are generally considered to be European. e.g. Volvo, VW, BMW.
It’s definitely true in the States. Due in part to import costs, we don’t get many of the bare bones reliable models from pretty much anyone but Volkswagen. Other European brands either don’t manufacture in the States, or only manufacture a small range here. For example, Mercedes-Benz and BMW pretty much only manufacture SUVs here because we can’t get over huge ass cars, so it makes more sense to make those here since we buy so many. But our economy class market is too competitive for the good cheap Euro stuff. Additionally, Americans automatically assign European brands a level of prestige, which they want to maintain, so we get the fancy over-engineered stuff that costs a lot to maintain and fix.
Interesting insight, thank you.
Depends somewhat on the brand, but for something like Toyota or Honda, it’s because they really are just more reliable and more easily maintained on average. Nissans or Mazdas, not so much (especially Nissan).
Nissan engines seem to be really reliable. The CVT transmission is hot garbage but really, anything with a CVT is. I’d take a Nissan (without CVT) over any GM or Ford 4 banger. (not including the 2.0 turbo and that new truck 4 banger, haven’t seen enough of those to determine if they’re crap or not)
The best way to get a quick understanding I think is to listen to episode 561 (2015) of This American Life about NUMMI in California:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
Toyota was more or less forced to start building cars in the US in the early eighties and did so in an unlikely joint venture with General Motors. GM was very interested in learning how Toyota build their cars. Bottom line: the Toyota Production System or TPS is mostly a way of management thinking that is completely different from the way most companies in the world manage people.
It is based on trusting employees, enforcing employees by training them, allowing employees to report errors as soon as possible, viewing the production proces as a manager with your own senses, understanding the production proces, truly following a vision and more.
Toyota actually does what most managers learn in management schools but don’t practice. Most managers outside Toyota want to be a boss and not a leader. But Toyota wants leaders that are being followed by employees based on intrinsic values.
Interestingly, the Toyota Production System is heavily influenced by the Training Within Industry program developed by the US Army during WWII and taught in post-war Japan by the US. And statistician W. Edwards Demming who showed Japan what true PDCA looks like.
Although an initial success, the production plant ultimately stopped operating. It was purchased by Tesla, and AFAIK, as of today Teslas are being build in the same plant in Fremont. But I highly doubt TPS is used to build Teslas.