Lemons out of season in Detroit

(AOL Autos) -- There was a time when buying certain cars from Chrysler, General Motors or Ford was a risky proposition. Poorly engineered vehicles were sloppily thrown together by arrogant UAW members.

A personal story: Back in the 1970s I worked for my older brother at his Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge dealership in Richmond, Michigan. The joke at the dealership was that if you listened carefully you could hear new Dodge Aspens and Plymouth Volares rust as they sat in the showroom.

About that same time, when my father's new 1978 Chrysler Cordoba (say it with me, "Fine Corinthian leather") was delivered from the factory, it required three days of repair work just to make it ready for delivery so bad was its build quality..

Many can recount personal anecdotes like these. To be honest, I've heard my fair share of horror stories regarding foreign cars, too. Ask anybody who owned an early Honda Civic how those survived after a winter of slogging salted Midwestern roadways. The answer will be, "Not very well." Mercedes endured a terrible spell of quality issues early this decade, with issues including faulty electronics and poor assembly quality. Even the revered masters of quality at Toyota have suffered quality glitches, with several prominent lapses in 2006 and 2007.

Manufacturing Quality

While anecdotes are fun to tell ... kind of like comparing scars ... they bring up a good question: How does one "prove" that one manufacturer or another produces a quality product? The answer is in the numbers.

Several companies exist for the sole purpose of evaluating, measuring, and reporting on the quality of automobiles. Many American consumers will recognize the J.D. Powers & Associate name. Most recognized for its automotive awards, the company statistically measures satisfaction using consumer-completed surveys for everything from cars to insurance to cell phones. All of their data comes directly from owners and/or lessees.

The annual reports from Harbour Consulting also measure quality, but this group comes at it from the manufacturing side of the business. The company measures plant productivity, and has demonstrated that there is a solid correlation between increased manufacturing productivity and product quality.

Just The Facts

So what do the numbers from Harbour indicate? Does Detroit still build junk? Nope.

Multiple measurements prove that Detroit has significantly narrowed the quality gap overall, and in some segments actually lead perennial front-runners from Asia.

Look at these facts:

• From 2002 to 2006, Harbour Consulting measured the time it took to assemble a vehicle. The gap between the single most efficient assembly plant (Nissan) and the least efficient (Chrysler) narrowed from over 11 hours per vehicle to less than three hours -- a four-fold decrease. It's important to realize that with each gain in efficiency, Harbour's proprietary research shows that there is a corresponding quality increase. Contrary to what one might think, it takes longer to produce a saleable product when initial build quality is low because it takes so much time to repair the product before it can be shipped to the customer.

• Some of Ford and GM's most popular models are built by top-ranking factories. These models include the Ford Escape and Taurus as well as the Chevrolet Equinox and Impala plus the Buick LaCrosse.

• In 2006, looking at the top performing assembly plants in the country, General Motors operates 3 of the top 4 facilities.

It is true that in some categories (body stamping and transmission assembly) Toyota, Honda, and Nissan respectively hold advantages over the domestic manufacturers. Toyota especially has an industry-leading stamping process that turns out body panels. Also, in general, no other manufacturer can assemble an engine as efficiently as Toyota. But the trends show the gap is closing, and what used to be a huge disparity is significantly smaller.

In a specific category where the General Motors and Toyota compete directly -- the assembly of overhead cam 6-cylinder engines -- GM is minimally quicker than the efficiency leader. Keep in mind that these figures are for operational, finished engines that have met all of each manufacturer's quality targets, so the comparison is, as they say, "apples to apples."

Measuring Quality

These production process improvements reflect genuine improvements in design and the assembly processes, so credit is shared between the manufacturers and the line workers. The results of these improvements are measurable.

Just this summer, J.D. Powers released the results of an extensive study of 97,000 new vehicle owners and lessees. The study looked at the number of problems customers reported in the first three months of ownership.

For every 100 vehicles, the average number of problems was 125 ... meaning that just about every vehicle had at least one issue.

Porsche led all others with a rating of just 91 issues per 100 vehicles (9 out of 10 Porsches had at least one issue), while Land Rover brought up the rear with an underwhelming 170 issues per 100 vehicles -- meaning that just about every Land Rover had one or two issues. (Compared to 2006, however, Land Rover improved its performance by 30 issues per 100 vehicles. That's going the right direction, chaps.)

On the top-ten list, Lincoln's average was above the perceived quality leaders from Asia and Europe; Honda, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz. Ford aced out Acura, BMW, and Audi.

Domestic Quality isn't an oxymoron

Combining the data from Harbour and J.D. Powers seems to reveal several high-quality vehicles from domestic manufacturers:

• Ford Taurus
• Mercury Sable
• Buick LaCrosse
• Pontiac Grand Prix
• Chevrolet Silverado pickup
• Ford F-Series pickup

Many other domestic cars have impressive records as indicated by either manufacturing or initial quality measures. These winners indicate that quality can come from Detroit. Pick wisely and enjoy the drive. E-mail to a friend

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