Denon, Yamaha or Marantz Receiver

[Woochifer]

Typical of your continual bias and straw mans. RE: 20 versus 18...instead of inventing my position try reading and thinking too tough for you it would seem.

Hey, you were the one that was throwing all those hypotheticals against the wall and see which one would stick. All I'm doing is pointing out what a statistically validated base of data says. If that's too difficult a concept for your to comprehend, then don't blame me.

Sneak into any Ford dealer's results of customer satisfaction - I was there I saw it - that was three years ago seriously doubtmuch has changed.

Ooooh, the clandestine secret files that you and nobody else has access to. Sorry, but sneaking into a Ford dealer and thumbing through their customer surveys is not exactly how I enjoy spending my evenings. (And are those customer surveys dealing with the cars themselves, or the dealer's customer service? Two VERY different things) If breaking into Ford dealers and reading customer survey forms is your joy in life, then by all means keep it up. So congratulations, but what does this have to do with European cars now having a higher defect rate than American cars?

Car recalls can be federally demanded or demanded by state on safety issues...not determined by the manufacturer...you would hope the manufacturer would do it themselves but that would take corporate responsibility and they - Ford mainly - has proven a disinterest in lives over profit...with the exact same fir issues spanning many models over now 3 decades my conclusion is simple they are clueless...why you would support proven beyond any doubt their heinous practices is ridiculous. The fact their sales rank for an ex big three is number five in the largest market car seller outside trucks and SUV's is proving customers despite CR are not stupid.

Am I supporting these practices? No. And where do I say that? Nowhere. All I'm pointing out is that you cannot use recall rate as a statistically valid way of doing comparisons because the thresholds for issuing general recalls versus service alerts is up to the discretion of the manufacturer. It constitutes a variable and therefore a bias.

BTW it would take a one page summary of the breakdown of their statistical analysis. Engine/transmission/ body are arguably the most high ticket brakdowns on a car. Rear tailight, e-break handle glue, interior cloth issues are minor in comparison. CR does break down each componant to their credit -as does Lemon Aid.

As usual to support your CR blathering you state that Lemon doesn't have "any consistency in how data is collected from vehicle to vehicle. And now you're giving a lecture on how to conduct survey research?"

So where is the consistency in how Lemon Aid collects and reports their data? They provide the detail that you like so much because they don't have a statistical significance threshold for reporting data like CU does. Collect enough anecdotal evidence, and it's easy to draw any conclusion about any vehicle, but not one that can meet any kind of statistically significant standard.

Man you like to dream stuff up - they provide FAR more information than CR about the cars. You won't see the recall and horrendously CRAPPY Ford safety in CR despite the fact that they've been crappy for 30 years in this regard.

But, again you cannot generalize this for EVERY single Ford model, and for EVERY model year, and for EVERY single unit.

Bonus is even more surveys than CR. Also, where did I ever say thet Europe was a bastian of quality. The article you presented blasts Eupoean cars with 20 defects versus 18 American ... hardly a huge difference to start with. Lumping all cars together as European versus American is not help either genius. At the very least I would like to know which performed better or worse...maybe BMW is 15 and Volkswagen is 27? The USA today of course isn't bright enough to provide the reader any sort of facts but rather purport broad generalizations. The exact same broad generalizations that you accuse me of - but at least I'm not writing for a newspaper where objectivity is supposedly a requirment over ramblings on forums. Hell Jaguar, Mercedes and Land Rover could be pulling the entire European number into the gutter for all we know. And we simply don't know do we?

Good gawd, there you go again! Just making up numbers and spinning the subject to try and avoid having to say ANYTHING positive about American cars.

But, again with Lemon Aid where is the CONSISTENCY in the reporting? They're talking about owner reports, but do they do the statistical validation themselves, or is it just pulling anecdotes out of a database and reporting it as fact? With the CU reliability data, the survey is widely circulated, they maintain full control over the data entry and reporting, and you know that it is a consistent set of questions from year to year. Comparisons between models and model years are valid because the questions, the sample validation procedures, and the minimum confidence levels are identical. Lemon Aid claims to be pulling all of these different sources together to make their conclusion, which is fine for anecdotal reporting, but the more subjective and open ended data that you pull into a dataset without devoting major resources into postcoding, the less reliable it is.

No, the broad generalizations that I've seen you make on this thread are in the rhelm of untruths and sensationalist exaggerations. Nowhere in that USA Today article is there anything that can be factually disputed. You're more than welcome to reinterpret things or take a different angle, but nowhere is there anything in the article that even approach the sensationalism that you inserted.

American cars have a number of good models in Lemon Aid - but over the entire range they are certainly crap compared to the Japanese - presumably you didn't buy Acura for no reason...they cost more are not very big vehicles you'll find more power in a NA car for cheaper? The fact the American counterpart would proably be in the shop twice as often or nearly so must have come into the equation somewhere - or happened to be a nice coincidence.

FYI, I bought the Acura BECAUSE of its small outer dimensions. Have you ever tried parallel parking in San Francisco? For pure driving experience within my budget, I would have opted for a Ford Probe (which incidentally had an above average reliability record), but its limited outer view and bulkier body nixed it from consideration. My car has stranded me three times with various electrical system problems since I bought it, so while I feel it's a good car, it's certainly not bulletproof and perfect. Even my parents' Camry has been recalled twice, and even after the fixes, the brakes on that car still suck and Toyota jerks my parents around every time they inquire about the brakes.

You keep saying my one bad experience with a 94 grand am...HARDLY - you look at the CR of that Car...I'm not the only one...MOST people have the exact same story to tell. ****ty paint jobs lousy transmission, horrible steering engines, electrical systems, and abysmal safety is not relegated to one car it's the ENTIRE run. if you don't have a tirade of numerous problems with it you're in the minority and fluked out - even CR supports that. The words of the idiot running Chrysler basically admits that 90% of his cars are junk compared to the Japanese and 10% are as good...THINK this is the f***ing guy who runs the f***ing company and he even KNOWS his cars were a POS that are mostly O.K. And hell their cars seem to come under less blasting than Ford or GM even in CR. What must their CEO's say?

Yeah, and you blame CU for enticing you to buy that Grand Am. They can only go on the basis of the data in front of them. Your quote about MOST people having a similar tale to tell about the Grand Am is something you have no proof of, and is just more unfounded assumption, exaggeration, and sensationalism. (On the CU reliability table, it only takes a failure rate of 7.5% to earn a black mark, so there's plenty of room between going over 7.5% versus going over 50%+1, which would define "most"; even using CU's old scale based on standard deviations above and below the mean, it would still be a very high hurdle to achieve 50%+1 on all those purported defects that you named) The previous model years might have been reliable, but unfortunately you drew the short straw and got a lemon. Life is unfair, move on.

And BTW, that quote that you cited is NINE years old and Robert Lutz isn't even at Chrysler anymore. The American brands started moving up on the European nameplates on the JD Power survey about five years ago, and the trend on the CU reliability reports has similarly trended upwards the past three or so years. Like I said, it's hardly shocking news if you've been following things the past few years.