Car Talk: I'm looking for a compact hatch

[Woochifer]

You're not far off - about 10 years ago Hyundai hired all the top engineers away from Toyota and Hyundai's reliability greatly improved and Toyota fell into the toilet.

"All the top engineers"? C'mon, I know you're a fan of Kia/Hyundai, but I would have to assume that's a rather exaggerated view. Toyota's a huge company and their car development is done by teams all over the world. Are you saying that all of Toyota's top engineers from around the world not only quit the company, but went to work for a Korean rival?

Remember Toyota stopped being Toyota well before 10 years ago. It was nearly two decades ago when they began decontenting their vehicles, using more common parts between different models, and designing their cars around profitability and price targets. This is how most other car companies design their vehicles, and Toyota simply applied those types of cost cutting and streamlining methods when they decided to make profit growth and becoming the #1 car company in the world their primary goals.

The Toyota Way, as it existed until the mid-90s, relied on a very close knit relationship between the management, engineering teams, production line workers, and suppliers. But, this type of tight collaboration could not keep up with Toyota's explosive growth and mushrooming number of geographically dispersed plant locations. So, they had a choice to either stay a smaller car company focused on product and engineering goals, or a profit and volume-driven car company with the stated goal of becoming the world's #1 volume car maker. They chose the latter.

Toyota's reliability didn't fall into the toilet. The quality control systems at their plants and engineering resources still rank among the best in the world, and the cars themselves are still in the upper reliability tier. But, they no longer fanatically overengineer their cars, and Toyota simply fell back in line with the rest of the industry. But, falling back towards the industry average is not how Toyota built their reputation. If not for the green halo that they wear thanks to the Prius, Toyota right now would be just another car company that makes boring commuting appliances with above average reliability (rather than exceptional reliability).

And if you check JD Power's latest IQS results, Hyundai this year fell below the industry average, two years after they ranked as the #1 non-luxury brand. As I wrote in an earlier post, Consumer Reports found that the reliability will often correlate with the time elapsed since the last model revision, and it's no surprise that Hyundai dropped in the rankings in a model year where they had three new models introduced, along with a brand new drivetrain.

There's a big difference between the ambition to be a big car company versus becoming the #1 car company. The hubris and arrogance underlying that kind of ambition ultimately undid GM, and it brought Toyota back to earth. VW now has its sights on becoming the #1 car company in the world, and their new decontented cars show they are chasing after volume and profit, rather than focusing on the driving experience and product quality. Right now, maintaining their product focus is the challenge facing Hyundai as they grow as a car company.

Hyundai I think wanted to tackle reliability first - it's what made the Japanese basically destroy the American car makers who sold complete caca in the reliability department.

That's probably the best place to start. Over the past decade, Hyundai has made all the right moves, but they also need to resist the temptation to overreach, as some industry observers have accused them of doing (i.e., their 40 MPG claims that have come under scrutiny from Consumer Watchdog, which was founded by Harvey Rosenfeld, one of Ralph Nader's former deputies). They've begun loading up their cars with all sorts of tech gadgets. Might look good on a checklist, and attract more interest from younger car buyers. But, larding up a car with crapulent (one of topspeed's favorite terms) tech features is also a very quick way to send the reliability rating into a nosedive, as evidenced by Ford's tumble in the reliability rankings and even Hyundai now dropping below the industry average. This is something that the Toyota of old would have never done.

The 5/5 rating comes from the Lemon Aid - which is based on actual repair records, survey reports - Phil Edmonston is the Ralph Nadar of the car industry.

Lemon-Aid author talks tough about buying cars | Wheels.ca

I know you keep pushing the Lemon Aid guide, but when I looked at it a few years ago, I recall that it relies entirely on secondary data sources such as service bulletins and recalls, along with some selected anecdotal quotes from readers. And I'm skeptical of using those sources as a reliability barometer, because there's no consistency with how or when service bulletins and recalls are issued. It's very useful for informing the public on potential problem areas on specific car models or manufacturers, but poor for drawing comparative conclusions about different car companies.

Unlike JD Power, Consumer Reports, and True Delta, Lemon Aid does not conduct its own reliability survey, which means that it does not have a consistent database to draw apples to apples conclusions between different models. Yes, all of those surveys have their own issues, but at least the conclusions are drawn from comparable data and large sample sizes.

He was talking about the sudden surges in Toyota cars well before(several years before) it cam to light.

And on Toyota's sudden acceleration recalls, my opinion has basically been that 1) the majority of the sudden accelerations resulted from driver error; and 2) Toyota rushed their drive-by-wire systems to market as part of their massive decontenting and cost cutting program, and they got caught in the same first-to-market reliability issues that are normally associated with German car makers.

On point 1, drivers can alleviate sudden acceleration by simply shifting the car into neutral. At the risk of stereotyping, IMO Toyota attracts a lower percentage of the enthusiast drivers that would know this. Their clientele will tend to be people who don't care as much about the driving experience itself, but simply want a reliable appliance that takes them from point A to point B. Also, Toyota drivers are far likelier to opt for automatic transmissions than buyers of competing models, and thus likelier to encounter sudden acceleration, since it's a non-issue with a manual transmission.

With that said, the manner in which Toyota widely deployed drive-by-wire systems in a very short time goes squarely against the revered Toyota Way. They introduced their electronic throttle and ignition systems before competitors did, and installed them in nearly all of their best selling models very quickly.

In decades past, Toyota was fine with letting the competition go to market first with newer technologies, and have them deal with fixing the bugs. But, replacing two mechanical systems with one electronic system in this case also saved money and fit in perfectly with their new-found decontenting ethos where they were trying to reduce the number of unique parts and systems in their cars.

In actuality, electronic throttle and ignition systems are far more reliable than the older mechanical designs. The problem is that a failure on an integrated electronic system is more serious, and by combining the ignition with the throttle controls, Toyota provided a single point of failure for what used to be two separate systems. Sudden acceleration also occurs with older cable throttle linkages, but it's a somewhat easier recovery with a stuck accelerator pedal than a failed electronic throttle control.

One of the mainstream science magazines (forget which one) found that Toyota's electronic control units were installed without EMI shielding, and speculated that made the system more vulnerable to seemingly random failure. That also potentially explains why tests by the federal govt and Stanford University were unable to replicate the Toyota sudden acceleration issue, since I don't think they ever tested EM interference (the much publicized SIU test that created sudden acceleration in the lab was done under conditions very unlikely to occur in real life). Other car companies have been more deliberate about deploying drive-by-wire systems, and likely learned from Toyota's mistakes, in much the same way that Toyota used to do with them.