U.S. Autos Equal Quality of Foreign Cars

[via Forbes.com] The quality of new vehicles sold by General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler Group improved by an average of 10% during 2008, despite unprecedented challenges that pushed GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.

Domestic passenger cars are now equal in quality to foreign brand cars, and domestic trucks are slightly better, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Initial Quality Survey. Among crossovers, foreign brands retain a substantial lead. Overall, domestic brands closed the quality gap with foreign brands to just 5%, the survey found.

Speaking to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit Wednesday, J.D. Power’s vice president of automotive research David Sargent said it’s too early to know whether the current financial crisis is causing carmakers to cut corners in development. In the 2009 survey, “there really is no correlation between what’s happened in the industry and their quality performance,” Sargent said. “If anything, they’ve intensified their focus in this area because they know they won’t survive if they don’t built good quality.”

J.D. Power’s survey measures new-vehicle quality during the first 90 days of ownership. Problems can be defects (a feature doesn’t work) or design-related (the customer doesn’t like the way it works). Initial quality is often a good predictor of long-term durability.