rayscar

In Today's WSJ, page D3, there is an article on car quality but it seems mostly focused on MB cars. It says MB ranked below GM's Opel unit in customer satisfaction. According to JD Powers, the Japanese cars did very well in customer satisfaction but MB was ranked 13th, tied with Chevrolet. Finally it says that no MB model made Consumer Reports Recommended List. If it helps at all, BMW only had one car on the recommended list, the 5 series. The article goes on about how all German brands are having issues but IMO it focuses on declining MB quality.

mwillems

Ray, any chance of sharing the article text? The online edition of WSJ is only for subscribers.

As for QC, I have made that point before: the "Japanese attitude" does not seem to be there at Benz. Car is great and I;d buy again in a jiffy, but surely if I miss it for 4 days in the first month for "little fixes", Benz should be all over that like a ton of bricks? I should be bombarded with apologies and free hats? Etc? Investigations? Reports? But no, none of that happens, and that is much more worrying than the problems in the first place. Problems happen, and they are minor in any case. But I'd like to see them taken seriously. (Including that noisy door seal (when cold and travelling fast) and the little rattle from the rear seat area)

Mike

abhansali

My feeling is that the MB is definitely "engineered" on a scale higher than Japanese cars (with the exception of a few quirks like cup holders), you can feel that in the drive and technology within. But from a manufacturing quality and customer care viewpoint, they seem to be on par or even lower than other manufacturers. For example, with my Honda, they will do a recall for items that are not critical just so that they can get the customers in for the repair proactively. We had some wiring harness that were recalled, we got notices in the mail, and when we went in, they automatically check our vehicle against all issued service bullitens and update everything at once so your car is "up to date". With what I can read on this forum, we have to tell the Mercedes dealer about critical bullitens like "weak motor mounts".

rayscar

Hi Mike, sorry I don't have a scanner and my typing ability is not up to a level of copying the article.

My grip is not that there have been problems. Problems are a given with any car. So far I've been lucky in that my car seems fine except for maybe a slight drift to the right which I'll have checked out. The real issue is that others on this site when they had problems seemed to know more about the problem than the dealers did. Another person had their new E in the shop for several days without even a loaner. That is totally unacceptable in my book. I agree with other posts in that when something does go wrong, and it will, MB and its dealers should then bend over backwards to make it right and to make us feel that our money was well spent. Pamper us! MB also needs to improve communication with its dealers. When they release a service bulletin, it seems like we know about it but their own dealers don't. That must be fixed.

MB's customer service SHOULD be second to none but it's not and that's too bad because that is where they could really improve the Mercedes-Benz reputation in my book.

MadManAboutTown

Guys,

Here's the text of the article that I think you're referring to in today's WSJ:


Mercedes Sees Rankings Slip In Satisfaction, Quality Tests

By NEAL E. BOUDETTE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Since picking up a new Mercedes S-Class 400 sedan in February, Wolfgang Hubbuch has lost track of how many times he has been to the dealer for repairs.

Once, the transmission was lurching the car forward inexplicably. Then the car's antenna came unglued from the rear window. Another time, the entire electronics system shut down.

"The telephone, the radio, the dashboard -- everything was out. But that's fixed now," Mr. Hubbuch said while sipping a complimentary coffee in the waiting area at his dealership in Frankfurt. "It has been a lot of little things."

Unfortunately for Mercedes , the flagship brand of DaimlerChrysler AG, Mr. Hubbuch's story is an increasingly familiar one on both sides of the Atlantic. Although renowned for precision engineering, Mercedes has stumbled in recent studies on customer satisfaction and quality. The latest blow: A reliability study by Consumer Reports magazine. Not a single 2003 model from Mercedes made it to the Consumer Reports recommended list.

Mercedes isn't alone. Other big names in Europe are also cutting increasingly smaller profiles in quality studies. In the Consumer Reports survey, BMW's 5-Series sedan was the only one from Bayerische Motoren Werke AG to achieve average reliability. BMW's company's X5 sport-utility vehicle was ranked among the least reliable in its class, a status shared by Jaguar's X-Type and S-Type and VW's Golf and Jetta.

Mercedes-Benz is stumbling in quality studies

• New Car Buyer Survey (February 2002): Mercedes quality rating is below that of GMÕs Opel unit

• J.D. Power (October): In German customer satisfaction survey, Japanese brands win every category; Mercedes ranked just above average.

• Consumer Reports (November): No Mercedes model makes magazineÕs recommended list


In the U.S., J.D. Power & Associates surveys are finding that the quality of nonluxury brands are improving "much more rapidly than luxury quality," says Brian Walters, Power's director of product research. "If you look at the European luxury brands, five of the eight lost ground" between 1998 and 2002 on J.D. Power's rankings of cars by initial quality in the U.S., Mr. Walters says.

The five brands that slipped in rank: BMW, Jaguar, Porsche, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz. Power's U.S. surveys show that Mercedes is suffering from complaints about features and controls, fit and finish, and sound systems, Mr. Walters said. On J.D. Power's 2002 survey of new-vehicle quality, Mercedes finished 13th among all brands, tied with Chevrolet, Mr. Walters says.

The situation has become more pronounced at Mercedes as the brand expanded its offerings while its parent struggled to turn around Chrysler in the U.S. Once purely a maker of high-priced, German-built luxury cars, Mercedes now also builds the M-Class sport-utility vehicle at a factory in Alabama. In Europe, Mercedes has moved into the mass market with the compact A-Class as well as the tiny Smart cars.

Earlier this year, in a European survey that is prepared for car makers themselves and is normally kept secret, Mercedes's rating fell below that of Opel, the German unit of General Motors Corp., a brand with one of the worst images in Europe.

"Daimler has had its hands pretty full trying to sort out Chrysler, so it's no great surprise if they are having some difficulties," said Xavier Gunner, an automotive analyst at UBS Warburg in London. "The more important thing is whether they are doing something about it. That seems to be the case but it takes a long time to fix."

In July, Juergen Hubbert, head of the world-wide Mercedes division, named a new product quality chief, Martin Karr, who oversees quality issues for the entire division and reports directly to Mr. Hubbert. Previously, individual departments were in charge of their own quality issues. Mr. Karr wasn't available for an interview.

Fred Heiler, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz USA, said the unit's own surveys and warranty studies show quality is improving. "The trend is tracking upward," he said.

Auto-making experts suspect that the increasingly complex electronic systems built into cars is partly to blame for some luxury-model woes. The average luxury car includes dozens of microprocessors and keeps track of hundreds of factors, from the outside air temperature to the engine's temperature.

Gian Sud, who sells Mercedes-Benzes at a dealership he owns in Normal, Ill., said he has noticed several quality problems on Mercedes cars recently -- particularly on the brand's pricey E-Class and S-Class models. "We are experiencing some quality problems: electrical, the windshield wipers, and sundry other things," he said. Mercedes's U.S. sales arm is "very receptive and they're trying to alleviate the problems as fast as they can," he added. "That takes the sting out of the problem."

Mr. Sud said the quality problems are among the items being discussed this week at a meeting of Mercedes dealers and company officials in New York. Mercedes engineers are trying "to fix it rapidly, both in design and manufacturing," he said.

Typically, car makers develop some electronics as part of the car's engine, and others separately as part of the dashboard or door components, said Francois Truc, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. Auto companies "need to have a better overview of the whole electronics system," he said. Achieving that takes time, months or possibly a year or more, Mr. Truc said. "This requires a change in a company's organization and how it approaches development."

mwillems

Well, that confirms quite nicely what I have found anecdotally on two Benzes now. Great cars but insufficient QC and below par aftercare.

<Gripe>Case in point: my new E320 goes in tomorrow again, for some more small fixes (last time I was without the car for three days but some of the parts took a few weeks to order in; plus, one dew issue, namely the door seal). And some of the gripes were not addressed at all, like the clock, whose hour hand points about 4 degrees too far anticlockwise. I mean, a darn clock, you'd think they could engineer that better or at least give a better answer than the usual "nothing done, no error memory"! And the wipers are still quite noisy... </Gripe> :-)

I'll stop griping now and go back to enjoying the other 98% ofthe car!

Michael

MadManAboutTown

And here's another article from a couple days ago on Europe's car woes in general:

Europe's Luxury Brands Falter On New Recommended Lists

Here's today's automotive quiz: Which brand has more models on Consumer Reports 2003 list of "recommended" new vehicles, Hyundai or Mercedes-Benz?

That's right, it's Hyundai. In its "New Car Preview 2003" issue, which is on sale now, Consumer Reports recommends the Hyundai Sonata midsized car and the Hyundai Santa Fe sport utility vehicle, along with a larger-than-normal crop of General Motors Corp.'s large-truck and SUV models, such as the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban. The new model recommendations are based on Consumer Reports testing and responses from 480,000 questionnaires returned by the magazine's subscribers.

This is a huge victory for Hyundai, which has never before had any of its vehicles recommended by Consumer Reports and has spent years atoning for the quality sins it committed when it first came to America a decade ago. Hyundai officials are beyond delighted, as my colleague Sholnn Freeman reported last week.

Getting consistent "recommended" ratings from Consumer Reports has proven over the years to be a powerful boost for a brand's reputation -- and for sales and profits. Just ask Toyota, which has enjoyed years of topping the magazine's charts and watched U.S. sales grow even as its reputation for quality allowed dealers to charge more than Ford dealers or Chevy dealers could get for a similar car.

This year, however, Consumer Reports car testers and survey respondents marked the redesigned 2002 Camry's reliability down to average from above average. The culprits: sloppy interior trim, squeaks and rattles associated with the new model, according to Consumer Reports. Toyota says the problems are typical for a new model and that the bugs are now worked out.

But Consumer Reports saves its toughest criticism for European luxury brands, including Mercedes -- which has exactly zero models on this year's recommended list. (The new, redesigned E-class sedan isn't rated.)Results for other European brands are mixed. The Saab 9-5 scored above average for reliability in Consumer Reports survey, but didn't outpoint Japanese rivals such as the Lexus IS300 or the Acura TL (which is made in America). Only one BMW model -- the venerable 5-series -- got an average reliability score. The Audi A4, a hot seller in recent years, was marked "well below average." Volkswagen, which owns Audi, fared poorly overall with its Volkswagen brand, with only the Passat achieving an "average" reliability rating. That doesn't bode well for VW's efforts to position the Volkswagen brand as a near-luxury make in America. Ford's Jaguar S-type and X-type models got branded as among the least-reliable models in their classes -- a setback for a brand that had made great strides.

David Champion, head of vehicle testing for Consumer Reports, says the problems at the European luxury brands seem to be increasing as the cars they produce get more gadgets and gizmos.

"As they put more complex systems into vehicles they are finding the robustness of design is not there," he says. At Mercedes and BMW, he says, recent models appear to have more problems with electrical systems, power equipment and body hardware.

What Consumer Reports is saying about the "prestige" European brands should be treated as a red alert in Munich, Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, where profits rely on consumers believing that German cars are precision-engineered machines worth paying extra to own.

You could, perhaps, dismiss Consumer Reports' survey results as just carping from professional nitpickers with no sense of automotive soul. But it's not just Consumer Reports raising complaints.

J.D. Power and Associates, which has conducted widely-followed surveys of vehicle quality and customer satisfaction in the U.S. for years, is now trying to establish a similar franchise in Europe. This has proven difficult for a variety of reasons, but this year J.D. Power produced its first survey in Germany. What company ranked first for customer satisfaction in the homeland of Mercedes and BMW? Toyota. The highest-ranking German brand was BMW, in third place, while Mercedes trailed brands such as Honda and Mazda. No German vehicle ranked first in the individual segment categories, including "executive luxury car." (Winner? The Nissan Maxima.)

Of course, no one is going to buy a Hyundai Sonata instead of a Mercedes-Benz C-Class because the Sonata now has a higher grade from Consumer Reports. Not yet, anyway. Reputations for excellence built over years take a long time to erode. But erode they will. The success of Toyota's Lexus brand in the U.S. has as much to do with its reputation for superior quality as any other factor. Certainly, styling and driving passion aren't what put Lexus ahead of Cadillac and Lincoln in the American luxury derby.

In recent months, top executives at the big European brands – including Mercedes and Volkswagen/Audi -- have acknowledged that they need to make renewed efforts to improve quality.

They'd better step on it.

etenn

I didn't notice in the Wall Street Journal article that the 2003 E-class was "not rated". The article that MM posted says that the 03 E was not included in the rating.

Hopefully that means that the improvement will show in the new E320 and E500.

I might never know. I still have not heard anything about delivery.

Ed

MadManAboutTown

Ed, let's hope for the better with the '03 model... and keep the faith, your car will come in due time (whatever that is!).

skymast

my opinion on quality, style, etc -- mercedes, bmw, porsche, etc are about the same ...other cars are much, much better.

ValueplusClass

WSJ is about sensationalism. The report does not give the breakdown of which models have the problems; the rate per car. The report quotes a german owner; Could the writer not find disgruntled US owners to quote from? Sometimes, malfunctions are reported to JDPowers from some too busy to read the manuals and could be operating modes. JD powers surveys quoted, I think, are "first 90 days" of ownership. How about after 5 years?

In local papers take a look how many newer model Japanese and Koren cars are for sale (2nd, 3rd hand or more) compared to MB models? I think that this is an important indicator. If people are unhappy or dissatisfied with their new cars, then they would be dumping them on the market shortly (few years) after buying them.

Mr. Xristo

They are not biased! LOL