Consumers want reliability

You know, it's about time someone showed Consumer Reports' annual auto issue to American car manufacturers.

In the report card category, Chrysler placed last, with GM just above it. Surprisingly, Mitsubishi edged out Ford for third worst.

The article noted that "Among American manufacturers, only Ford improved over last year. It scored one point better to pass Mitsubishi for 11th place in our rankings. By contrast, Chrysler is again in last place and dropped two points since last year. And General Motors placed right where it did last year -- second from the bottom -- even though it eliminated half its brands and about one-third of it models."

I'm sure if American carmakers read Consumer Reports they would know that the Japanese, and now the Koreans, are considered better automakers.

Then again, their sales, or lack of sales, should've told them that. GM and Chrysler did go bankrupt last year.

If they had started reading Consumer Reports, say 30 years ago, maybe they wouldn't have needed government bailouts last year, because it's been the same story for decades.

American carmakers apparently believed that no one could read, let alone pore over a magazine with no ads in Consumer Reports. They thought no one else was reading Consumer Reports.

To tell you the truth, American consumers didn't really need to read Consumer Reports to get the memo sent by U.S. automakers themselves.

For more than 30 years, Japanese cars have been more reliable, dependable and fuel efficient than their American counterparts. Consumer Reports merely validated what consumers had learned the hard way, by purchasing lemons. Afterall, the "lemon law" arrived in 1982 because American vehicles were so lousy.

In the late 1960s, my dad drove toward home from a GM dealership in a brand new Pontiac. The car never made it because it broke down in an intersection. You can imagine what it's like to buy a lemon before there was a law to protect you.

There are millions of former drivers of American products. They're driving Japanese makes, mostly.

I've owned a couple of Fords over the years and I can safely say, I'll never buy another. I once drove a VW van around the country. It survived, but it was costly to maintain. I've driven Chryslers, Chevys, Cadillacs, Buicks, Dodges and Pontiacs. They're all underwhelming.

I drive only Japanese cars now, Honda, Toyota and Subaru, the brand that Bend drivers prefer most.

Of all the safety features and innovations of the past 50 years, nothing beats reliability and dependability.

And that is where the Japanese excel, in spite of the recent recalls by Toyota and Honda, the premier brands.

In ranking reliability, Japanese and Korean manufacturers hold the top four slots. Porsche, not really a mass-purchased brand, ranks fifth. Ford is the only American brand to crack the top 10 at No. 9.

Japanese-made vehicles break down less often and last longer than American cars do. They require less maintenance that is cheaper than work on American vehicles. Forget German cars like BMW and Mercedes-Benz where you go in for an oil change and walk out $400 poorer.

In ranking "best and worst values," the magazine shows that Japanese and Korean vehicles dominate all the best-value categories, while American vehicles take nearly every slot for worst value in every category. Sadly, nothing much new there except that Korea is making better cars.

If there is one flaw to the Consumer Reports' rankings is that they don't rate vehicles on where they were made. Talk to any service department at any Japanese car dealership and you'll hear the same story: Hondas and Toyotas made in Japan are better built, therefore more reliable, than their American-made counterparts. I make sure the cars we buy are made in Japan, not North America or Mexico.

When some Bend dealerships lost their GM and Chrysler/Dodge franchises last year, they cried foul. It was sad it ended so abruptly and so callously, but, not to sound like George Clooney in "Up in the Air," they should take this as an opportunity to sell vehicles that Central Oregonians want to buy.

And, as tough as it is to admit, they don't want to buy American.