The American consulting company J.D. Power and Associates has been researching the automotive market for many years and compiling a rating of the reliability of used cars available in the United States.
So 2017 was no exception - in February, the next results of the Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS) market analysis were published.
The J.D. Power and Associates study surveyed 35,186 owners of 224 different models of 3-year-olds (manufactured in 2014), picking faults from a list of 177 problems they encountered in the past 12 months. Based on their answers, the Americans determined the number of defects for every 100 "iron horses" of a particular brand (Problems Experienced per 100 Vehicles - PP100), and the larger this number was, the greater the difficulties for motorists.
It is worth noting that the average number of malfunctions in 2017 was 156 units per “hundred” cars (156PP100), which is 4 points more than last year.
As before, the owners of "three-year-olds" most often face a problem, which is designated by the acronym ACEN (audio, communication, entertainment, navigation). Well, most of all the troubles are caused by the voice command recognition system, Bluetooth communication with external "gadgets" and electronic guides.
For the sixth year in a row, the Japanese premium brand Lexus has been at the top of the ranking - 110 breakdowns per 100 cars (the decline in comparison with 2016 was 15 points at once). But this time a similar result was shown by Porsche, which worsened its statistics by 13 units. The second position was taken by Toyota with 123 complaints about the “hundred”, and the “bronze medalist” was the Buick brand - 126PP100.
An interesting fact is that Mercedes-Benz (131PP100), Hyundai (133PP100) and BMW (139PP100) have seriously improved their positions - despite the fact that the total number of defects did not decrease significantly, they were able to move up to the fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively (although a year earlier they were "trailing" in the middle of the rating).
Fiat's three-year-olds are completely out of order with reliability - for every 100 cars they have 298 faults at once. The rest of the outsiders showed not so depressing results: Jeep brand - 209PP100, and Infiniti - 203PP100. And here the Italian brand demonstrated an absolute failure - it added 127 complaints at once compared to 2016.
It should be noted that, in general, Toyota became the leader in terms of the number of awards - seven models of the brand at once received "gold" in their segments. General Motors' models performed slightly worse - they excelled in four classes.
In addition to brands in general, J.D. Power specialists have identified the best three-year-old cars with the highest reliability by 2017 in each of the segments:
- Subcompact car - Chevrolet sonic;
- Compact car - Toyota Prius;
- Premium compact car - Lexus es;
- Mid-size car - Toyota Camry;
- Mid-size sports car - Chevrolet camaro;
- Premium mid-size car - Lexus gs;
- Full size car - Toyota Avalon;
- Subcompact crossover - Volkswagen tiguan;
- Compact station wagon - Toyota Prius V;
- Compact crossover - Toyota FJ Cruiser;
- Premium compact crossover - Mercedes-Benz GLK-Class;
- Mid-size crossover - Toyota venza;
- Mid-size premium crossover - Lexus rx;
- Full-size SUV - Chevrolet tahoe;
- Minivan - Toyota Sienna;
- Light commercial pickup - Ford F-150;
- Heavy commercial pickup - Chevrolet Silverado HD.
