Detroit's Auto Brands Climb in Quality Rankings

Car problems are an issue for many different makes and models of vehicles, and the California lemon law is an important law protecting consumers who buy cars that turn out to have serious reliability issues.  Although consumers have rights when cars have problems, often getting issues fixed can be time consuming and stressful. As a result, motorists typically do research into vehicle features and car reliability rankings when they make the decision about what car they want to buy.

The J.D. Power initial quality study is one of the potential sources of information that consumers can access to find out about whether a new car is likely to have issues or not. According to CBS News, Detroit-based vehicle brands have been scoring very well on this study in recent years.

Detroit's Vehicles are Being Rated as More Reliable Than Foreign Alternatives

J.D. Power conducts its initial quality study by asking 80,000 car owners about issues they had with their vehicles within 90 days of buying or leasing a new 2017 car. The results of the survey showed good news for car owners this year, as there was an 8% increase in overall quality level compared with last year. The overall quality level was actually the highest it has ever been.

However, some vehicles were found to be more reliable than others. In particular, for the second year in a row, Detroit-based vehicle brands had fewer complaints during the first 90 days of ownership than foreign vehicles.  There were 93 problems per 100 vehicles reported for U.S. based car brands, down from 103 last year. By comparison, there were 99 problems per 100 vehicles for foreign brands. 

Most of the issues that were reported related to in-vehicle technologies. Issues with entertainment, navigation and communication systems -- including problems connecting to cell phones -- were the problems most frequently reported by car owners. 

There were also numerous reports of problems with in-vehicle safety technologies, including adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance systems, collision alert systems, and lane departure warnings. These safety technologies were the only category in which more problems were reported this year than in prior years.  This is major cause for concern for makers of automated vehicles, who rely on automated safety technologies like these as a building-block for the technology that powers self-driving cars.

While these areas were generally more problematic, Detroit-based cars did, overall, fairly well in brand rankings when it comes to reliability, especially Ford, Ram, Chevrolet and Lincoln, which all finished among the top 10 in brand rankings.

Unfortunately, no matter where your car comes from or how much research you do, there is still a very real possibility that problems could arise that affect your car's functionality. If your vehicle has repeated problems, the California car lemon law could protect you. You should contact an attorney to find out what your options are for pursuing an appropriate legal remedy in response to car problems.