SURVEY SAYS....

Harbour Consulting may not strike you as familiar right from the off, but J.D. Power may well carry some sway in your books. Research completed by Harbour shows that - surprise - Toyota was the most efficient automaker, circa 2006, in North America. Ford's performance was not so stellar, but did show improvement compared with 2005.

J.D. Power's Initial Quality Survey should never play a large role in car-buying decisions, but when used as a tool to compare Ford with Ford, or BMW with BMW, or Land Rover with Land Rover year over year, Initial Quality stats carry meaning. People, especially automotive sales consultants, are tempted to ignore the 'Initial' part of the title, and hang their coats on this survey rather than long-term reliability and dependability.

Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler all proved themselves to be improved in the year 2006. In North America; Toyota can build a vehicle in 29.93 labour hours. General Motors needs just 32.26, while DaimlerChrysler required 32.9 hours. Nissan fared almost as well as Toyota; better than Japanese headquartered Honda; at just 29.97. Honda's automobiles are paragons of efficiency, and the manufacturing of said vehicles would not need much improvement to rank at the top. 31.63 labour hours is not too shabby.

Ignore all extra costs related to extended build times bar employee wages; and one can easily see a big reason for Ford's dreary financial statements. Although 35.1 labour hours per vehicle in 2006 is better than their 2005 average, it ain't that much better. If all that mattered was worker cost, and if a worker cost just $20/hr, Ford would still pay out $103.40 more per vehicle than Toyota. There's hundreds of millions of $ being thrown around simply because of lax efficiency standards. In reality, says Harbour Consulting, the gap between the best (Toyota) and the worst (Ford) is 2.16 labour hours narrower than it was in 2005, but the actual cost per vehicle caught in that gap is around $300.00. Ouch.

Ford makes up for that dreadful news in the J.D. Power study. JDP depends on the reporting of manufacturing defects and design problems by automobile owners. Ford/Lincoln/Mercury owners are quite impressed with their vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. The Mustang is the most problem free midsize sporty car. Mercury and Lincoln Fusionalikes, the Milan and MKZ, ranked as the best midsized car and best entry premium car. Lincoln's luxed-up F150 pickup, the Mark LT, was the top ranked SUV, and the oh-so-famous Mazda roadster, MX-5 Miata, came in at #1 in the compact sporty car category.

Jaguar was at one time infamous for electrical glitches and blown gaskets. Now, at least over the first 90 days of ownership, Jaguars are as trouble free as Toyotas. Porsche ranked at the top of the list for overall brands. Ford-owned SUV maker Land Rover was the most-improved brand, while still finishing a conspicuous l-a-s-t. Queen Elizabeth has never seemed to mind the fact that her fave sport-utes have 1.7 problems per vehicle. Granted, I've never seen a shot of Prince Philip helping his wife out of the back seat of a Porsche, a brand which suffers just 90 problems per 100 vehicles, or 0.9 per car. Perhaps then the Land Rover would not seem so dependable.

In individual categories winners included: Kia Rio, Honda Civic, Mazda MX-5, Porsche Boxster, Lincoln MKZ, Mercedes E-class, Audi A8/Benz S-class, M-B SL-class, Ford Mustang, Mercury Milan, Pontiac Grand Prix, Honda CR-V, Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Sequoia, Lexus RX, Lincoln Mark LT, Chevrolet Silverado Classic HD, Toyota Tacoma, and Chevrolet Express.

Translated, Kia Rios give owners less trouble in the first 90 days than would an Echo/Yaris from Toyota. Interesting.