Recalls, Complaints, and Secret Warranties How Did The Luxury Brands Fare Over the Last 20 Years?

It doesn’t take Albert Einstein, to have noticed that the quality of the average car has increased immensely over the last decade or two.   No longer are we worried about rushing out to buy a new car after 50,000 miles because we weren’t sure just how much longer that rust bucket would hang on with out a major failure.  Simple put we have progressed to a point that some of us might successfully argue that most modern vehicles will rarely leave you stranded on the side of the road.  Major reliability issues have been replaced with smaller and many times minor annoying issues.

With that said I think everyone knows we regularly proclaim the shortfalls of JD Power and Associates famous Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS), and Initial Quality Study (IQS) results. Even though they are vague on the real issues at hand, they have been instrumental in assisting automakers improve overall quality.  After all a bad score can cost you millions of dollars in lost sales, and since they are one of the few actually measuring these statistics, it makes sense to tailor your designs to make it through the process with the best score possible.

This is all fine and dandy for the measured statistics from JD Power, that are regularly are advertised. But what about the hidden issues that fail to make show up on these results only to surface years later?  What about all of those recalls we have been hearing about for the last few years? What about the times you take you car in and they fix something else unrelated for free? Was that good service, or something or was there something more to it?

The answers to these questions, and many others, may be better answered by looking through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration archives.

If an auto manufacturer is found to be responsible for a serious safety or mechanical defect, an auto recall or truck recall is issued by the NHTSA. A recall requires the manufacturer to send an official notice to owners of the vehicles found to be defective. More often than not, only a portion of the production run of a certain make, model, and year vehicle is affected by an auto recall. 

The NHTSA also files complaints directly from consumers, these complaints often are a good indication if this model car has a history of problems that may not show up as a recall. These car complaints are still a concern to the owner especially when they are substantiated by different consumers reporting the same problem.

A Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) can be referred to as a secret warranty.  It is an advisory issued by the manufacturer to help automotive technicians diagnose and repair problems reported by consumers and dealership service departments.  These potential issues are earmarked by the manufacturer and if you car comes into the shop for even an unrelated issue, the shop will typically look at these too.  This could go a long way in explaining those famous good faith repairs performed by dealerships.

While we all know just how well the industry ranks in the JD Powers world, I bet more than a few of you would be surprised to know what may go unreported. How about this simple fact: over the last 20 years the manufactures still in existence today have logged 665,629 combined recalls, complaints, and technical service bulletins! That is quite a bit of issues that may never see the light of day to the average buyer.  Take a look at the table below and see what the totals are for the last 20 years for the industry by automaker.

Now before you go jumping off the deep end, and start picking fights.  You need to be aware of a few things. 

Size matters: If you make a full line of vehicles then your chances of an issue is far greater than a smaller company.

Complexity matters:  If you produce overly complex vehicles, the deck is stacked against you from the beginning. Complex designs will inherently have the potential to create issues. TSB’s can give you a clue to the real world experiences of owning a complex vehicle.

Expensive doesn’t insulate you from anything: As you can easily see expensive cars
in general still have issues.

Complaints are just that:  They can be issues from total rust failure of a structural element that leads to a recall, accelerators that get stuck under floor mats that ends up as a TSB, or even headlights that aren’t bright enough which may never get addressed.  A TSB might best be a gauge on how widespread issues are in a brand.


So what about those luxury brands?

I thought you would never ask!  I took the Japanese big three luxury brands and pitted them against the European luxury brands in my typical fashion to see how they stack up over the last 20 years.  This is a tough test because the German industry was not at it’s finest in the later 90’s and you can really see it.  But in the interest of fair play I also took the last 10 years into account if it made any difference.

Are the Japanese really all they are cracked up to be?

Acura has never been massive but their sales in the past have been respectable and they have a fairly complete lineup.

The totals for the last decade are:

Infiniti barely scratches the surface with a lineup relying on just a few models to make headway in the market:

The totals for the last decade are:

Lexus is the king pin here with a broad lineup and large volume.  If issues were here they would be in the numbers:

The totals for the last decade are:

The Germans are well known for performance and high complexity but is there a cost?

Audi and Infiniti are similar in sales volume but what about recalls and complaints?

 The totals for the last decade are:

BMW has been known for performance and finicky owners.  How do they stack up in the long run?

The totals for the last decade are:

Mercedes-Benz has impeccable style and engineering, but are there hidden issues that only the dealer knows about?

The totals for the last decade are:

So where does the truth lay? Somewhere in these figures I suppose, because in reality it is what you are willing to live with. 

If you want a German car then Audi wins in recalls probably because it only recently has become a full line automaker in the US.  If you tend to buy a Japanese brand then Lexus is your choice due to a full lineup and limited recalls.  The real key is gauging reliability, recall likelihood, owner complaints, and the potential issues with underlying TSB’s.

Give us your feedback and if warranted (by your responses) I can break out specific categories based by model for a future comparison.  (Example: 3 Series vs. the rest of the class)