San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)

Luxury cars no longer are tops in dependabil­ity

- By Christophe­r Jensen Christophe­r Jensen is a New York Times writer.

Not only are cars and trucks getting more reliable, but mass-market vehicles overall are now more dependable than luxury brands. That’s according to the 2019 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependabil­ity Study, which looks at how well 2016 models have held up.

Lexus was first, followed by a tie between Porsche and Toyota, with Chevrolet taking fourth. Buick, Mini, BMW, Audi, Hyundai and Kia rounded out the top 10.

“The industry continues to make more and more reliable vehicles despite putting more and more technology on those vehicles,” said David Sargent, a J.D. Power vice president.

That doesn’t mean perfection has been achieved.

Owners complained about a wide variety of problems, including batteries that fail, wind noise, transmissi­ons that shift oddly and things that just break, Sargent said in an interview. While they may upset owners, these issues are not likely to leave them stranded, he said.

J.D. Power, which sells automakers the right to advertise good ratings from its research, has conducted the Vehicle Dependabil­ity Study for 30 years. For 2019, almost 33,000 owners of 31 brands were asked about problems in eight major categories, including engine, transmissi­on, controls, entertainm­ent and navigation.

The vehicles and automakers are ranked on the number of problems for every 100 vehicles, with lower numbers being better. The industry average this year was 136 problems per 100 vehicles. That’s down from 142 in 2018 and 156 in 2017. When J.D. Power combined the scores of “mass market brands,” it came up with an average of 135 problems per 100 vehicles. That compared with 141 for the luxury marques, which weren’t helped by Volvo (204) and Land Rover (221). They took the 29th and 30th spots. Fiat (249) was ranked last.

A Land Rover spokesman said the automaker had problems with its infotainme­nt system and was correcting those. A Fiat spokesman said the automaker expected to move up as a result of a quality improvemen­t program. A Volvo spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but Sargent said that Volvo had just introduced its new 2016 XC90 and that it was not unusual for new models to have problems.

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