Quote:
Originally Posted by adouglas
It isn't just Japan, and it isn't just Honda. All car makers have the same issues. My wife bought a first-year Neon (hey, we were giving the US makers a chance for a change) and it was buggy as all get out.
It's not because the manufacturers aren't doing their best. It's because cars are sufficiently complex devices that no matter how much you test, once hudreds of thousands of them actually get out in the real world unexpected issues are bound to crop up.
+1 on the advice to avoid a first-year platform, no matter who makes it.
By the same token, it's a safe bet that a car that's reaching the end of its lifecycle will have all the issues worked out and be pretty darned good, even if it got a bad rep because of early quality problems. I understand the Fiero (remember that?) actually was decent by the time they killed it.
Me, I'm on track to buy a 2010 Fit. By that time my Focus will have 200k on it and be ready for the scrapyard. My wife just took delivery of an 07 and it's a Goldilocks car...just right. I'm liking the new one.
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To some extent I agree with you about all manufacturers' first-year model, but there is a difference among them as to the extent of changes that happen during the same period. Toyota, for instance, does not do running changes much in the first year (an effective cost- and quality-control measure), whereas Honda does it all the time. Auto critics in Japan often call Honda a company whose idea at sunrise changes by the sunset. In one way, you can say Honda is improving their cars all the time. But how about the people who bought those cars in their early part of the model life? Some of that bad experience repeated over the years is reflected in the fact that Honda, as of 2006, had only about 11% market share in Japan, when Toyota had 45% (Nissan about 20%).
When you work at a Honda Cars dealership (that's the dealer brand name in Japan) and try to order parts, it is not enough to know of which model year the particular Honda is. You have to know which lot that car belongs to, or which chassis number that particular car has, or you will get wrong parts precisely because Honda changes things so all the time. That is virtually never required with other Japanese makes such as Toyota or Nissan, or for that matter Subaru or Suzuki or whoever. By the way, I am referring to JDMs - manufactured in Japan and sold in Japan. The same companies often employ different running change philosophies for vehicles built offshore.
Incidentally, the Neon was buggy all the way until the end of the model life. Chrysler never figured out how to put it together. It was just even buggier in the early days.