TrueDelta Releases Quarterly Reliability Results

By Michael Karesh

02.09.2009

TrueDelta released updated results for its Car Reliability Survey a few days ago. These include owner experiences through the end of 2008, and so are about eight months ahead of other publicly available car reliability information.

One benefit of our prompt quarterly updates: some 2009s are included. Most notable: the 2009 Hyundai Genesis (review coming to Autosavant in a few weeks), with a repair rate close to the average. Since the Genesis was all-new, and most Hyundais are much less complex, Hyundai could easily have botched this one. They didn’t. All of the reported repairs have been minor electrical, which is the most common type of problem reported for recently purchased new cars.

Aside from the level of complexity, same goes for the 2008.5 / 2009 Pontiac G8 and 2009 Subaru Forester. They’re also all-new, and have similarly average repair rates. The redesigned 2009 Nissan Murano and 2009 Toyota Corolla and refreshed 2009 Hyundai Sonata check in just enough better than the others–the difference is only one or two extra repair trips per ten cars per year–to rate “better than average.” Toyota has dropped the ball a couple of times in recent years, but their small cars still tend to be glitch-free.

Which 2009s aren’t doing well? Among those covered by this set of Car Reliability Survey results, just the Jaguar XF. After some improvement the XF has leveled off at a repair rate nearly three times the average. Mostly minor electrical here as well, just more of it.

TrueDelta now has a separate Car Reliability Survey results page for each model that compares it to its competitors. These pages can be found at this link.

Editor’s note:  Michael Karesh is the founder and owner of TrueDelta, an automotive research company.  While several members of the Autosavant staff participate in TrueDelta’s free vehicle reliability research panels, neither Autosavant nor its staff receive compensation of any kind from TrueDelta or Mr. Karesh.