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The Early 2010 Reliability Grade Point Averages and Grades for Manufacturers of Automobiles
by James Bleeker
Photograph of a 2006 Toyota
Prius on 18 September 2010
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The Toyota Prius has a 2010 Auto Reliability
GPA of a perfect 4.00 over its 9-year data history and
has helped Toyota Motor Corporation place second among all
automobile manufacturers in the Early 2010 Auto
Reliability Grade Point Averages. See the
table below. |
The following table provides the reliability Grade Point Averages (GPAs)
for each of the automobile manufacturers with significant sales in North
America. Each manufacturer's GPA is an average, unweighted by sales, of
those of its motor vehicle products that appear in the tables of the
Consumer Union's Consumer Reports: New Car Buying Guide: 2010 and
the April 2010 issue of the Consumer Reports magazine. The Average
GPA for each car company is the average of the
Average GPAs of its products. The Average
Minimum GPA for each manufacturer is the average of the
Minimum GPAs of its models. The Reliable
Two, Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda Motor Company, appear first in the
table, because of their rather singular stature; the remaining manufacturers
are listed alphabetically.
Letter grades are determined thusly: A if the GPA is 3.50 to
4.00, B if the GPA is 2.50 to 3.49, C if the GPA is 1.50 to 2.49, D if
the GPA is 0.50 to 1.49, and F if the GPA < 0.50.
GPAs for 4 age ranges are given so that the visitor may
examine more thoroughly the one that is of greater interest to
him/her, if such there be.
To arrange any column in ascending order
(smallest value on top), click the header of the column. To
rearrange any column in descending order
(largest value on top), click the header one more time.
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The Early 2010 Reliability Grade Point Averages for Manufacturers of Motor Vehicles
for Four 4-Year Age Ranges
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Notice that (1) Toyota and Honda products dominate the upper end of the reliability
spectrum in the outer years, as well as for younger vehicles, (2) Honda took
the top spot from Toyota in 2010, an infrequent but occasional occurrence,
and (3) Hyundai has leaped past Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.
Caution |
General Motors Corporation changes
(dumps?) vehicle names rather often; consequently, the
reliability ratings of GM's products within Consumer Reports: New Car Buying Guide: 2010
are rather sparse in the outer years. As
there are many more reliability ratings for younger
ages, these values likely provide a better picture
of what one can anticipate from a GM product. |
Note |
General Motors Corporation's GPAs
suggest a means by which the U.S. government, GM's
largest shareholder, may sabotage the Chinese economy:
License all of GM's technology to China for $1.00 per
year, and slip a few million to any manufacturer willing
to use it. |
The Reliability GPAs of both General Motors and Chrysler suggest that one
or two additional bankruptcy reorganizations may be in the offing for one or
both. However, this largely depends on the rate of information dissemination
and the speed with which people act on the information gathered. More likely
than not, GM and Chrysler will be able to limit market share loss to one
percentage point or less per year. At this rate, both should be able to
comfortably downsize without causing economic disturbance in the U.S. or
abroad.
Disclosure |
Site manager is currently a
very small shareholder of Ford Motor Company (2010-04-27). I am not,
and have not been, a
shareholder of any other motor vehicle manufacturer. |
A
PDF version of this page is available for
downloading and/or printing. With it saved, you may glean any changes that
may occur over the next decade, and you may give posterity an opportunity to
glean changes, if any there be, over the next 50 or 100 years.
Note |
Although this site was created using software by Microsoft,
you may encounter difficulty in downloading a PDF file from this
page using
Internet Explorer. However, with Mozilla Firefox, there should
be no difficulty, and the download should be speedy. |
The method of computation of the GPAs is probably familiar to nearly
every college, technical school, and high school student. A Grade Point of 4.00 (that is, an A) is given to a Consumer Reports
"Much Better Than Average" rating, a GP of 3.00 (that is, a B) is given to a
CR "Better Than Average" rating, a GP of 2.00 (that is, a C) to an "Average"
rating, a GP of 1.00 (that is, a D) to a "Worse Than Average" rating, and a
GP of 0.00 (that is, an F) to a "Much Worse Than Average" rating. A Grade
Point Average (GPA) is an average of the Grade Points and is computed using
Microsoft's Average(a:b,[c:d],...) function.
The table is an immediate import from Microsoft's Access and a more
distant import from Microsoft's Excel. The integration of the Access
database into Microsoft's Web Expression software makes the reordering of
the columns a rather simple task. For Ajax's partial post back, the
ScriptManager and UpdatePanel controls were inserted by dragging; <ContentTemplate>
was manually inserted into the code immediately after the ScriptManager and
Update controls.
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