Few surprises on dependable cars
It's the usual gang of winners and losers in J.D. Power's annual survey with a few wild cards thrown in.
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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- There are lots of different ways to measure automotive quality. But for my money, the best single indicator is J.D. Power and Associates' three-year study of vehicle dependability. More than 46,000 original owners of 2006-model year vehicles weighed in with their opinions this year
Ranking high in this study is like winning an Academy Award. You don't get to make an acceptance speech, but at least the voters are more qualified - they actually drove the cars.
The reason this survey is so important is that three years is typically the minimum length of time you would expect to own a new car and, likewise, the length of time you would expect it to run trouble-free.
This year's study was redesigned to include 202 different problem symptoms, including such things as noisy brakes, peeling paint, and excessive wind noise.
No surprise here: It was Toyota Motor. Among vehicle segments, the equivalent of the Academy's craft awards, the automaker's Toyota, Lexus, and Scion brands won ten of the 19 categories, everything from subcompact (Scion xA) and compact (Toyota Prius) to large SUV (Toyota Sequoia) and large premium (Lexus LS 430).
Other Asian brands scoring above average were Infiniti, Acura, Honda, Hyundai, and Subaru.
Domestic manufacturers could claim some victories too. Four of Ford Motor Co.'s (F, Fortune 500) brands - Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, and Jaguar (now owned by India's Tata) finished above average, and four Ford Motor vehicles were segment winners.
For its part General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) saw its Buick brand tie with Jaguar for first place in dependability. But Cadillac was the only other GM brand to finish above average, and the Buick Lacrosse was GM's only segment winner.
GM quality czar Jamie Hresko says GM can do better. He says the automaker's warrantee claims have fallen 48% since 2006, and adds, "I think the Chevrolets we are building today are better than the 2006 Buicks in the survey." Reason: higher quality components.
Japan's tiny Suzuki finished dead last with J.D. Power - it traditionally does poorly in quality surveys. So does Land Rover, which finished third from last.
In between them was Volkswagen, but that may be a lagging indicator. In the most recent J.D. Power survey of initial quality after 90 days of ownership, Volkswagen finished in the third quartile, suggesting the quality of its newer models is better than its three-year-old ones.
Ditto for Mercedes-Benz. It finished below average in the three-year study - not where you want a luxury brand to be - but fourth in the latest initial quality survey.
Of course, even the Academy Awards are subject to controversy and the voting results don't always line up with, say, the Golden Globes.
Likewise, the ranking of predicted reliability by Consumer Reports magazine in its latest auto issue has some jarring differences. It uses a different survey and polls millions of its subscribers. Toyota brands still score well, and Subaru, Mazda, and Mercedes all rank more highly with Consumer Reports than they do with J.D. Power.
The domestics tend to score worse. Cadillac is fourth from the bottom with Consumer Reports. vs. 9th from the top in the J.D. Power survey. Chrysler, meanwhile, ranks above average with J.D. Power but third from the bottom with Consumer Reports.
Perhaps some light will be shed on the discrepancies when J.D. Power releases its 2009 initial quality survey in June. Until then, the best advice for shoppers is caveat emptor.
In the meantime, if we find all this confusing, just think what the Treasury Department's auto task force faces as it tries to sort out whether GM and Chrysler deserve more federal support and under what terms.
"Caveat emptor" wouldn't be bad advice for it, either. 
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