Whether you’re a hard-core car enthusiast or you think of your vehicle as an appliance, you don’t want automotive problems that demand dealership visits or generate roadside delays. One of the key sources of information about automotive quality is the J.D. Power and Associates U.S. Initial Quality Study (IQS), which the company has been conducting since 1987. But how, exactly, is quality measured in this survey?

You begin to wonder when you compare the 2011 IQS results with those from 2010 [see below]. For example, GMC, Mazda, and Toyota each moved up 14 or 15 positions on the chart, while Ford plummeted 18 places—from fifth to 23rd. We haven’t noticed a huge degradation in Ford quality during the past year, so what’s going on?

Part of the disconnect stems from most people’s tendency to equate quality with an absence of defects. Back in the Eighties, when Japanese car­makers were grabbing market share from domestic companies on the strength of their superior assembly quality, many of us thought of automotive quality primarily in those terms. But Webster’s concise definition of quality is “the degree of excellence which a thing possesses.” And the J.D. Power IQS has always taken this broader view.

Raffi Festekjian, J. D. Power’s director of automotive product research, explains that the IQS was designed to capture “things gone wrong” with a vehicle. Each one is called a “problem,” and it can be “either a fault in the assembly of the vehicle or a design issue.” A fault might be a poorly assembled door panel or a loose electrical connection, while a design issue is something that a customer doesn’t like—a multifunction cruise-control stalk, for example—even though the item is performing exactly as intended.

To identify both types of problems, J.D. Power conducts an extensive survey with 228 questions divided into eight categories: exterior, interior, features/controls/displays, audio/entertainment/navigation systems, seats, climate controls, powertrain, and driving experience. “In our 2011 IQS, we had a random survey, geographically distributed, with more than 73,000 respondents who had owned their vehicles for 90 days. We require a minimum of 100 surveys for a model to be rated,” says Festekjian. “And we make no judgments about these answers. We simply report the voice of the customer.”

Which brings us back to Ford, which introduced two all-new models last year—the Fiesta and the Explorer—and performed a major face lift on the Edge. Was Ford’s drop in the rankings simply an illustration of the old adage about never buying a new car in the first year, before the bugs are worked out?

The IQS numbers would appear to support this theory. The industry average was 107 problems per every hundred vehicles in 2011, while new and redesigned machines averaged 122 problems, and carry-over or lightly modified cars and trucks scored only 103 problems. Indeed, according to Festekjian, the all-new Ford Explorer experienced the greatest IQS deterioration of any vehicle in the industry.

But while J.D. Power won’t reveal the breakdown of problems on individual models or brands, Festekjian does allow that Ford’s plummet in the rankings was primarily due to design problems rather than defects. “Ford tried to do too much, too quickly.”

Ford does not deny this. Spokesman Alan Hall says that the company was aware of many of these issues even before the IQS results were released. “Voice recognition has been identified as ‘not working.’ ” Why the sudden problem when Ford has had Sync for years? Hall explains that “Sync controlled primarily the phone and the music player with a fairly simple command structure. [The new MyFord Touch system] has far more capability with far more commands.”

In other words, Ford’s voice-recognition system works, but customers don’t know how to use it, given that it requires precise vocabulary and syntax. “We did clinics about this, and one of the first things we learned is that customers were asking for more training.” Hall explains. “We’ve put together dealer-personalization sessions to provide training for our customers.”

In addition, there’s a dedicated staff at the Ford customer-service center to address MyFord Touch questions, as well as some 30 training videos on the MyFord Touch website. This is one IQS problem that can’t be solved on the factory floor.

At the same time, Ford is also making running software changes to improve the operation and user-friendliness of its electronic systems. But this example underlies the risks of incorporating too much modern technology in cars. As Power’s Festekjian puts it, “Consumers want the technology, but as it’s added and integrated into the vehicles, the technology tends to add to the problems reported in the IQS.”

Lest you think that these problems are primarily electronic in nature, the new Fiesta has also been cited for issues with its PowerShift dual-clutch automatic. There seems to be little evidence that this transmission has any mechanical problems, but customers are complaining about its shift quality.

The PowerShift transmission is not as smooth as a conventional automatic equipped with a torque converter. Might the customer complaints be instigated by a transmission that doesn’t feel like a conventional automatic? “I can’t go into customers’ minds,” says Festekjian.

It seems clear that when it comes to technology and infotainment features, upfront training might forestall such complaints. The same might be said for features that are new or unfamiliar to customers who have recently switched brands.

We’ve observed with dismay as BMW, in its newer models, has been switching from its traditional stalk-based cruise control to buttons on the steering wheel. We’ve been told that this change is to address IQS complaints, even though we—and most BMW executives—agree that the stalk control is easier and less distracting to operate.

In a different vein, Porsche has struggled with brake-pad choice because of the IQS. The pads that deliver the best fade resistance and wet-braking performance are also those that generate more wheel-soiling, IQS-complaint–generating dust.

One hopes that the customers who complain about the brake dust in the IQS are somewhat offset by those who praise the brakes in Power’s Automotive Performance, Execution, and Layout (APEAL) study, which is designed to capture “things gone right” about a vehicle. It’s attached to the IQS questionnaire, so it draws from the same population of respondents.

Unfortunately, the results of the APEAL study don’t get the play the IQS does, suggesting that moves toward the lowest-common-denominator solutions to reduce design “problems” will continue. When a large majority of IQS-reported problems were defects, the survey was a powerful force in the drive toward automotive quality. But the gap between defects and design problems is closing. “In 2011,” according to ­Festekjian, “there were still slightly more defects than design problems, but it’s getting closer every year.”

The J.D. Power organization only reveals the intimate details of each car’s and truck’s IQS performance to the manufacturers that pay for that information. It’s been a business model that has served the company well since Toyota became its first client in 1969. But Power’s Raffi Festekjian revealed the top three industry-wide complaints in the IQS for both the defect and design sides:

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Defects

• 1) Wind noise (the leading complaint since the first survey in 1987)

• 2) Abnormal noises under the vehicle (could be anything)

• 3) Noisy brakes (squealing and clunking)

Design Problems

• 1) Hands-free communication not recognizing customer commands

• 2) HVAC controls poorly located and difficult to use

• 3) Automatic-transmission behavior and shift quality (dual-clutch transmissions, busier shifting with downsized engines and more gears)

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