
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280486
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE:  By Newsday
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

U.S. AUTOS BETTER, BUT JAPAN'S BEST, BUYERS' SURVEY SAYS

Cars made by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are getting better but, overall, the Japanese still produce the most trouble-free vehicles, according to Consumers Union's latest survey of its readers.

The survey, reported in the current issue of the group's magazine, Consumer Reports, provides one of the few objective comparisons of automobile reliability whose results are publicly available.

Consumers Union rates three Detroit products - the Buick LeSabre, Dodge Spirit and Plymouth Acclaim - as having "better-than-average" reliability. None earned that rating last year or the year before.

At the same time, the group said, of 33 model-year 1989 passenger cars rated "worse than average" or "much worse than average," all but one - the Jaguar XJ-6 - were American cars.

Consumers Union concluded that Toyota and Honda generally produce the most trouble-free vehicles.

The group does not categorize as "American" cars vehicles such as the Honda Accord, assembled in the United States by a Japanese automaker, or the products of joint ventures on U.S. soil such as the Plymouth Laser, produced by Mitsubishi and Chrysler Corp.

The group based its conclusions on readers' experiences in the previous year with more than 637,000 vehicles, including, in this survey, 1984 through 1989 models. Readers' answers to a questionnaire are fed into a computer, which generates the ratings. The group does not name a "best" car or truck, but it gives 20 vehicles - all made by Japanese automakers or joint ventures involving Japanese automakers - its highest rating, "much better than average."

Car makers rarely dispute the group's findings, but some executives note that Consumer Reports' readers are concentrated on the East and West coasts and might be biased toward imports. Some also claim that readers of a consumers' magazine are likely to more critical than the average consumer.

Last Friday, however, in a rare public statement by a "big three" executive, General Motors chief economist George Eads told a lecture audience in Ohio that Japanese factories in the United States "produce a higher quality car at a lower cost than the domestic makers."

Although Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. have at times claimed to produce the best American-made cars, Robert Knoll, chief of auto testing for Consumers Union, said he could not determine from his data which of the big three U.S. automakers produced the best vehicles. But, he said, all three are making progress.

"I really do think they are," he said. "I just wish they would do it more across the board; right now, it's sort of on specific models."

by CNB