Shocked at what I saw....

I went into a Sleepy's Mattress Center yesterday evening and was stunned at the bedding they sell at what I thought were high prices. All brand name, heavily advertised product, but to my eye it looked cheaply made. I'd look at a set and think "That's got to be $ 599, tops" and pull the tag and its $ 1,999 ! I guess I've been looking at my Royal Pedics too long that I have in my store. WOW....I had no idea they got that kind of money for what I think are very marginal products (that I wouldn't own). There's a lot of cruddy bedding out there, I guess.

Yeah that's pretty much how I felt the last time I set foot in a Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc. dealership. LOL

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Originally Posted by earlh

Yeah that's pretty much how I felt the last time I set foot in a Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc. dealership. LOL

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Must've been a very long time ago. Cars are one of my obsessions and your opinion is very outdated. Today, country of origin cannot be used to guarantee product quality; an American made Ford is very likely to be a superior product over to a Japanese Toyota.

Not outdated at all. You're welcome to buy all the Fords you like, but the quality of a Ford is nowhere near that of a Toyota - period! Don't believe me? Just have a look at the resale market. Compare what you get for a used Toyota with what you get for a similar used Ford. The Toyota is worth at least double. Nothing speaks louder to quality than the market, whether it's cars or anything else for that matter. Oh, and you must have missed this thread. Have a look at the data from Consumer Reports. Where do you see Ford? Yes at the bottom! Now I'll stop. I do not want to piss off our Fearless Leader. Sure hope he comes back soon.

I just bought a Toyota Tundra pickup, built in San Antonio, TX. Why Toyota? I had really liked my Tacoma and have had so many Ford F-150's that I wanted to try something different. So far, its a really nice truck with amazing electronics as standard equipment on the more base model.

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Originally Posted by earlh

Not outdated at all. You're welcome to buy all the Fords you like, but the quality of a Ford is nowhere near that of a Toyota - period! Don't believe me? Just have a look at the resale market. Compare what you get for a used Toyota with what you get for a similar used Ford. The Toyota is worth at least double. Nothing speaks louder to quality than the market, whether it's cars or anything else for that matter. Oh, and you must have missed this thread. Have a look at the data from Consumer Reports. Where do you see Ford? Yes at the bottom! Now I'll stop. I do not want to piss off our Fearless Leader. Sure hope he comes back soon.

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I don't personally own a Ford and never have but if I were shopping for a new vehicle, I wouldn't automatically rule out the purchase of one. Today, one of their products is likely as good or better than competing makes.

Ford has gotten dinged in some quality studies because of their Microsoft-based infotainment system called MyFordTouch. It's an iPad like system of controlling the HVAC, audio, and navigation system. Lots of folks find it to be frustrating to use and criticize Ford for it. BMW experienced a similar decline in quality ratings seemingly overnight when they launched a similar system called iDrive.

Bob Lutz, former Vice Chairman at General Motors and the man in charge of product development and design once quipped that 'perception lags reality'. By that he meant that what people think about a brand is often based on past experience so, good or bad, the way a brand is perceived isn't always consistent with the current reality.

Maybe someone owned a Ford 20 years ago and it was awful. They think Ford makes terrible cars now. Maybe they currently own a 10 year old Toyota that has been fantastic. They think Toyota still makes great cars. Although those are consumers' perceptions about the two brands, they are based on what was produced in the past and that may not be consistent with reality today. Ford could have improved (they have) and Toyota could have declined (they also have) so a savvy consumer will educate themselves on the current state of the automotive market rather than assuming that old axioms remain true.

You cite resale value as a determinant for how good a product is and it is a good indicator but there are many factors that go into what a car is worth on the used car market. Among them is the perceptions of consumers about what a product is worth and, again, perception lags reality, so resale value may also be a lagging indicator of actual quality.

To bring this back to furniture, there are many examples that could be cited. If one were to ask consumers who makes the best furniture, they likely would cite big name brands that have spent nearly a century producing quality furniture in the North Carolina region. The brands that would be named are those that we find in our parents' homes. However, many of these companies have long since closed shop in the Carolina's and moved to China. The furniture is often not what it used to be but again, perception lags reality. Consumers buy what they think is "good" furniture only to be disappointed because it turns out their notion of who makes good furniture is outdated. Many brands do what I call "living off their reputation rather than living up to it". For example, many consumers think a La-Z-Boy recliner is the best and perhaps at one time it was but today the quality is, in my opinion, quite poor but the company still sells a lot of chairs because consumers' perceptions about recliners lag reality. They are still living off of their good name.

Back to cars, Toyota sells a lot of cars because of the perception of being the best. Ford may struggle because of their past but the current reality is that I wouldn't automatically assume one is better than the other. A Ford Fusion today may turn out to be superior to Toyota's Camry.

No. Reliability is north-south. CR editor's test score is east-west on that chart. Toyota simply has better quality than any other manufacturer by any measure (TCO, longevity, repair frequency). It isn't close.

Nevertheless, I no longer drive a Toyota because I find their cars boring (though the new FRS looks very promising). I respect, but do not agree with CR editor's car ratings.

The European auto makers have really improved their quality greatly in the last 10 years (Volkswagen's Audi line in particular is making a push). The American manufacturers have improved alot too actually, but were so far behind that it would be a huge costs to upgrade all of their facilities to use high quality techniques. I have hope for Ford, because they're cars are currently beautiful. And Jeep is America ... for whatever that's worth.

It would be hard to overstate how bad American cars were in the early 90s compared to imports. And the worst part of that is that 90's American models were leaps and bounds better than 80's and 70's cars (but imports were nothing special then either). Toyota invented TQE actually (the mathematician worked for them), and in the 80's adopted TQE completely. By the late 90s, only the US makers didn't do TQE.

Interestingly, I bet that one thing that all of Duane's preferred manufacturer's all use TQE/TQM (possibly) without even knowing what it is. I bet they all have close relationships with their suppliers, and tell them what they are using the supplies for so that the supplier can give them the correct wood for the application the builder is using, rather than just any cosmetically nice piece of wood or hide. The main thing TQE showed, was that there was no one thing you could do to get quality, you had to do everything well. That may mean telling your supplier I need the prettiest wood for face A, but I need wood with the straightest possible grain for post B. Even if the wood appears the same, a 100 year old mill will know where the trees were from, and know which batch has better properties for a long bed post or a flat table top. And I bet H&M and Treharn and Plaud have those kind of relationships with the mills and tanneries.

Also interesting is the fact that Toyota was one of the first companies across all manufacturers to use Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to design and produce a product that indeed met or exceeded what the Customers valued in a product offering. Of course it is also interesting that it was two American men that launched Statistical Process Control to Japan. In any event it is arguable as to which Automobiles are of the highest Quality in today's market environment. If we used reliable criteria and data to back our perspective we would get one answer, while perception might produce an entirely different answer. I have a Buick and a Honda, both purchased the same year and perception allowed me to buy the Buick at a much better price, yet I find both vehicles to be of similar actual Quality.