“Buyers want impeccable quality, reliability, basic space for what they
have to do, package size, good performance, and good fuel economy,”
so says David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a
consulting group in Ann Arbor, Mich.
I have read this statement several times. I'm pretty sure that I agree with his assessment as it applies to most people I come in contact with when buying a car.
Quality and reliability have been the features I have stressed most over the years. That makes sense since I have sold more Toyotas and Hondas than anything and the strongest suits of those brands are quality and long term reliability. Not everybody cares.
Mr. Cole doesn't mention safety. Of loyalty, patriotism, prejudice, envy, not a word. What about style?
Hall, at AutoPacific, says that from the 1970s to the ‘90s, Detroit’s
attention was focused on finance, sales volume, debt repayment, and
other factors--everything but customers. “The domestics are trying to
fix three to four decades of not caring about the product,” he says,
“and that’s not going to be turned around overnight.”
For American carmakers to catch up, they can no longer afford to merely improve on their older models, experts say. They must
build better cars than Honda and Toyota. More...
The Consumer Reports piece is interesting. They are always very analytical, methodical. Practical.
One thing you won't get in a Consumer Reports story though is this. Buyers often forget to act like Consumers. Sometimes, " as long as it's red " is the end of the story.