不要迷信欧洲车

European and Australian cars consistently lag behind their Asian competitors in quality, according to confidential industry figures obtained by the Herald.

The Australian New Car Buyer Survey, carried out on behalf of the industry by respected researcher ACNielsen, shows that the locally designed and built Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon have more faults in the first five months of ownership than their competitors in the large-car class, the Japanese-built Nissan Maxima and the Korean-built Hyundai Grandeur.

Half of all Falcon owners - and almost the same number of Commodore owners - will have a fault in their vehicle in their first five months of ownership, the survey reveals. But owners of a Mazda, Suzuki, Honda and Nissan are likely to be delighted with their purchase with lower than average fault rates.

The figures obtained by the Herald cover the period from January to June 2006. The Commodore figures tally with the experience of the Drive team, which found quality issues with the majority of the new VE models we tested. In Australia, the ACNielsen New Car Buyer Survey is carried out every six months and car companies share quality information with each other on the proviso that no one publishes the results.

The top 10 brands in Australia -which together make up almost 85 per cent of the market - all pay for the service, which is believed to cost each of them about $250,000 a year. Prestige brands, with the notable exception of Mercedes-Benz, subscribe to a separate survey that doesn\'t include quality figures (see separate story).

The figures confirm similar surveys overseas, which have shown that US- and European-built cars largely lag behind Korean and Japanese cars on quality. They also reinforce the results of a recent Roy Morgan Research survey on customer satisfaction for nine of the country\'s biggest brands, in which Holden, Mitsubishi and Ford were ranked in the bottom three places. But in addition to measuring actual vehicle faults the ACNielsen survey also measures customer satisfaction and their perception of quality. In this regard, the survey shows that while fault levels may be higher than expected, this does not mean customers are unhappy.

For example, some Volkswagen models recorded a higher than average number of actual faults but figures from another part of the survey show customer satisfaction is high. \'\'We are very happy with our customers\' perception of the quality of our brand,\'\' says Volkswagen Australia spokesman Matthew Wiesner. He says there are pros and cons of making the data available to the public. \'\'I don\'t think showing customers the figures is necessarily going to improve quality. We do that anyway.\'\'