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J D Power Asia Pacific 2008 has published its first India Vehicle Dependability Study, and named 8 of India's most dependable cars.
A car's overall dependability is based on the number of problems reported (by customers) per 100 vehicles (PP100) -- with lower scores indicating a lower rate of problem incidences and higher long-term vehicle quality. The 2008 India Vehicle Dependability Study is based on evaluations from nearly 4,700 owners, who purchased a new vehicle between July 2004 and September 2005.

Swift
Esteem
Corolla
Innova
Santro
Honda City ZX
Ford Endeavour
MB C-Class

Interesting to see TATA/GM/SKODA completly missed out the list.

From your own experiences do you concur because I think a sample of 4,700 is too small our forum's sample is many times bigger than that?

I think the 800 is still a dependable car. If you have to pick "the most dependable car" what would it be?

It's Corolla or Innova for sure. Never have I seen any vehicle from the Toyota stable stranded on an highway or anywhere else due to a malfunction.

Ford is the most common vehicle that I see stranded.

Has to be the Innova ! But the study is based on a sample of 4700 ? Not right.

The NHC is certainly a dependable car or so it seems going by the strong numbers it posts month after month.

The Corolla is also a dependable car. Like lurker mentions, I too have not really seen any Toyota stranded on the highways or city roads.

I am wondering how such a survey might be conducted? Most vehicle owners would own let's say on an average 2 vehicles and their universe of "dependability" will be restricted mostly to the vehicles they own.

I used to own an M800 and now Santro AT and Verna. My view of dependability is going to be restricted to my experiences to these vehicles. So how can my dependability be compared to the dependability of someone who owns say an NHC?

Any thoughts?

Cant agree more.
It is something which has been here for so long that I need not ad more to the reply

Thats also because Toyota has sold much fewer cars than Maruti, Hyundai and Honda.

IMO, more than a particular car, it should be a dependable brand that we must be looking at. Because presence or absence of quality will be more or less uniformly seen in all cars of a brand. As opposed to one of their cars being dependable and the other not.

For each one of us, it would depend on what cars we have owned and experienced. I have used Suzuki cars from 3 segments and would vouch for their absolute dependability, with the M800 being one of them.

Were you expecting otherwise, especially when the study was about dependability and number of problems per vehicle ? :)

Hmm. M&M is also not in the list.

I think this survey is flawed. You cannot judge the reliability until you own all the cars in the survey. Since that is not possible how do we compare one car's reliability with another car? I will be biased towards the cars I own. Also sometimes you end up with a flawed product. So do we say that the brand is not reliable based on one car?

Pl. see Rediff Slide show
for J D Power Asia Pacific 2008 India Vehicle Dependability study.

This is about J D Power Asia Pacific 2008 survey. How can this thread decide India's most dependable car?

It has to be Toyota, Honda & Suzuki in that order. Like SB said, the range of cars in a company are all as reliable as the other.

now i am totally surprised to find the swift first in the list i am kind of sure at least 30 owners would complain of the rattling problems, i think this rating is totally biased.

how come santro has so many problems?

The problem with such surveys is that they are not a measure of actual dependability, but perceived dependability.
Lets say there are two cars, X and Y. X is known to give hundreds of problems, while Y is supposed to give zilch problems.
The sample containts two people whi bought X and Y respectively
Luckly the X's car gave just 5 problems, when he was expecting 50. Naturally he will mark his car as very high.
Y got a bad batch which gave 2 problems, and rated it bad.
Now from the POV of Z, Y's car is still more dependable, but from the POV of X and Y, which these results take, X becomes more dependable though its clearny not so.

This is really old data. As an aside Toyotas and Hondas are known the world over for their reliability and dependability and it is one the most important reason for their success. I have heard from several cab owners about the rock solid reliability of Qualis and Innova and how they have been running them for lakhs of kilometers without any major trouble.

This April when I was traveling from Delhi to Simla, the rented innova had 1.3 lakh kilometers on the odo yet there wasn't a single rattle in it. IMO, Innova should be above swift in terms of reliability/dependability else the study is flawed.