How much Pontiac is in the Toyota Matrix?

You're probably right, Chris... lots of perception issues. But, what IS the variable that accounts for this disparity? (A rhetorical question. I know that no one has the full answer.)



Angelo has spent $4,000 on repairs. I haven't spent $40. Both vehicles have been owned by mature drivers. We live near each other... no difference in terrain or road or weather conditions. We're both "car guys"... know enough to change the oil on a regular basis, etc.



There must be some difference in quality control in the manufacturing process. I know guys on this board who can give us a Six Sigma dissertation on QA. But don't you suspect that human error (or attitude) is behind a lot of the lemons we hear about?
 
Aurora40 said:
Glad to hear you learned something, because you led off like a jerk...
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I was born near Detroit, most of my family lives in Lansing and Midland Michigan.



Most of them have been employed by Dow or American car companies for as long as I can remember.



I married into a family that only drives Hondas and Toyotas. They drive them for 15-20years. They are not "car people" by any stretch of the imagination, they do VERY little maintenance, they fix stuff as they break, and change the oil, thats all.



Where as my family bought new Pontiacs, Chevys, Buicks, etc, they would maintain them by the book, and really after 125k-150k they were done.



When I drove home one time in a '92 Honda Prelude, my family flipped, they were really pissed at me. I took my Uncle for a quick spin, he was actually pretty impressed with the ride quality, fit and finish, etc.



He said "well yeah, but how is it going to drive when its 5 years old?" I said "it's 14 years old now!" It was 2006.



He was visibly shocked.



We then started talking about the Japanes Vs. American car thing. He basically boiled it down to this....



We design cars visually for the American consumer, who's tastes change quickly. We design cars functionally to last 5 good years so the American consumer is back in the showroom buying another car, which keeps him working.



Looking back at my childhood, that is exactly what we all did, no one ever had a car that was more than 4 years old. Every four years we bought a new Monte Carlo, Bonneville, Cavalier, whatever.



So sorry if I came off as a "jerk", but given my experiences, and thats all I have to go on, it was a logical question.



I have a friend that paid top dollar for a Honda Passport and got nothing but a piece of crap, 100% re-badged Isuzu, I'm sure there are good Isuzus, but he didn't get one.



"Perception" has been mentioned many times, but I can't imagine anyone willing to say that a Pontiac is a more quality vehicle than a Toyota.
 
The Vibe IS the Toyota Matrix, only rebadged and with slightly different sheetmetal and interior, although if you've sat in a Vibe you know instantly that you are sitting in a Toyota, not a Pontiac.
 
John Henry said:
But, what IS the variable that accounts for this disparity?

...

Angelo has spent $4,000 on repairs. I haven't spent $40.
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So the difference must be country of origin? Not just that of the tens of thousands of cars that roll of any assembly line, some will have problems and many will not?



If someone spent $4,000 in repairs on a car that came from Japan, what variable would you point to then? Or is that an impossible scenario (also a retorical question, as there are plenty of POS's that roll out of Japan, same as anywhere).
 
Aurora40 said:
So the difference must be country of origin? Not just that of the tens of thousands of cars that roll of any assembly line, some will have problems and many will not?



If someone spent $4,000 in repairs on a car that came from Japan, what variable would you point to then? Or is that an impossible scenario (also a retorical question, as there are plenty of POS's that roll out of Japan, same as anywhere).
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My Toyota was not manufactured in Japan, and I love it... speaking of coming off like a jerk.
 
In the past, when GM for example, wasn't concentrating on say panel gaps, they were markedly larger than they are now. Panel gaps would be considered under fit and finish but no matter what the ethnic background of the assembler, the panels wouldn't line up like a swiss watch...tooling and engineering was the reason for this, not because Tom can't tell the difference between 3 mils and 1 cm. It was much more expensive to concentrate on these small things they thought nobody would care about...and to be honest, most people didnt seem to(other than car mags).



My point of the whole thing is that people seem to think literally that "Americans" cannot assemble as well as people in other countries....a difference of quality in a product of a timeline spanning 20+ years has given people a reason to ask and a reason to answer why. Nevermind the validity of it, people have chalked it up to the actual country of origin. As if America doesnt build some of the worlds best jets, spacecraft, Chris Craft boats, Gibson/Taylor guitars etc.. Has anyone ever watched "How Its Made"? :) People seem to think stuff from China is crap but realize your Ipod comes from China. Does that make it crap? Would it be alot better if it came from Japan? Would it be worse if it came from the US? Or is it the knockoff products with no quality control without engineering that should be to blame for the perception. I know its not the people themselves.



CHRIS
 
2003SCT said:
My point of the whole thing is that people seem to think literally that "Americans" cannot assemble as well as people in other countries....a difference of quality in a product of a timeline spanning 20+ years has given people a reason to ask and a reason to answer why. Nevermind the validity of it, people have chalked it up to the actual country of origin. As if America doesnt build some of the worlds best jets, spacecraft, Chris Craft boats, Gibson/Taylor guitars etc.. Has anyone ever watched "How Its Made"? :)

CHRIS
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Most of the Honda Vehicles are now built in the US. The Accord was the first one built here a little over 10 years ago. The Element (Which I own), the Ridgeline, the Pilot, Acura TL, RDX, and a few others.

Toyota is doing the same along with Nissan.



Honda is not really an import anymore, it is a more American vehicle than half the GM line up which are built in Mexico and Canada. I think they have proved the US can build superior automobiles, as more and more imports are becoming domestics.
 
John Henry said:
My Toyota was not manufactured in Japan, and I love it... speaking of coming off like a jerk.
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Then what was your point? The talk is about how NA made engines crap out, but Japanese made ones are awesome. Someone replies that they are mainly assembled by machine, and it's probably a figment of imagination.



To this, you reply "yeah, maybe your right, but what accounts for the previous poster's Canadian car that's a POS, and my car that is awesome"? If your point was not that country of origin makes a difference, then what was it? It sure seemed clear to me.
 
Aurora40 said:
Then what was your point? The talk is about how NA made engines crap out, but Japanese made ones are awesome. Someone replies that they are mainly assembled by machine, and it's probably a figment of imagination.



To this, you reply "yeah, maybe your right, but what accounts for the previous poster's Canadian car that's a POS, and my car that is awesome"? If your point was not that country of origin makes a difference, then what was it? It sure seemed clear to me.
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My point was that if the manufacturing process is the same, and the parts are standardized, then what does account for differences in the quality of individual cars? Human error? I don't know.



It seems that Toyota or Ford or BMW for that matter would be working 24/7 to find the answer(s) to this question.
 
A few years back, BMW did build testing in a couple of countries on the then-new 5 series and couldn't seem to find any discernable differences in the assembly quality. Not that they are the only one but the test has been done a number of times with essentially the same result. But I still think the knee jerk reaction is to instantly blame American workers/manufacturing. And I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, would be again, years of waning in the manufacturing/engineering process that allowed other countries to leap frog the Big 3. 20 or so years of doing that will cause a bad reputation on something that people have as their second largest expense...their car.

For note, Mercedes Benz for a few years had some quality issues which dropped them in the ratings. They werent severe issues(much of them having to do with the COMMAND interface and all) but their ratings dropped nonetheless. Without even thinking about it, people instantly blamed Chrysler for putting "American crap" into these fantastic German cars. Now if people had known ANYTHING about the "merger" they would have seen that all that happened was Chrysler was given a new RWD platform and Daimler finished off what is known as Chrysler(value wise even after liabilites). At Mercedes, it was just business as usual but people were acting as if they came in and said, "All right all you AMG workers, put down your high quality stuff, we're using Neon parts now!" I have even heard people blaming Fords partial ownership in Mazda as the reason that the RX-8 has been such a quality nightmare. Amazing...simply amazing.

Another factor may be embarassment plain and simple. People who have been touting the superiority of companies like Toyota for so long have to suddenly explain why they had to take the car into the dealer. I worked with a guy who hid issues with his Acura and said he was going to the dentist so that people didn't hear his Acura was anything less than perfect. And if you have been pounding your chest so hard about them being perfect, it seems you would rather throw American workers under the bus than allow people to think it could be the company you have so fervently defended. What people never recognise is the amount of TSBs and recalls Japan has been having. We don't hear about them like we do about the more local ones.

Not saying this is with everyone, but trying to throw some reality in as opposed to perception.



CHRIS
 
I just want to clarify some things that have been said that are not totally true ...



Even though the Matrix and the Vibe are the basically the same vehicle, they are NOT built in the same plant. Nummi only builds Pontiacs and a Toyota Plant in Canada builds the Matrix. Nummi's management is half GM/half Toyota i(if I'm not mistaken). They do follow a UAW agreement, but it's different than the rest of the GM plants.



There's another vehicle that has a similar build history. The Suzuki X7 is the same vehicle as the Pontiac Torrent and Chevy Equinox. All these vehicles are built in plant in Canada. I'm not too familiar with the relationship of GM and Suzuki in that particular plant though ...





I'm not trying to be a know-it-all here, but I get asked this same question so many times. I used to work the the current plant manager that runs NUMMI.
 
Gianni D said:
There's another vehicle that has a similar build history. The Suzuki X7 is the same vehicle as the Pontiac Torrent and Chevy Equinox. All these vehicles are built in plant in Canada. I'm not too familiar with the relationship of GM and Suzuki in that particular plant though ...
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The Suzuki Grand Vitara is the same platform as the Equinox and the Torrent. GM and Suzuki have been partners for years. Most of the Geos were all rebadged Suzukis, except the Prism, which was a rebadged Corolla and the Storm, which was a rebadged Isuzu Impulse.
 
scpanda said:
i think that the pontiac this time around is still pretty much identical to the toyota
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2009-Pontiac-Vibe-GT-02.jpg




Identical to



2009ToyotaMatrixFront400U.jpg








Similar....meh



The same? Far from it.
 
I think the vibe wins this time around the toyota is trying to look too rice boy to me. And I should know since I'm asian and know a thing or two about the ricer aesthetic since I have some friends who are totally into buying a 14,000 econobox car and spending 30,000 on bolt ons and accessories just so they can say it drives better than a BMW. When for the same amount they could have had the BMW.



There is a a lot of misconceptions about American cars out there. And one thing that Japanese companies are known for is trying to avoid TSB's. One issue that deserve recognition is the Honda Ridgeline, Honda seriously dropped the ball on this one. They put the oil filter right next to the exhaust, so if you take it off roading and leaves and such get caught between them they can cause a fire and the oil seal to fail which could not only ruin your engine but catch the whole car on fire. Several seal failures have already been documented, is there a recall? Nope. TSb? Nope. Cause it would be such a PR disaster on the quality of Japanese engineering, it's not even a manufacturing issue.



Yet you still have people extolling the virtues of Japanese design. And there are a whole lot of people taking these glorified minivans off road, exactly where they shouldn't be considering the delicate AWD system, uni-body chassis.



Want more proof? Here's a little comparison of some trucks. It's obvious the Tundra has some terribly weak frames and would not stand even a few years as a real work truck. And there's no excuse for this, because some have been saying it's designed that way to lower the weight and save fuel which is bogus because it gets the same gas mileage as the chevy.



toyota tundra bed bounce - Google Video
 
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