Merc1

I agree with James and bum-man here. I think that if the Germans particularly Mercedes/BMW/Audi could get really close to Japanese cars in reliability you'd see the popularity of Japanese cars drop very slowly, but steadily. In the U.S. market a good deal of people won't even consider a German car because the reliability factor, but they clearly want one because of its other qualities. Once Mercedes in particular gets it together in this area it will be no stopping them.

I also think the Germans could stand to lose some variants of each model, espcially Mercedes. I mean this is hugely expensive to build a jillion versions of one model.

In order to get better reliability though the German brands are going to have re-think, tear-down and rebuild their whole way of designing a car, if they want to get to Toyota levels of reliability. They're all still doing things the old fashioned way (in most cases). I also think they need to put every single model through the same tests. Something tells me Mercedes isn't going to test the new C like they did the S, which BTW seems to be enjoying a glitch-free launch so far. I mean the S was driven in every country around the world over and over to test various systems (nav/radios/phones/suspension tuning) and refine the car to the ninth degree and get a better understanding of how to tailor it for each market instead of the one-size-fits-all approach. Will they do the same with the C? I hope so.

The Germans need to hurry up on this too because when the Japanese figure out how to make a true equal to a German car in every way its going to be death to the Germans.

Oh, Porsche enjoys great reliability, but it was because they got some help from Toyota years ago. As a result the 911 and Boxsters have been dead reliabile so it can be done. Then look at their only unreliable product, the Cayenne. It was co-designed with VW and the reliability went out the window, according to U.S. surveys.

M