Posted by Matt Wilson on Thursday, February 05, 2004 at 2:01PM :
Hey Norm,
I was just curious. By careful examination of your posts on this site, the more perceptive people amongst our ranks could get the idea that you might have a slight preference for Dodge over Ford or GM. I, in my superior abilities to infer hidden meanings, managed to glean that notion from your subtle comments over the past couple of years.
Anyway, in all seriousness, you mentioned at least one time a while back that you drive Dodge's because you had found all kinds of research showing that Dodge's were much more reliable and performed better than the other brands, and also because of a bad experience with a Ford product. Please don't take my next statement the wrong way, but I'm just wondering what your sources are for this research. I have not looked at Consumer Reports in a couple of years, but the last time I did, I seem to remember that the Dodge's had significantly more reliability problems than the Fords, and also I seem to remember that they had more problems than the Chevy's. I think Consumer Reports provides probably the most comprehensive, most detailed information available regarding vehicle reliability and quality, so I think it would be hard to dispute. Now, I understand that perhaps the recent Fords or Chevy's could be having teething problems with their current products, and Dodge might not be, but Consumer Reports probably won't show much info about such new products (not enough info yet, I suspect) until they are a couple of years older. However, with the trucks that have been out on the market for a few years, so that sufficient data is available, I don't remember our beloved Dodge's fairing so well. I, for one, would love to see Dodge's rated as the top trucks in the world, but I just haven't seen the evidence to convincingly say it's so, and I seem to remember that the evidence said just the opposite.
Maybe your research is personal (i.e, based upon your own experience). I understand that kind of "research" to a point, but everyone has had good and bad experiences with all brands of products over the years, so that's not what I would call valid research. When I talk about research, I'm talking about comprehensive data based upon the experiences of a very large population of people (such as Consumer Reports).
If a person were to insist on sticking with personal experience or experiences of their buddies and acquaintances, then I guess I'd have to admit that most of the folks I know who drive Fords have had very few problems, and Chevy drivers may have a few more, but on the whole the Chevies seem to have had only a few. Meanwhile a large percentage of the people I know who have bought Dodge's have had quite a few problems, many of them major.
The reason I am asking this is not because I'm trying to tick off anybody. The reason is because I want to know the truth. I think the Cummins is a great engine, and someday I might like to own a Cummins-powered truck, and if that truck is a Dodge truck, then all the better. However, if the rest of the truck doesn't hold up while the Cummins engine does, then it's not worth it to buy a Cummins. In that case, I'll just buy a PowerStroke or a Duramax unless I see convincing evidence from a reputable source to steer me in the other direction.
On this forum, there are a lot of people who like Dodge's, but amongst the other circles I participate in, most people don't like them, and have bad experiences to back up their opinions. Now, many of them drive other brands and are very happy. I used to think that these folks were just biased, but after hearing more and more negative things, I began to wonder, and when I saw the negative reports on paper, I didn't have an argument. I would like nothing better than to prove the anti-Dodge crowd wrong....but are they really wrong? Show me the numbers! To make matters worse, when someone is so pro-Dodge that he can't possibly admit that other brands generally make very good trucks, it does not instill confidence in me that his opinion is un-biased. This is especially true when his pro-Dodge, anti-brand-X statements might be based mostly on one bad personal experience. So again I say: Show me the numbers!
Please don't take this post personally, as I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this.
Matt
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