Having a '17 Jag F-Type, Were a little concerned about Jaguar/Land Rover's dead last in JD Powers' initial quality ranking last few years.
Just traded in my wife's Mercedes for '19 XJ a month ago, & now great to see yesterday that Jaguar has moved up a few spots this year, just right above Mercedes...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...vs/3243994001/Here's how the J.D. Power IQS study scored the major brands (problems per 100 vehicles):

• Dodge (136)
• Kia (136)
• Chevrolet (141)
• Ram (141)
• Genesis (142)
• Mitsubishi (148)
• Buick (150)
• GMC (151)
• Volkswagen (152)
• Hyundai (153)
• Jeep (155)
• Lexus (159)
• Nissan (161)
• Cadillac (162)
• Infiniti (173)
• Ford (174)
• Mini (174)
• BMW (176)
• Honda (177)
• Toyota (177)
• Lincoln (182)
• Mazda (184)
• Acura (185)
• Porsche (186)
• Subaru (187)
• Chrysler (189)
• Jaguar (190)
• Mercedes-Benz (202)
• Volvo (210)
• Audi (225)
• Land Rover (228)
• Tesla (250)

 

So, Tesla is bottom, yet the company seems to manage to attain a market capitalisation far larger than the major players, but produces less than half a million cars a year.
I can't help thinking there is something seriously wrong here !
Tesla - $179 bn
VAG - $149 bn
Toyota - $128bn
GM - $35.7
Ford - $23.6 bn

 

Fraser, how much of that money is cars and how much of it is the other stuff that Tesla is involved in (SpaceX, battery production, etc). Besides, doing a little bit of research, it would appear that the $179B would be their annual sales (2019) for all Tesla products. The Tesla car portion only made $24.6B in sales with their actual profit being a negative number ($862M). These numbers are pulled from a site called "The Verge". If you look at the annual income report directly from Tesla, the automotive portion is only claiming about $20B in sales and about $4.2B in profit. I am pulling these second set of number from https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/b3...8-c928b914b529. I can see where the "179B" came from which is listed on the Tesla annual report for 2019, but that would be a "-179 b p" which is a number that they are associating with Automotive Gross Margin on a year to year (YoY) basis. I am not quite sure what "b p" is in reference to. I am not a financial expert.

Where, Ford in 2019 made $155.9B and had a positive profit of $6.4B. I am not sure where you are getting your numbers. But ,I pulled my Ford numbers from Ford's annual report (see https://annualreport.ford.com/Y2019/default.aspx).

I think both of these sources most would consider pretty reliable.

 

Have J and LR ever been far from the bottom, if not fiercely defending it?
At most, maybe 3rd from the bottom. At least for the last 15 years or so, since well before passing through the hands of Ford.
But then again those looking for a conventional cookie cutter, reliable and dependable go-mobile just wouldn't understand.

 

Well, my first thought is there’s only a factor of two between the worst and the best. All modern cars are very reliable, generally speaking.

second thought, for premium brands expectations tend to be higher, so a Jaguar might be taken in for something that would be overlooked on a Dodge.

Third one, premium brands have more things to go wrong.

 

All those very true points considered, the Jaguar in particular stands at the top of my list, with my Range Rover not quite as highly placed against a Ford Explorer in my book.
A Jaguar owner will take their Jag in to the dealer quicker and more often for ride quality degradation due to bushing wear, compared to the Hyundai owner, maybe because the degradation on a lower-level car (than our Jags) isn't as noticeable, and the owner just doesn't care about the subtle vibes and shakes.
I just had my motor mounts replaced (at 135k miles) on my wife's Jag, not because the engine was dancing wildly, but because they were letting the whole car be less than it was meant to be, and the ride we expect from it.

 

I think I heard it on Ed Wallace's radio show that since its "initial quality", a whole bunch of the issues brought back in the first 90 days are with the car's infotainment systems or other electronics. Not surprisingly then the top ranked single car is also the cheapest, most basic, the Chevrolet Sonic while Tesla, the most technology-laden is at the bottom. I was at a Cars & Coffee years ago when Teslas were a new thing and a group of them showed up. Overhearing the Tesla owners talking was unlike any gearhead conversation that had ever taken place before. Tesla A: "Did you download the latest firmware update?" Tesla B: "Yes, but now my windows won't roll down unless I first do this....." <proceeds to demonstrate the sequence of steps to roll up the windows> Initial Quality tho does not translate into reliability. That'd be a different survey.

 

True, this is only for Initial quality when the vehicles comes off the factory line. But at least it's ONE quantifiable indication of quality, & also give owners their first impressions of how likely they'll have to bring their brand new car to back to dealer for service.

Think they should have an ongoing quality measurement at 3 years, or 5 years intervals, somewhat similar to Consumer Reports, but with today's technology, they can probably track Manufacturers' service dept's numbers of factory repairs needed over those years.

Many of my clueless friends swear that their German vehicles still are the best quality cars today, & others swear that their Japanese cars are still best.
Now just watch out for the Korean & American made cars...