Today's Wall Street Journal reported that Mazda is the number one car maker in a German quality study, registering 7.7 technical issues per 1000 cars. It singled out Porsche for having twice as many technical issues. It also said that all the top 6 brands are Asian (but no details).

The Mazdas sold in Europe tends to be the smaller cars compared to those sold in the US. Those smaller than the 323/Protege/3 are not sold in the US.

 

Interesting to hear The WSJ would report about a German study.

Very good news for Mazda. Thanks for posting.

 

SMALLER?!?!?!

Damn I've got a protege now and the only thing smaller than that is a rio, or echo. I can't imagine the roller skate the Euro's are driving!

 

Try this car on for size

http://www.smart.com

I saw tons of the fortwo coupes in Europe and loved them.

dag

 

Gas has been expensive there for years. No SUVs to speak of.

 

Try google "Mazda 121".

 

That is strange. Honda leads the ranking in the USA with 190 technical issues per 1000... 7.7 you say?

 

SMART cars rock in europe, thanks to the small alleys that it can run through!

not sure it'll work in the US suburbs though

 

Yeah...some overzealous golden retriever would have it on the front lawn in no time :D

 

I thought the Mazda 121 was sold in America as Ford Festiva. I bought one. I consider it my second Mazda. Built by Kia, engine a 1.3l Mazda B-series, like Protege and Miata.

-Peter

 

Once in a while I see a Smart here in Capitola (San Francisco Bay Area). I ran into the owner on the parking lot and he told me his brother was a sales guy for SMART (Daimler) and they did a study about bringing them over to the USA. He was allowed to leave the demo model for his brother.

I've seen an electric Ford THINK on our parking lot of similar size.

See attached pictures.

 

Ironic Porsche got away from the totally handbuilt thing, and adopted some Japanese manufacturing practices. Supposedly, that's the only reason they're still afloat, though. They were on their way to bankruptcy in the late 80's.

I just wish Porsche wouldn't use such OBVIOUSLY plastic bumper caps to cover what seems like 40% of the car. The coolest cars are the Ferrari's that were beaten out of sheet metal with a hammer, ala Jesse James on DSC.

 

Interesting. I'd like to see more of the specifics on this.

 

Is that by chance a corporate twin of the Ford Ka?

 

The Mazda 6 just topped the long time (100.000 km) test list in the german mass market car paper AutoBILD.

Now the point is not only that the 6 was the best car ever tested, but that it had zero (!) points, whereby points represent problems.

You can find the Article (in german) here.

 

What a relief......first Mazda I've owned and the quality's better than my previous Hondas.

 

yeah, surprisingly mazda is a lot better than their reputation (outside of the rotary). I thought they were really unreliable, cuz it seems like i'm always in the shop with the 626, and my dad's always in the shop with the mazda3. But we document everything that happens/is done to the cars... and apparently we just drive A LOT cuz it was all regular maintenance. Not a single thing went wrong with those cars.

 

That's not the case with the Mazda 6 here, it's had its fair share of issues and is built in the US.