Ford Claims to Achieve the Highest Initial Quality

If you watched TV last week you must have seen Ford’s ads that claim that the initial quality of its cars is now equal to that of vehicles built by Toyota and Honda. This claim seems to be boastful at least.
Mike Michels on Toyota’s Open Road blog seems to be rather confused with this statement. He says that the survey of initial quality was carried out not by the well-known J.D. Power & Associates but by some third-party, so its results can hardly be reliable.
Then Mike Michels gives arguments to discredit initial quality in the first place. To prove his opinion he cited J.D. Power figures according to which the difference between the worst and the best vehicle within first few months of ownership makes up around 8 or even less drawbacks per each car. And most of these problems were caused by owners’ preferences and did not need actual repair.
Of course we admit that initial quality is not enough to make a complete total car quality story but at the same time it is strange to hear that Toyota tries to discredit the initial quality which has always been a very important part of Toyota high quality image. As a result of great manufacturing, engineering and design the Toyota and Lexus became leaders of initial quality. And now when other automakers are catching up with them Toyota tries to represent initial quality as not too significant. It seems that we should wait for 3-5 years to check whether the initial quality of Ford Fusion built today will be as high as that of Toyota Camry’s