Those Power-Full Car Ads : Manufacturers’ selective use of J. D. Power’s quality listings has confused the public and irritated Dave Power.

Never before has quality been so important to the car-buying public.

And never have the quality claims of the auto makers been so confusing.

Is quality “Job 1,” as Ford insists? Does an “Advantage-Chrysler” really exist? What about that “relentless pursuit of perfection” at Lexus?

Yet the confusion becomes even more frustrating when it results from the rankings developed and issued by the most famous--and most prestigious--arbiter of automotive quality in America: J. D. Power & Associates.

By rights, the independent Power ratings, widely considered the industry’s yardstick for quality, should help clear up the competing claims of auto makers, who often sponsor their own quality studies--which they then publicize.

But that hasn’t happened. Instead, the Power ratings, as they are used and manipulated by the auto makers in their advertising, have in some ways clouded the picture. Indeed, it seems that every major car company these days is touting itself as a winner in the surveys put out by the Agoura Hills research firm.

Dave Power, the soft-spoken New Englander who founded J. D. Power, doesn’t like it. In fact, he has assigned two staffers to do nothing but police the ad claims of the auto companies that use the J. D. Power ratings.

But if the public understands what goes into the Power rankings, it may be easier to sift through the advertising clutter.

Most of the advertising claims based on Power ratings are related to two basic surveys conducted by the Power staff: the J. D. Power Initial Quality Survey, or IQS, and the Power Customer Satisfaction Index, or CSI.

In the initial quality survey, J. D. Power uses national car registration data and each year selects about 70,000 people who purchased new cars in November or December. This year, roughly 26,000--or 38% of those polled--responded to the survey. The new owners are chosen for the survey in a way that closely reflects national auto sales patterns.

During the following February, Power mails out 89-question surveys to those buyers; they are asked about problems they have encountered with their vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. The questions cover 12 major areas of potential trouble, including brakes, transmission, exterior paint, water leaks and wind noise.

When the survey results are received later in the spring, each model produced by every major auto maker is graded by how many defects are reported per 100 cars included in the survey. Power then ranks each car separately, and also provides overall rankings of each auto maker--through a sales-weighted index of the rankings each of its cars has received.

Those separate rankings for models and auto makers lead to some of the confusion. For instance, in the 1990 rankings on initial quality, just released this month, the Toyota Cressida was ranked No. 1 in the model-by-model breakdown, followed by the Mercedes-Benz E-Series.

But the Lexus division of Toyota--which produces the Lexus LS400 and Lexus ES250--came in first in the overall ratings for the auto makers. Thus, Lexus has been able to promote its own top ranking while the parent company has also been able to crow about the Cressida.

Further confusion comes when the auto makers begin to massage the Power ratings in their advertisements. For instance, American auto makers often make claims that their cars have been rated the “best-built American cars” or are the best produced by a North American-based auto maker.

For instance, the Buick LeSabre, built by General Motors in Flint, Mich., ranked second in the IQS ratings of individual models in 1989 and fell to sixth place in 1990. But in both years it has received the highest rating of any car built by the Big Three U.S. auto makers. So Buick has advertised the LeSabre as the best-built American car--not as the sixth-place finisher overall.

Confusion is piled on even more deeply when claims based on Power’s separate Customer Satisfaction Index are added.

“People don’t understand that there is more than one study, so there can be more than one winner,” notes Bill Fleming, a senior account executive at J. D. Power.

Unlike the initial quality survey, which deals almost exclusively with actual defects on brand-new cars, the customer satisfaction index is designed to measure the overall experience of car owners after the first year of driving. As a result, it includes questions concerning the quality of the service received from the dealer and auto company, as well as the reliability of the car.

And, although the initial quality survey measures current model-year cars, the customer satisfaction index looks back at the previous year’s fleet. Power sends out detailed, six-page questionnaires in March to about 75,000 people who have owned their cars for 12 to 14 months. This year, about 26,000--or 35% of those polled--sent back answers.

The CSI is weighted so that about 60% of the results come from responses concerning reliability and ease of repair of the car, while 40% come from questions about how the customer was treated by the dealership and factory.

Like the IQS, the CSI ratings also are conducted on a model-by-model basis and then added up to provide overall ratings for each auto maker. But Power publicizes only the overall CSI ratings of each auto maker and doesn’t allow auto makers to advertise claims based on model-by-model CSI ratings. Power figures that the overall ranking of the company is a better measure of customer service than the individual ratings for each car line.

The CSI thus creates more winners--who are not necessarily the same as the victors in the IQS. In fact, Acura, the luxury-car division of Honda, has come in first in the CSI overall ratings of auto makers for four years in a row--even though it is ranked eighth in the IQS overall ratings of auto makers.

And although Cadillac didn’t place any of its cars in the top 20 in the IQS model-by-model ratings for 1990, it still came in fourth in the CSI--and thus was the highest-ranking domestic nameplate in the customer satisfaction survey.

As if that’s not enough, Power is adding more ratings. It now has a separate IQS quality ranking for trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans (Mazda came in first overall in 1990), and also provides ratings breakdowns for each specific segment of the car market from the IQS report.

Thus, Chevrolet can boast that its Lumina coupe “is the most trouble-free car” in the “mid-size specialty” segment of the market, Honda can claim that its CRX model is the highest-quality car in the “small-sporty” segment and Toyota can claim that its Camry is No. 1 among compacts.

In fact, winning in the Power surveys has become a key corporate goal at many major auto makers, and some firms complain that their rivals are trying to rig the numbers.

Dave Power says he has heard complaints from auto companies who charge that their rivals are mounting special campaigns to contact as many past customers as possible--offering help for any problems they may have experienced with their cars--during February and March of each year. That is the same time of year that Power’s surveys go out in the mail to car owners across the nation.

“We have heard that some companies are trying to sweet-talk their car owners,” hoping to come across some who are being surveyed by Power, says Dave Power.

But despite the complexities of Power’s ratings--and possible attempts to influence the results--it is still relatively easy for consumers to spot underlying trends.

Most notably, Power’s surveys clearly show that the Japanese still have a significant quality edge over the domestics. In 1990, aside from the Buick LeSabre, only three domestic models--the Buick Century, Pontiac 6000 and Ford Crown Victoria--made it into the top 20 in the model-by-model breakdown of the IQS survey.

Meanwhile, the surveys also show that Toyota, which has long been the envy of the Japanese industry for the strength of its quality-control systems, continues to set the worldwide pace in automotive quality. Six of the top 12 cars in the model-by-model ratings of initial quality for 1990 were Toyota products--the Cressida, Camry, Lexus LS400, Corolla, Supra and Lexus ES250.

High quality thus tends to shine through for companies that consistently receive good ratings; Mercedes, for instance, was ranked second overall in both the IQS and the CSI for 1990.

“The two together (IQS and CSI) are a good measure of overall quality,” says Power’s Fleming.

Still, Dave Power and others at his firm stress that the domestics have made big strides in quality and that the entire industry has improved in recent years. Since 1986, when the Power CSI survey moved to its current format, the industry average on the customer satisfaction index has risen 22%, according to Fleming.

The domestics “are making gains,” notes Power. The problem, he adds, is that domestic car makers have still not updated all of their models to compete in the 1990s, “and you can’t change them all at once.”