J.D. Power Issues Recall on Some Results of Car Quality Survey

Product quality guru J.D Power & Associates got a taste of its own medicine, forced to correct its latest annual automotive quality awards because of, well, a quality-control problem.

A flawed data program overstated the number of problems that new-vehicle owners reported with traction-control systems, the Agoura Hills-based firm said Friday.

After dozens of Power associates worked through the night, a new tally changed the overall quality ratings and thus the order of finish in three vehicle and two manufacturing plant categories.

Toyota Motor Corp.’s Camry moved from second place into a tie for first with the company’s Avalon model as the premium-level mid-size cars with the fewest problems. The Acura TL from Honda Motor Co. moved from second into a first-place tie with Toyota’s Lexus ES 300 in the entry-level luxury-car class. And DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge Caravan booted Honda’s Odyssey out of third place in the minivan segment.

The error also jumped Toyota’s Georgetown, Ky., factory into first place for quality among U.S. auto plants, knocking the Toyota-General Motors Corp. NUMMI joint venture in Fremont, Calif., into second.

After alerting clients, Power issued a public correction Friday. But the firm is, after all, all about image. So words such as “error” and “goof” never appeared. Instead, Power called it a “reassessment” of “a small discrepancy in respondents’ ratings . . . which has resulted in more good news for the automotive industry.”

The good news? Well, instead of an industry average of 158 problems per 100 vehicles, as first reported in the 2000 Initial Quality Study released Thursday, it turns out there were only 154 problems--an overnight improvement of 2.5%.