[Sylvanfan]

Interesting stats for sure. Of course initial quality is a bit misleading in a way because it is all new cars, and doesn't take into effect as much how the car performs over like say a 5 year period of time which is likely how long most people own cars for before trading them off. Of course a lot of new vehichles are on lease now. I suspect that because of the rise in prices and the fact that leases are more prevelent now than they were like say 10 years ago that this is a big reason why quality has shot up. I think auto makers always knew how to make better cars, but since most people owned them and would spend money to fix them it was a potential after sale revenue that contributed to keeping quality low. Now that so many vehichles are being leased and coming back to the dealerships in like 3 years I suspect the automakers decided to increase quality so that they would have better cars to re-sell, and the dealers wouldn't have to spend as much fixing them after only three years. Thats my little conspiracy rant for the day.