I have a gas Q7 3.0T Prestige on order, and noticed the Oct. 27 USA Today article (page 3B) on Consumer Reports predicted reliability survey for 2011 vehicle brands. The Audi brand ranked near the bottom of the list, and the worst model is the A6(3.0T) - is this the same engine that's in the Q? The survey methodology is stated as "CR predicts the reliability of each year's new crop of vehicles based on data from owners of mechanically similar earlier models." Not sure whether to be concerned or not - my '07 Q4.2 has been very reliable. Hope I'm not buying problems with the 3.0T engine. BMW and Mercedes also rank low on the list of brands.
Thoughts/comments?

 

Meanwhile here in europe another survey says that Audi A6 is the most reliable car.

http://www.dekra.de/de/pressemitteil...icleID=3463798

STUTTGART – Der Opel Corsa D und der Audi A6 sind die jeweiligen Sieger im DEKRA Mängelreport 2010. Das Auto mit der niedrigsten Mängelquote überhaupt („Beste Einzelwertung“) ist der Opel Corsa (97,6 Prozent). Damit siegte der Kleinwagen knapp vor der 5. Generation des Audi A4 (97,3 Prozent) und der 3. Generation der Mercedes C-Klasse (96 Prozent). In einer zweiten Auswertung über alle Laufleistungsbereiche hinweg („Bester aller Klassen“) holte sich, wie schon im Vorjahr, der Audi A6 (88,1 Prozent) den Titel als das Fahrzeug mit den besten Langlaufeigenschaften, vor dem BMW X3 (87 Prozent) und der 5. Generation des BMW 3er (86,8 Prozent). Der DEKRA Mängelreport 2010 erscheint am 7. Januar 2010 als Sonderheft „Gebrauchtwagen Spezial 2010“ der Zeitschrift auto motor und sport.

 

I believe you can only make general inferences on these surveys. Reliability is not an absolute.

If a floor mat retaining ring comes apart, and a Panroof leaks water, are these both recorded equally as interior quality issues?

If someone cannot locate a drugstore on the MMI3G, and a cruise control does not activate, are these both recorded as electronic failures?

I had a brand new 2006 Honda Odyssey Touring that was in the shop about 8 times in a three year period. Half of those were tire related. It had the infamous PAX runflat tires that only the dealer could service and were expensive to fix and replace. Did these trips bother me? Yes. Did they get recorded in car relaibility problems? Probably not.

The Mercedes R350 gets all kinds of bad marks, but after 15 months and 11k miles, my wife has not had to take it in for anything.

Word of mouth is best. Read the Audi forums to get the real story. Edmunds Town Hall is another good source. My 2007 Q7 except for a bad O2 sensor throwing a code, never had any problems over the 3 years I had it.

 

I agree with Aggie88. Learn from the real world users instead of trying to glean much from surveys; it's difficult to quantify their metrics and how they are analyzing their data.

I've only been on this forum for a little while, but I've already greatly enjoyed learning quite a bit.

The data and users on this forum are invaluable.

 

check out the Q5 forum for virtually this same discussion at https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho...php?p=24052707
It looks like the plastic water pump housing now replaced and recalled has done for Q5 what the 08 CEL did for the A6.
So you end up with a known problem that has very few actual fails being replaced under recall getting counted per unit rather than per fail. Its great for sensational stats but completely pointless in predicting the likelyhood of a new buyer encountering problems.

 

Consumer Reports is probably the last place I would go for objective automotive commentary. They have a very real "agenda"; and targeting foreign made luxury cars is right in the sights of their agenda. They targeted Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

 

^ This.

Also CR automatically down-rates any newly introduced model or engine on the basis that first gen always has 'bugs to be worked out'. CR is your grandfather's internet; they just aren't relevant much anymore to anyone but the AARP crowd.

 

Not even with this ex-AARP member!

 

Consumer reports uses reader surveys instead of real reliability data. There are a few things to consider when relying on surveys.

1. People with problems are more likely to fill out surveys than people that are happy with their cars.

2. The more one spends on a car, the more reactive a reader will be if they have problems, therefore more likely to fill out the survey, even for small problems.

3. FAR less people that can afford a high-end german car are likely to be CR readers who receive the surveys, again, of the people that do, they will be less likely to fill-out the survey unless they've had a problem.

4. Inversely, people who spend less on a car will be less likely to complain about issues, especially small ones.

So if you think about the math, they are not comparing these numbers to production numbers for models and brands but calculating percentages based on the averages among the survey's filled out. So CR is relying only on surveys for these reports, not all the facts, and clearly the bias sways in favor of less expensive cars, like Honda and Toyota. I think the reason above might explain some of it.

But in my opinion, I don't expect to drive my Q7 to 250,000 miles like my first toyota, but the toyota was just an engine and steering wheel with a couple of seats, much less to go wrong. So I think comparing brands is a bad measure of reliability since less expensive cars are less complex in most cases.

My 10 cents.

 

Thanks for all the well-reasoned insights. As a bit of counterpoint to the CR survey, I just received an "Audi Experience" email, announcing that Esquire Magazine selected the 2010 Audi S4 as car of the year. The S4 included the 333hp 3.0T supercharged V6 engine that I was wondering about. Although this is anecdotal and may not speak to reliability, it's an encouraging bit of information.