James Tate began a career in automotive writing as Senior Editor of Sport Compact Car magazine. Since then, his work has appeared in publications like Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, Automobile, Motor Trend, European Car, Edmunds Inside Line, Kelley Blue Book, Stuff, and specialty publications. When not writing, Tate can be found fantasizing about vintage Porsche 911's.
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 11:48 am and is filed under Racing News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Staying Power
Hyundai Sonata
Reliability is a tricky business with automobiles. They are increasingly complex mechanical and electronic objects with thousands of parts, any one of which can fail at any time. Plus, says Michael Pecht, a reliability expert with the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Maryland, many companies outsource complex electronic parts such as engine control modules, and just assume they will work with their vehicles. "However, often there are no statistically acceptable accelerated tests conducted on the vehicle as a whole," he says. In other words, many of the complex systems in a modern vehicle might be linked by a bond of pure faith.
Yet, amazingly, today's high-tech autos seem to work — and more reliably than ever before. Dave Sargent, vice president of vehicle research at J.D. Power and Associates, which performs the industry-standard Initial Quality and Vehicle Dependability studies, says that the company's research has shown steady improvement in vehicle quality across the board every year. "Basically, we've seen about a 5 percent reduction in the number of problems reported each year," Sargent says. "So if you buy a 2011 model-year vehicle, chances are that it will have fewer problems in its first five years than if you had bought a 2010 vehicle."
While buying a new vehicle is good advice if long-term reliability is your goal, it doesn't really address questions about individual models. Studies such as J.D. Power's vehicle dependability survey are inherently backward-looking, so they do not tell the whole story. So how, for example, can you assess the potential reliability of a new model or redesign? "We wrestle with that question," Sargent says. "The easiest way to determine long-term reliability is to wait a long time. It's hard to predict the reliability of a new car, by definition."
While predictions are not foolproof, they're also not impossible to make. We've cross-referenced analysis of J.D. Power's Initial Quality and Vehicle Dependability studies, and thrown in a few extra points for any vehicle or manufacturer that has shown significant momentum toward quality improvement over the past few years. The resulting list of cars should have just the right recipe for long-term reliability: Start with a good reputation, then stir in some well-earned faith.
Bing: Car Dependability Rankings
Let's start with something obvious. The Honda Accord has scored between 3.5 and 5 — the top rating — every year for the past 10 years on both J.D. Power's Initial Quality and Overall Dependability studies, which rank user satisfaction in the first year and the third year of ownership, respectively. Luckily for Honda, neither study quantifies excitement, which is pretty hard to muster when you're driving one of the plainest-looking and -driving sedans on the market — and harder still when you realize that for less than the Accord's $21,180 base price, you can find a more exhilarating vehicle in either the Nissan Altima or the Ford Fusion.
Read: 2011 Honda Accord — Flash Drive
Here's a vehicle that has scored a perfect 5 in J.D. Power's survey of Initial Quality for the past six years and between 3.5 and 5 in Overall Dependability for four out of the past five years. While most Porsche owners are reluctant to breathe a bad word about the brand for fear of being tossed out of the "club," there has to be something behind years of stellar satisfaction ratings. And if you're paying a base price of $77,800 — and nobody ever pays base price on a Porsche 911 — you have a right to demand perfection.
Read: Porsche Makes the Most Dependable Cars
The LaCrosse was overhauled in 2010 from its Geritol-friendly earlier design to a new shape and chassis that is about as sprightly and sexy as this brand is likely to get. A dose of re-engineering is likely to dip any model's satisfaction numbers a bit while the manufacturer works out some of the kinks — Sargent recommends that buyers steer clear of a new redesign for at least a year — which makes the 2011 Buick LaCrosse a pretty safe bet. Plus, starting at $26,995, the LaCrosse is a pretty good deal for a big car with a smooth ride and a quiet interior. It's like somebody slipped a little Viagra in with the Geritol.
Watch Video: 2011 Buick LaCrosse
Why is a car we haven't even seen yet on this list? Well, first off, we're sticking to the "give 'em a year to get the kinks out" philosophy. Secondly, rumor has it that next year Hyundai may upgrade the Equus' competent 4.6-liter V8 engine with an even more competent 5.0-liter V8. It took cojones for Hyundai to produce the Equus, a $58,000-plus, limolike sedan that takes straight aim at the Mercedes S-Class and Lexus LS. But the Equus is an insanely comfortable, quiet and indulgent vehicle that, next to offerings from Mercedes, BMW and Lexus, is also an insanely good deal.
Read: Hyundai Goes Upscale
Since its introduction in 2006, the Ford Fusion has delivered impressive build quality and reliability. The 2010 redesign has made this midsize sedan even more appealing. Some of Ford's newer introductions, such as the relaunched Fiesta and upcoming Focus, have stolen some of the Fusion's econocar thunder, but there's no denying the record of satisfaction and value that this bargain 4-door — starting at $19,720 — has established. In the most recent J.D. Power rankings, it scored an impressive 5 in overall initial quality.
Bing Images: Ford Fusion
Virtual Wheels
Click to enlarge picture
'NASCAR The Game 2011' developers had to approve the look of every car, complete with up-to-date decal layouts, with real-life NASCAR teams.
In the beginning, the video game universe was a simple place, populated with the most basic of adolescent fantasies: playing sports, battling ghosts and aliens, and, of course, driving fast cars. Well, sort of driving cars.
The first arcade-style driving game, Atari's "Gran Trak 10," debuted in 1974, just two years after "Pong." It was a single-player, race-against-the-clock competition in which the driver maneuvered a race-car icon around a simple 2-dimensional track. Primitive for sure — the graphics were laughable — but it did feature a real steering-wheel controller and a 3-speed gear shifter. Even so, the driving experience wasn't exciting or, for that matter, close to lifelike.
It wasn't until the 1990s that software designers bothered incorporating believable driving dynamics and real-world vehicles into their virtual creations. When it debuted on the original Sony PlayStation console in 1997, "Gran Turismo" set a new benchmark for racing simulations with its industry-leading graphics and the true-to-life performance characteristics of its virtual vehicles — specifically, handling and acceleration. The game was an instant success.
Soon, the Xbox-exclusive "Forza Motorsport" franchise began doing the same, and the dueling series turned racing games into powerful, surreptitious marketing tools, in which players spent as much time driving their virtual racers as they did lovingly customizing their exteriors.
Today, video game developers are competing to take automotive wish fulfillment to even greater heights of realism. And while the games still can't capture the sphincter-tightening sensation of barreling around a real racetrack at breakneck speeds, they do come closer than ever before. How do they do it? By going old school — getting out of the lab and back on the track.
Bing: Racing Video Games
Virtual Vehicles
The process of importing real-world cars into video games was largely established more than a decade ago, when developers first started using extensive photographic references to create 3-D models of vehicles, and adjusting performance and handling based on a car's raw specs. Today's game artists use exponentially more references — hundreds or even thousands of photos, depending on the vehicle — as well as more detailed data sets.
For games such as "Gran Turismo 5," which was released in November 2010 for the PlayStation 3, and "Forza Motorsport 4," due this fall on Xbox 360, many carmakers provided computer-aided design schematics, allowing programmers to create in-game equivalents that are structurally accurate, inside and out, instead of reverse-engineering virtual models based on just their stats. Certain vehicles get an extra degree of analysis: For the upcoming "Forza" title, developers took 3-D laser scans of select cars, including the Bugatti Veyron.
A game's look is one thing; translating a car's performance is another, and it is still primarily about numbers. But more powerful game engines — the core software that determines the physics and interaction of objects as you play — allow for more detail and differentiation. The creators of "Forza," Turn 10 Studios, say that they have modeled tire-related properties, such as weight transfer, and have incorporated proprietary performance data from tire manufacturer Pirelli into "Forza 4." The result, the company says, is the most up-to-date simulation of how modern tires grip or slip in a variety of racing conditions. Few players will notice this level of nuance midgame, but the tiny, exacting minority of hard-core players and professional racers who train using "Forza" and "Gran Turismo" spread that gospel of updated accuracy to the wider audience.
In some ways, Eutechnyx, the team behind the upcoming "NASCAR The Game 2011" — slated for release in March 2011 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 — has to dig even deeper into the minutiae of real-life vehicles. "NASCAR has strict rules about the performance of its race cars," says Gregg Baker, community manager at Eutechnyx. "It's not like Formula One, where you can have one car with a much superior engine." NASCAR's stringent regulations mean that engines are nearly identical when it comes to power output. "So you have to really fine-tune the difference between the cars — how loose the suspension is, how well they conserve fuel, etc.," Baker explains. "Our game engine is accurate down to how much tape you put on your grille."
Watch Video: Forza Motorsport 3 Action
Where the Render Meets the Road
Building digital cars might be a relatively standard process, but the capture and creation of racetracks varies from title to title. For its popular iPhone game, "Real Racing 2," the developers at Firemint used existing track layouts as a general reference, and then created custom tracks that are designed to keep the games fast-paced and not overly punishing. "Gran Turismo 5" includes a mix of real tracks and fictional ones. "NASCAR The Game," on the other hand, is a slave to accuracy, and Eutechnyx captured thousands of reference shots of track corners and irregular surface features, and includes as many of those cracks and bumps in the game as possible.
"Forza 4" may end up raising the bar when it comes to re-creating a track. According to Turn 10, developers rented out each track that appears in the game for two to three days, shooting terabytes worth of video and photos, and tracing the inside, middle and outside portions of the road surface with a commercial-grade GPS system. The resulting map detects road crowning, tiny changes in camber, or angle, and other anomalies with subcentimeter accuracy, all of which can be coded into the game for even more realism.
Read: Five Ways Your Car Can Drive Itself, Today
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