MINI Quality Rises Dramatically Ranking 4th Overall in JD Power Dependability
MINI quality has come a long, long way. Today we see the fruits of that labor as JD Power has named the MINI hatch the most dependable sporty hatch you can buy in the US. Perhaps more impressively the MINI brand itself has move dramatically up to the 4th most dependable brand overall. That means MINI has made a dramatic leap from 28th (out of 32) to 4th in just four years. How has this happened? A lot of hard work and the switch from the R series of MINIs to the new F series. Quality has improved so much that dealers’ service centers are struggling to even stay busy.
The study, now in its 30th year, measures the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles (PP100) during the past 12 months by original owners of three-year-old model-year vehicles. The 2019 study measures problems in model year 2016 vehicles. A lower score reflects higher quality, and the study covers 177 specific problems grouped into eight major vehicle categories.
You can hear about about how this all came to be in our recent interview with MINI Head of Product Pat McKenna.
<p>They’ve really come a long way. This, along with the Consumer Reports rankings, should be enough to finally convince my wife to let me buy another MINI after having to deal with the issues we had with my 2007 R56 (which I still love, in spite of all the trouble we had with it).</p>
<p>Long over due. Hopefully this is a real trend and not too late.</p>
<p>That said, I do remember hearing that JD Powers’ rankings were meaningless. Is that why folks aren’t commenting?</p>
<p>They are meaningless. I know this because when I worked for a well known luxury appliance maker we were interested in JDP scores. For a large fee they would teach us how to make our products meet their metrics to score better. The same goes for auto manufacturers. It’s a scam.</p>
<p>However, a friend of mine, who is a team lead at a local Mini dealer, told me the quality/reliability is much better on the F-series cars in comparison to the R-series.</p>