Compact car complaints: Focus criticized

　　According to China Securities Journal, recent China automotive complaints shows there is littlie change of the top ten enterprises, only domestic brand BYD entered the top ten. Referring to the complaints of the compact models, Focus topped the list with 153 complaints, and then followed V3 Lingyue with 141 complaints and Excelle ranked in third place with 87 complaints.

　　Compared with the last complaints list, this week there is little change. Only that BYD replaced Chery as one of the top ten. So far, the complaints of BYD have grown significantly. The amount of complaints has jumped from the last week’s 95 to 106, making it one of the top ten of the list.

　　Meanwhile, as Shanghai GM and South East Motors adopted positive and effective proposal to deal with the problems and accepted by the owners, their amount of complaints fell down as some were cancelled.

　　Chinese Changan Ford Company has finally announced a voluntary recall of about 230000 Focus cars after reports of engines stalling at low speeds. With153 complaints, the engines stalling faulty has lead Focus the compact model champion of the complaints list.

　　From the feedback of some owners of upgraded Focus, although the promotion has fixed the engines stalling faulty, it causes another even bigger problem, bending the throttle can not accelerate the cars, which causes the fuel consumption increased significantly. And this conclusion has been agreed on by more and more owners. The current online complaints about this problem have reached 12. The owners are quite worried that this recall addressed only the symptoms, not the cause. For example, Mr. Xu from the city of Qingdao, complained on the Internet like this, “After the promotion, the car starts obviously too fast that I always need to brake, or the car will be out of control definitely. Simultaneously, when I bend the throttle, the car just do not accelerate, which causes the fuel consumption increased significantly. Besides, during the driving, the car always needs to brake, which makes the braking system really vulnerable. And driving safety can not guarantee.”

　　The owners from Jinhua, Zhejiang province, said, “My car has the same experience as Mr. Xu’s. The recall is absolutely without merits.”

　　V3 Lingyue received a large number of complaints because of the gearbox problem in March. Although the enterprise have actively addressed and proposed solutions, since some car owners do not submit feedback to the website, the complaints in the first half has reached as high as 141, leading to V3 Lingyue the second place on the compact model complaints list.

　　Shanghai GM’s hot-selling model Excelle ranked in third place with 87 complaints for its relatively high ownership and the negative effect of its defective tire.

　　Sunny model ranked fourth with 81 complaints. Looking through its complaints, it can be found out that short supply accounted for more than half of the complaints. In other words, the complaints are directed against its service instead of quality. Besides, it reflects the hot sales of Sunny and inadequate production capacity. Last year, Shanghai Volkswagen received many claims about its capacity bottlenecks while the deficiency is still not improved.

　　As last year’s sales champion and an independent brand model, BYD F3 got only 74 complaints in the first half of this year, ranked fifth among the compact cars, which shows BYD efforts in the car quality and after sales service.

　　As Beijing Hyundai’s “rising star”, Elantra ranked the sixth place with 73 complaints. While Elantra is gaining a breakthrough in the sales, several of its general problems about quality have been troubled many owners, such as frequently occurred self-ignition, engine oil leakage and front windshield deformation, all of which have a serious security risk. For example, the front windshield deformation will lead to visual distortion of the road ahead while the drivers are more prone to fatigue. Safety problems can never be underestimated.

　　Cerato ranked the seventh place in the first half of this year with71 complaints due to the negative impact of defective transmission as well.

　　Dongfeng Peugeot 307 model ranked the eighth place with 66 complaints in the first half of this year.

　　Although the sales volume of Junjie is not high, the complaints are plenty. This year the online complaints about cracking front windshield can be seen everywhere. Although there are only 61 complaints in the first half, half are aimed at cracking front windshield.

　　This year Toyota has suffered a lot of challenges and impeachments Corolla ranked the tenth place with 51 complaints, which can be said a quite good result to Toyota.

　　(Translator: Yalong/Jessie)

　　See original Chinese report Please click:

　　http://auto.sohu.com/20100708/n273360496.shtml