Tough year for US automakers. Only Buick managed to make it into the Top-10 most-reliable brands, coming in at #8. Of the 27 brands Consumer Reports looked at (based on a survey of 640,000 owners), GM’s Cadillac came in dead last.
"Not a single U.S. model landed on the list of the 10 most reliable vehicles, which included the Kia Niro, Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86, Lexus ES, Lexus GS, Lexus IS, Audi Q3, Toyota RAV4, Toyota Prius V, Toyota Prius C and Infiniti Q70.
The 10 least reliable models included the Chevrolet Camaro, Mercedes-Benz GLC, Jaguar F-Pace, GMC Acadia, Ford Focus, Ford Fiesta, Fiat 500, Cadillac Escalade, Tesla Model X and Volvo XC90."
Ford came in at #15, though its Focus and Fiesta ranked well below-average. Fiat Chrysler’s Jeep brand came in at #20, while Dodge and Ram crossed the line at #24 and #25, respectively.
Brand reliability
Here are the latest reliability rankings from Consumer Reports. Last year’s rankings are in parentheses.
Toyota (2)
Lexus (1)
Kia (5)
Audi (4)
BMW (9)
Subaru (11)
Infiniti (8)
Buick (3)
Honda (10)
Hyundai (7)
Nissan (13)
Mazda (6)
Porsche (16)
Mercedes-Benz (17)
Ford (18)
Volkswagen (22)
Chrysler (27)
Chevrolet (15)
Acura (12)
Jeep (23)
Tesla (25)
Lincoln (20)
Volvo (19)
Dodge (26)
Ram (29)
GMC (24)
Cadillac (21)
Buick is only U.S. brand on Consumer Reports Top 10 reliability list
That list really does not tell you anything about reliability. They ranked them in order, but, so what? Without more information, one could read this list and assume that a ranking of 1 means it breaks down 1 time per year, whereas a ranking of 27 means it breaks down 1.027 times per year. Ranking-wise, the puts Caddy at 27, but statistically, it is a dead heat. In addition, we do not know what they mean by “reliability.” If I have a recall every time I get my oil changed, but it does not impact my daily driving, that car company is going to get dinged for “reliability,” but, so what? It never left me on the side of the road. In addition, if I trip an error code every month, but, again, no danger, whereas the top ranked car will only have 1 incident every 5 years – but that “incident” is the brakes completely fail – which is worse?
I am going out on a limb and assume you’ve never owned a Cadillac. Cadillac is no where statistically any near the top ten in reliability. Based on the comments of all of the mechanics I’ve known, (and my business is dealing with dealership sales and service depts) it is quite possibly the worst brand out there according even to the technicians who are employed by dealerships associated with the brand.
How did BMW land in the top 5? I wonder how long these people owned the new cars.been pretty lucky with mine I guess bought a pre owned 3 series in 2012 with 28000 miles and have had 0 issues other than regular schedule maintenance. Just costs a fucking arm and a leg to service the damn things. $450 to change spark plugs.
That’s just robbery plain and simple!
How did BMW land in the top 5? I wonder how long these people owned the new cars.
I did some consulting work for a few franchise car dealers, helping them improve their business development centers, and they’d occasionally have late-model Beemers on their used car lots. Every one of them had issues that added to their “recon” (reconditioning) costs. And then they’d always turn into aged units, often with 120-150 days or more on the lot before they’d sell. And that was after heavy discounting. It may have been because it’s the metro Detroit area and the domestic three automakers are still the big boys on the block. But some of it had to be the quality rep BMW had gotten for a few years.
I am going out on a limb and assume you’ve never owned a Cadillac. Cadillac is no where statistically any near the top ten in reliability. Based on the comments of all of the mechanics I’ve known, (and my business is dealing with dealership sales and service depts) it is quite possibly the worst brand out there according even to the technicians who are employed by dealerships associated with the brand.
Cadillacs are another brand that used car managers at franchise car dealerships hate to take in on trade, and they always come in low on the trade-in offer because they know they’re going to sink a couple grand, minimum, into reconditioning/repair costs to make them attractive enough to used car shoppers. Most models have high-dollar suspension and engine systems that cost an arm and a leg to recon, and with their telematics these days, figure on adding several hundred more dollars to repair or replace, hopefully under warranty. Because when those cars go out of warranty, any repair is going to cost big-time.
People think used car departments at franchise dealerships catch a break from their service departments when they run the vehicles they’ve taken in on trade through service for safety checks and reconditioning, but they don’t. They have to pay the same Alldata book rates as Joe Schmuckatelli does when he brings his own ride in off the street. Cadillacs often eat up almost all the potential profit from recon, repair and sitting on the sales lot forever. If I’m a used car manager, when I take a Cadillac in on trade I don’t offer more than the wholesale price (after getting bids from several wholesalers) or what I could get for it from a Manheim or an ASEA or Smart auto auction run “at the block” (meaning, average price it’s going for at the auction once it’s driven up onto the auction block).
I have a Skoda - not sold in US but good rep in europe as part of VW group
I was looking for a used car.
I have discovered that kia offer 7 years or 150k km.
So i can buy a used 3 year old car and get a 4 year balance of warranty and usually 70-80k km still left fot less than 50% of new
Thats a used car that almost crushes many new warranty deals.
Kia’s made huge strides for sure, and they practically beg you to buy them around here in the metro Detroit/Toledo, OH area. There are two-for-one deals (heavy with fine print, of course), over-allowances on trades (because Kia covers much of that over-allowance, in order to help dealers “move some metal”), guaranteed financing and so on. And the cars, SUVs and minivans aren’t bad. Not unattractive, seemingly reliable and, like you say, they come with tons of warranty coverage.
I had a writing gig a couple years ago where I wrote automotive reviews for various large chain dealerships’ websites. The Kias were always easy to write about, when comparing them to other brands in their model class. Mostly because Kia was working hard to do all the right things, starting with quality/warranty areas.
I am too superstitious to talk about reliability of our vehicles we now own. . My experience personally and with friends owning many of these brands over my life time I agree with the ratings. Except I thought Honda would be a little higher.
How did BMW land in the top 5? I wonder how long these people owned the new cars.been pretty lucky with mine I guess bought a pre owned 3 series in 2012 with 28000 miles and have had 0 issues other than regular schedule maintenance. Just costs a fucking arm and a leg to service the damn things. $450 to change spark plugs.
That’s just robbery plain and simple!
I am on my second one. First was a '99 3 series I bought off a 3 yr lease. Kept that until 2011 and bought an '08 also off a 3 year lease. The first one when I traded it in had ~150K miles on it and was starting to need expensive repairs. Partly due to my lack of reg maintenance. Current one is just about to tip 100K in miles. It needs one expensive fix now which I am putting off. Other then that just regular expensive maintenance. I think the bad rap comes from how much it cost to have work done on them. Although it seems like all cars are expensive to fix now. I’m lucky with the fact I have a brother who is a mechanic and he is friends with a couple guys who used to work at a BMW dealership and opened their own shop. That’s made a difference with just getting work done that needs to be done and not everything on the dealerships checklist.
I am too superstitious to talk about reliability of our vehicles we now own. . My experience personally and with friends owning many of these brands over my life time I agree with the ratings. Except I thought Honda would be a little higher.
Yah, seeing BMW rated more reliable than Honda made me do a double-take. Not consistent with my experience.
As a Subaru geek/nerd/fanboy etc i’m happy with this (:
To see the BRZ/86 on the list of individual cars, plus Subaru at number 6, which is a solid improvement, makes me almost as happy as the Seattle GRC weekend and the entire ARA series this year (:
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What is interesting is CR rated the Tesla S model ( $90,000) their highest rating a few years back and it is somewhat of a lemon, ranking in at 21.
CR’s ratings are based on the car working as intended. Their buy recommendations take into account the expected reliability.
Not that I place much weight in these results (repeat VW owner here!) but I got a kick this morning out of sending them to a former co-worker who’s a total Honda/Acura fanboy and who constantly bangs on about their superior reliability to me and another former co-worker (VW/BMW owner). His reaction was awesome, albeit 100% predictable, and may have involved multiple uses of the words “fucking”, “bullshit” and “meaningless”. It’s always fun just to spin him up and watch him go
Not that I place much weight in these results (repeat VW owner here!) but I got a kick this morning out of sending them to a former co-worker who’s a total Honda/Acura fanboy and who constantly bangs on about their superior reliability to me and another former co-worker (VW/BMW owner). His reaction was awesome, albeit 100% predictable, and may have involved multiple uses of the words “fucking”, “bullshit” and “meaningless”. It’s always fun just to spin him up and watch him go
