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Consumer Reports - Which Car Brands Make the Best Vehicles? - Just came out today
This just came out today:
Quote:
Which Car Brands Make the Best Vehicles?
Consumer Reports tabulates its exclusive data across the model lines
One great car—or clunker—doesn’t define a whole brand. Neither does its reputation (good or bad) relieve you of the need to examine a vehicle carefully. But our long-standing and comprehensive analysis of car brands reveals that you can glean important information by knowing a brand’s output over time.
To determine which car brands consistently deliver vehicles that serve consumers well, we tabulate the overall score, road-test score, and predicted reliability results for each tested model of a brand. We then average those scores at the brand level. This average overall score is used to rank the car brands as an indicator of who makes the best cars. Topping our Ratings are the luxury brand Audi and mainstream marque Subaru. Only vehicles that are on the market and that we tested factor into the equation. The rankings don’t account for corporate practices or brand perceptions.
Hence, Audi and Volkswagen diesel vehicles that have been pulled from dealerships—following their recall and stop-sale last year for cheating on EPA emissions tests—are not included in our car brands scoring. Consumer Reports strongly believes that Volkswagen AG, the maker of VW and Audi vehicles, should be held accountable for manipulating emissions testing with its vehicles.
In creating the car brands Report Card, we aggregate road-test performance, reliability, safety performance and active safety aids, and owner satisfaction. Brands with a lineup of mature, incrementally updated vehicles tended to rise to the top.
For instance, Toyota’s middling road-test score was balanced by strong reliability; Mercedes-Benz’s strong road tests were offset by below par reliability. And Honda, Nissan, and Chrysler suffered due to problematic new transmissions.
Note that car brands must have at least two models with test and reliability data to be included. Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Maserati, Ram, Smart, and Tesla lack sufficient data.
Rank Make Overall Score Road-Test Score Predicted Reliability % of Test Models That Are Recommended
The list only shows "predicted reliability" and has 3 German manufacturers in the top 5, sounds like useless information then.
I don't have an online subscription, which may be different, but I've noticed the paper copies have really dumbed down the information over the years. It makes it difficult to make an informed decision using just CR.
Compare that to Lemon-Aid, for example, and it's a night and day difference; detailing trouble areas with specific sub-models and years.
CR, for example, will list say the BMW 3-series, give their visual dots for each category, but not detail it in the subscription. Does the 335i have the same problems as the 320i xDrive? Unless it's a model with little variation between trims/sub-models, it's pretty useless.
It's a stupid report, they mix quantitative and qualitative measures, and atleast in this little report posted, fail to give any sort of breakdown on how they came up with the final numbers, or how they gathered their information.
As others have pointed out, the list looks like crap given some of the rankings.
got a 2012 Jeep Wrangler rubicon. with 120XXX kms on it. 3.6 pen motor, its been on road, offroad, 3x cali trip, x1 eastcoast trip. never let me and my gf down. so i disagree with that list.
got a 2012 Jeep Wrangler rubicon. with 120XXX kms on it. 3.6 pen motor, its been on road, offroad, 3x cali trip, x1 eastcoast trip. never let me and my gf down. so i disagree with that list.
I'd expect any 4-year-old vehicle to still be reliable, assuming proper maintenance and operation.
Also, just because you have had an issue with your Jeep, it doesn't mean 100% of Jeeps are as reliable as yours.