According to popular consumer quality advocate Consumer Reports, Lexus, Toyota and Mini are the top manufacturers when it comes to reliability. If you’re in the market for a reliable car, you might think about looking into one of these three brands, although there are quite a few brands to pick from nowadays.
How the top car brands rank in reliability
While we’ve given away the top three already, the rest of the top 10 round out with Acura taking the fourth spot, Honda in fifth, Subaru in sixth, followed by Mazda, Porsche, BMW and Kia in that order.
It’s not until you get to the top 20 that we start seeing some domestic manufacturers pop into the list. Buick topped the domestic manufacturer list at twelfth, while Tesla, Ram and Cadillac took the fourteenth through sixteenth spots. Chevrolet finished in twentieth.
Consumer Reports noted that SUVs, while popular, tend to not be as reliable as sedans. The reason they gave was that sedans don’t usually have as many features as an SUV does – think headrest screens and an extra row of captain’s chairs – so there are fewer potential trouble spots.
If you’re in the market for a new or new-to-you car, that boring sedan might be a better choice for you, depending on your financial goals.
How reliability is scored
Consumer Reports uses several different ways to determine reliability, according to their website. One of the ways they help determine reliability is by polling their members on problems reported over the course of a year. They also review 20 different zones that cover a range from minor issues through major troubles.
To determine where a vehicle ranks in the list, Consumer Reports combines these factors into a “reliability score,” from 1 to 100, and they assign it out to every mainstream vehicle so they can determine the most reliable cars according to their index.
Consumer Reports then uses its test track facility to test the vehicles in a live environment to help balance out the data reported from its members with the data they collected during its track testing.
They also combine owner’s satisfaction survey results and safety data with the rest of the data they’ve collected to determine the vehicle’s overall score, which is what their ranking indicates.
Hybrids lead the way while electrics face challenges
According to the data that Consumer Reports put together, there are some vehicle types that are more reliable than others. They have an in-depth vehicle report that goes over each model from each manufacturer, and if you’re searching for a specific vehicle, that might be quite helpful for you.
Overall, it seems like hybrid vehicles are experiencing the fewest problems, even though Consumer Reports found more potential trouble points with hybrids than with internal combustion engines (think gas car – ICE for short) or electric vehicles (EVs).
While traditional gas vehicles have had many years to work out the kinks and quirks, according to Consumer Reports, EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have more problems by a significant margin. EVs appear to have almost 79% more problems than a gas car, and PHEVs have a whopping 146% more problems than a traditional vehicle, based on the data from Consumer Reports.
If you’re shopping for an SUV, sedan, hybrid or an EV, you could give Drive® a chance to help you get pre-qualified for a car loan. It takes about two minutes and it doesn’t impact your credit score.
