Detroit Three struggle in vehicle reliability ranking, but 2 brands are up
Detroit Three automakers again struggled compared to their Asian competition in Consumer Reports annual brand reliability rankings Toyota Subaru Lexus and Honda took the top four spots in this year s new car rankings disclosed Thursday BMW slotted in fifth as the top European automaker At the bottom were Chrysler GMC Jeep and Ram with electric conveyance maker Rivian taking the last-place spot at No There were a minimal bright spots for the traditional American brands Buick slotted in at No and Ford at No with both making gains from last year and now firmly in the top half of all brands ranked Chevrolet and Cadillac were No and respectively with Lincoln at No Ford which has long dealt with quality challenges and in the last few days a costly string of recalls explained the ranking shows it s now headed in the right direction with the highest Consumer Reports reliability ranking in years The development confirms what we re seeing in our content that quality is improving a declaration from spokesperson Mike Levine revealed The rankings out annually were based this year on content submitted by Consumer Reports members for individual vehicles The organization also distributed several other rankings Thursday including brand owner satisfaction and road-test rating ranking Then they combined them together into one overall brand ranking that also includes safety assessments Subaru took the top award in that overall ranking with Jeep in last place Consumer Reports experts in a presentation with the Automotive Press Association on Thursday noted that EVs and plug-in hybrids continue to create problems for their owners though other hybrid models without plugs are considered generally highly reliable even generating better rankings than purely gas-powered cars Steven Elek Consumer Reports facts analytics undertaking leader declared that s in large part because plug-in powertrains haven t been around as long The general trend of what we re seeing is the longer a innovation has been around and the more time automakers have to work out the kinks they get more reliable he declared Whereas the newer technologies like plug-in hybrids and EVs they re still working on that
