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Honda Insight leads a Consumer Reports 2009 reliability study with some unlikely winners and losers
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Consumer Reports recommends that car-buyers avoid the new 2010 Honda
Insight, which it criticized as cramped and unrefined, but the car earned
the top rating in the magazine's reliability study (photo by Honda). See other
winners and losers in from the survey in today's slideshow.
The new-for-2010 Honda Insight gas-electric hybrid is the most reliable car on the market, Consumer Reports magazine said today, but no brand consistently dominated in the publication's annual 1.4-million car survey.
The Insight demonstrated few reliability issues immediately after it launched this spring, when Consumer Reports conducted its survey, displacing Toyota's Scion xD subcompact hatchback as the survey's winner.
The three biggest Japanese automakers -- Toyota, Honda, and Nissan -- rounded out the top five most reliable brands in the study, but Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Porsche, and Mercury were close behind in the top 10.
More significantly, even the most respected reliability brand names include a wide range of product performance, with versions of the Toyota Tundra pickup and Lexus GS luxury sedan falling below the industry reliability average in the study even as three of the top five and six of the top ten vehicles in the survey were made by Toyota.
Furthermore, many specific car lines popular in no small part for their sterling reliability reputations are outranked by lesser-known competitors; for example, although owners of the Toyota Corolla reported a respectable 28 percent fewer reliability issues than the average car, such competitors as the Suzuki SX4, Ford Focus, and Hyundai Elantra did better.
(To those wondering what that exactly those figures mean, you're out of luck; Consumer Reports does not publish the data or calculations behind its reliability rankings.)
As another convenient example of the importance of shopping an individual vehicle rather than just relying on the reputation of a brand can be found in two Mercedes-Benz luxury SUVs: the GLK, which was one of the most reliable vehicles in the Consumer Reports survey, and the larger GL, which was one of the least.
See the five most-reliable and five least-reliable cars in the survey in today's slideshow
The Consumer Reports findings serve as a convenient reminder to shop carefully for your new car rather than buying based on reputation. A car with a sterling quality reputation may have only that: a reputation. And many reliable cars have few other virtues that make them worth the money.
The magazine also took pains to note on its website that reliability isn't everything. Many reliable cars ranked poorly in Consumer Reports road testing, where they faced criticism on such counts as comfort, refinement, engine performance, and handling agility. The magazine does not issue its "recommended" label to the Insight because of poor road test scores; other reliable cars the magazine declines to endorse include the Volvo S40 and the Toyota FJ Cruiser and Yaris. It also won't recommend the Toyota-built Scion tC for its mediocre crash-test performance.
Consumer Reports does not provide data on how many reliability issues each car suffered or their severity, but most cars today are reliable by most metrics. Which car scores the highest in a reliability survey should not be a major factor in your buying decision -- simply a reassurance. However, do see what cars populate the low end of the quality spectrum, and shop them warily.
The results of the Consumer Reports survey largely track those from a much smaller study released quarterly rather than annually by TrueDelta.com. Some exceptions include the Ford Edge and Infiniti EX35 SUVs scoring well with Consumer Reports but not TrueDelta and the opposite case with General Motors' full-size crossovers.
Both surveys note key reliability progress from Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen -- though of those, all but Hyundai also had some products falling near the bottom of the Consumer Reports survey -- and little good news from Chrysler, a brand that Consumer Reports ranked as the industry's worst and had no above-average vehicles (though the corporation's Dodge and Jeep marques fared slightly better).
For more information from the Consumer Reports survey, see its press release and poke around the free sections of its website or buy a subscription. Also feel free to leave any specific questions in the comments section below this article.
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