Consumer Reports just published a new used-car reliability leaderboard, ranking 26 popular car brands from “most” to “least reliable,” based on survey results. The top of the list won’t surprise anyone. The bottom is a different story—Tesla is dead last, suffering the particularly harsh indignity of getting beaten by Jeep in the reliability survey.
According to CR‘s latest study, Lexus topped the list with a “77” (out of 100) score, then Toyota was closely behind in second at “73.”
Third was Mazda, but the gap widened considerably: It scored “58.” Most mainstream Euro and Japanese brands appeared in the middle of the list, scoring around “50.”
The bottom of the list, brands scoring below “40,” were dominated by American OEMs and Kia.
All the way at the very bottom is Tesla, with the worst score of “31.”
How could a car with so few moving parts have so many issues reported by owners? I know we’ve all seen plenty of stories about Tesla’s inconsistent build quality, but even having covered that for years now, I have to admit, I was surprised to read that big T had the most owner complaints.
Consumer Reports is considered a bastion of truth when it comes to in-depth and objective car reviews. It’s the only car-testing outfit I’m aware of that buys the cars it reviews and also has a well-equipped private testing facility to consistently evaluate them on.
This used-car reliability survey is great and draws on a lot of data. “Every year, Consumer Reports asks its members about problems they’ve had with their vehicles in the previous 12 months,” writes CR Managing Editor Jeff S. Bartlett. “For this analysis, we focused on the problems reported on cars from the 2016 to 2021 model years from a survey sample of more than 140,000 vehicles.”
To score reliability and create a ranking, CR compares “a car’s number of problems to the average number of problems for cars of that model year,” focusing on 20 potential “trouble areas.” The publication’s analysts then weighed those reported problems, according to their severity, to calculate a score.
“The overall reliability (verdict) ratings from those six model years were averaged to create the used-brand reliability score. These ratings are based on owner-reported problems. We required at least five years of data for each brand,” Bartlett explains.
Steven Elek, CR’s program leader of auto data analytics, shared: “Taking this longer view, looking at reliability over five to 10 years, gives a clear picture of what used-car buyers can expect.”
That sounds like a good way to consider a whole lot of data that’s hard to aggregate. But studies like this can’t be quite as ironclad as CR‘s normal on-track comparisons—relying on owner-reported issues is always going to introduce inconsistencies. Still, these are interesting insights into the performance of five to 10-year-old cars, and it’s hugely helpful for people who are looking for rational data to make a used-car purchase with.
As for how this reflects on new cars, at least when it comes to Tesla, Consumer Reports was a bit more charitable, stating: “… the American automaker has made significant strides, and its latest models have demonstrated better-than-average reliability, placing the brand in the top 10 of our new car predicted reliability rankings.”
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