Who Makes the Most Reliable New Cars?
CR ranks the brands and reveals how their new models are likely to hold up
Toyota, Lexus, and BMW are the top three most reliable brands in our annual auto reliability brand rankings, with the German automaker jumping up 10 spots from last year to join the two reliability stalwarts on the podium. Mazda, last year’s second-ranked automaker dropped two spots to come in fourth, while Honda rounds out the top five.
Our predicted reliability score is calculated on a 0-to-100-point scale, with the average rating falling between 41 and 60 points. For a brand to be ranked, we must have sufficient survey data for two or more models.
Every year, CR asks its members about problems they’ve had with their vehicles in the previous 12 months. This year, we gathered data on over 300,000 vehicles, from the 2000 to 2022 model years (with a few early-introduced 2023 model years), that address 17 trouble areas, including engine, transmission, in-car electronics, and more. We use that information to give reliability ratings for every major mainstream model.
Asian automakers are still leading reliability by a wide margin with an overall reliability average score of 59 for the region, on a scale of 0-100. Seven of the 10 most reliable brands were from Asian automakers. European automakers are in second place at 51, while Domestic brands trail both with an average score of 40. Nearly every automaker had at least one model that had an average or better reliability ranking, and a number of automakers had an entire lineup that scored average or better.