GMC, Volvo Jump into CR’s Top 10 Reliability Ratings

Japanese car brands continue to dominate the closely watched annual reliability ratings from Consumer Reports this year. But Audi rose four positions to fourth spot, and two other non-Asian brands GMC and Volvo broke into the top 10.

CR announced the results on Monday at a meeting of the Automotive Press Assn. in Detroit.

Toyota's Lexus brand, which ranked third in 2012, regained its top position this year. The Toyota brand retained its second-place spot. Acura jumped from seventh last year to third in 2013.

The top-scoring individual model this year for predicted reliability is the redesigned 2014 Subaru Forester SUV. The worst-ranked model is the Ford C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid.

CR calculates its ratings by polling its subscribers about their experiences with 1.1 million vehicles during the past 12 months. Each brand's ranking is an average of the reliability ratings of several specific models. Thus the magazine shows its results for each brand as a range of scores (right).

Ford's namesake brand, for example, has some models with reliability 20% above average but also some that are more than 200% worse than average. CR says Ford's scores were hurt by complaints about misbehaving electronics, balky transmissions and new models that are less reliable than the ones they replaced.

The magazine notes that every model it evaluated for six brands (Lexus, Toyota, Acura, Audi, Mazda and Volvo) scored above average.