Toyota Up, Cadillac Down, Chrysler and Tesla Rise in Consumer Reports’ Study

DETROIT – Toyota tops Consumer Reports’ 2017 reliability study, moving up one spot from last year as sister brand Lexus moves down one spot to No.2.

While General Motors’ Cadillac brand is at the bottom, falling six places from last year, and GM’s only brand in the top half, Buick, fell five spots from 2016, the news wasn’t all bad for domestic brands.

Last year’s bottom-dweller Chrysler, while still in the bottom half of brands in reliability, moved up 10 places to No.17.

“While it remains in the lower half of all 27 brands ranked by CR, this represents a huge improvement for (FCA),” the publication says, noting the new Pacifica minivan ranked average on reliability due to “minor transmission issues.”

The minivan uses ZF’s 9-speed automatic, which has been the subject of complaints in prior third-party reliability and quality surveys. However, CR notes the same transmission in the Jeep Cherokee is not as problematic as it once was and FCA seems to have the issues in the model “worked out.”

Transmission complaints, as well as ever-present infotainment woes, were the top reasons for reliability to fall in this year’s study.

The survey of 640,000 vehicle owners "revealed that all-new or updated models are now more likely than older ones to have a wonky engine, a jerky transmission or high-tech features that outright fail,” Consumer Reports says.

Unlike other third-party industry surveys, Jake Fisher-director of auto testing at Consumer Reports, says CR measures things broken or malfunctioning, not annoyances. “A problem with pairing my phone is a whole lot different than ‘my engine failed,’” Fisher tells media today at an Automotive Press Assn. luncheon here, adding infotainment problems are not weighed as heavily as transmission issues in determining a vehicle's reliability.

In conjunction with newer 8-speed and 9-speed transmissions, as well as CVTs, arriving in market, CR says it is seeing complaints of bad shifts or transmissions breaking down.

The publication says some models scoring poorly last year due to transmission and infotainment woes, such as the ’16 Hyundai Tucson and ’16 Honda Civic, respectively, saw complaints drop sharply for those same issues on their ’17 versions.

Tesla is No.21 in the reliability rankings, up four spots from last year. CR says improved reliability scores for the Model S were the reason, and it predicts the new Model 3 also should have above-average reliability as both cars share much of the same technology. However, Fisher says the Model X CUV is one of the least reliable models on this year’s survey.

“Electric vehicles are inherently less complicated than gasoline or hybrid alternatives,” Fisher says in a statement. “The Model 3 is the least-complicated Tesla yet and should benefit from what Tesla has learned from the Model S.”

Other brands seeing improvement from last year include Kia, BMW, Subaru, Infiniti and Honda. All landed in the top 10, with CR noting Honda, up one spot from last year, seems to have worked the bugs out of the Civic’s in-car electronics, which it surmises had a positive effect on the car’s platform-mate the '17 CR-V CUV.

Below the No.10 spot but improving nonetheless were Nissan, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Volkswagen, Jeep and Ram.

Others seeing declining reliability included Hyundai, Mazda, Chevrolet, Acura, Lincoln, Volvo and GMC.

CR says Acura’s seven-spot drop – the biggest in this year’s survey – can be attributed to all its models, save for the aged RDX CUV, being below average in reliability.

While Chevrolet’s Bolt EV was the brand’s most reliable model, ranking above average, all other Chevys were below average, including the Volt and Cruze, the latter of which performed well on the 2016 survey.

Volvo holds the survey's dubious distinction of having this year's worst infotainment score, for the touchscreen-based system in the XC90 CUV. CR says the system’s infotainment score rivals the low scores Ford and Lincoln’s MyTouch infotainment systems had at their debut.

Fisher says the XC90’s infotainment screen, per survey respondents, had a tendency to lock up, which can block access to safety features of the vehicle. Problems with the system are “not dissimilar to the problems we see with other infotainment systems,” he says.

The XC90 was the third least-reliable model overall in the 2017 survey, CR says.

Other models seeing below-average reliability scores included the Hyundai Tucson, which CR blames on its 7-speed DCT; Subaru Impreza; Cadillac XT5; Buick LaCrosse; and GMC Acadia. The Acadia was among the 10 least-reliable models in this year’s survey, for climate and drive system issues, as well as infotainment woes and power-equipment problems.

Models improving included the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Ford F-150 and Ram 1500.

Kia’s new-for-’17 Niro hybrid CUV landed on the list as the most reliable new model of any surveyed. Fisher believes Kia likely benefits from parent Hyundai's scheme to introduce new technologies first in Hyundai-brand vehicles, theorizing by the time those technologies arrive in Kias most of the bugs have been worked out.

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