Toyota Prius: Most Reliable Family Car in America?

Okay, first let's get all the nits picked regarding Consumer Reports' annual reliability survey, starting with the situation that best exemplifies the inherent subjectivity of these types of reports. In the "family car" segment of this year's report, the Toyota Prius gets top marks, followed by the Volvo S40, Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan, and then four more hybrids: the Fusion and Milan hybrid models and the hybrid versions of the Nissan Altima and Toyota Camry.

Just to tally things up here, this means five of the top eight family cars — in terms of reliability — are hybrids. I can understand how the Ford products got on that list, but the Nissan and Toyota have me a bit suspicious, and unless someone can show me how the addition of a hybrid powertrain increases the overall reliability of a vehicle, I'm going to have to say something funky is going on here. And it's probably the same thing that helped Saab jump 12 places upward in the brand reliability rankings. And that drags down certain of Lincoln's all-wheel-drive products — but not their Ford counterparts.

And that's the fact that no matter how hard these survey makers work, there's just no way to remove the human factor from the equation. As a result, such studies are so much reliable gauges of a vehicle's reliability as they are measures of consumer perceptions of that reliability.

But that's still something important, which makes Ford's stellar showing on the Consumer Reports survey well worth celebrating. Some 90 percent of the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury lineup was ranked as at least "average" in terms of reliability. For comparisons' sake, only about 42 percent of the General Motors portfolio scored that highly, with only one, the Chevrolet Malibu with a V6, scored above average, although the 'Bu did out-place the V6 Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. On the other hand, Consumer Reports did note that, "GM has a number of strong contenders either just released or in the pipeline, but we won't have reliability data on them for a while."

The good news was tougher to find over at Chrysler, where only about 33 percent of the company's products hit the "average" mark. The only Chrysler product that Consumer Reports actually recommended was the newly redesigned Dodge Ram pickup.

(A quick note here: Some vehicles that were ranked as "average" or above in the reliability survey are not literally recommended by Consumer Reports because they posted subpar results in the group's road tests. This includes the Honda Insight, which, and I'll quote here again for the full effect, "had the best new car reliability our [Consumer Reports'] survey, but scored too low in our testing to be recommended.")

Taking the global view of the results, the Asian OEMs are still setting the pace, manufacturing 36 of the 48 models with top reliability scores. This includes 18 from Toyota, eight from Honda, four from Nissan, and three from both the Hyundai-Kia group and Subaru. Further, the only below-average vehicle from Honda or Toyota or any of their subsidiaries was the all-wheel-drive Lexus GS.

It's significant, however, that despite the apparently good showing of the Koreans, the brands' overall rankings showed some relative weakness. The Hyundai Elantra, Tucson and Genesis (with a V6), along with the Kia Sportage, all received top ratings in the survey, but, overall, Kia actually fell four spots on the reliability list while Hyundai only maintained its ranking. Subaru, another OEM noted for its recent sales success, saw the same kind of results. Every vehicle from that automaker except for the Subaru WRX with a turbo was average or better, yet the company as a whole still fell five spots.

The overall results for the European brands were approximately equivalent to those from the U.S. OEMs. For the Americans, 42 percent of all models were average and 17 percent above average, while the European competitors combined to get 47 percent of their products ranked average and 16 percent above average.

It's also worth noting that despite the Europeans' reputation for precision engineering, etc., many of these brands are surprisingly low on the Consumer Reports rankings. Yes, Porsche jumped 10 spots to reach number nine on the list, but Volkswagen, despite moving up four places, is still down at number 21, just above Pontiac. And just below Pontiac is Mercedes-Benz (up four places), followed by Audi (down two places). BMW and MINI are even lower, at 26 and 27, respectively. The former was down six places, while the latter saw the biggest fall on the survey, tumbling 14 spots.

My key take-away from the European rankings, though, is that the German push to get consumers to consider diesel vehicles as credible, fuel-efficient alternatives to the hybrids, is having an effect. It's true that the VW Jetta TDI is the only diesel to actually get recommended, but I don't think it's a coincidence that VW's overall reliability improvements are coming at the same time that the company has been aggressively promoting its diesel lineup and has become the country's only source for affordable high-mpg diesels.

After all, perception, it's been said, is reality.