Car Reliability Ratings

The latest reliability ratings have been moved to a new site: Car Reliability Ratings

The old reliability ratings from 2009 have been archived below for comparison sake:

2009 Car Reliability Ratings

Car Reliability Ratings are out for 2009. Every year, JD Powers rates the reliability of new automobiles based on 3-year poll results of original car owners. Car Reliability Ratings are based on or around 200 or so mechanical criteria, then grouped in 5 different categories:

 

 

1. Overall Reliability
2. Powertrain
3. Body and Interior
4. Features and Accessories

We should remember that Used Car Ratings might look completely different than New Car Ratings. The New Cars judged in these reliability ratings are three years old, meaning that none of them go beyond the age of a 2006 model. There is a tremendous amount of data to gather in order to derive a useful used car reliability ratings chart. It would be interesting to see the 20-year ratings on cars and which of them rank the best for longevity and lowest-maintenance life span.

While I certainly appreciate the tremendous effort and research JD Powers does in getting these useful new car reliability ratings together, I wish they would go into a bit more detail. I am sure they have enough data to break these rankings down into even more meaningful specifics as it pertains to new car reliability. As for the auto rating system, wouldn’t it be much more interesting to see 100-point spans over the vague 5-Star ratings they use? I am sure they have the data on these new cars – it’s just a matter of sharing it in their charts. Since I like numbers and 100-point ratings systems, PRR has decided to extrapolate the numbers and come up with a rough average, using the 100-point average scale. The result is the PRR Rating shown in the table below. Hopefully, this gives us a more detailed picture of the 2009 Car Reliability Ratings.

Car Reliability Ratings of New Cars

New Car Reliability Ratings

	Make	Overall	Powertrain	Body & Int.	Features & Acc.	PRR Rating
1	Buick	100	100	80	100	93.33
	Toyota	100	100	80	100	93.33
2	Jaguar	100	100	100	60	86.67
	Lexus	100	100	100	60	86.67
	Mercury	100	80	80	100	86.67
3	Infiniti	80	100	80	60	80.00
	Cadillac	80	60	80	100	80.00
	Honda	80	80	60	100	80.00
4	Acura	80	100	60	60	73.33
	Lincoln	80	80	80	60	73.33
	Porche	80	80	80	60	73.33
5	Audi	60	60	80	60	66.67
	Ford	60	60	60	80	66.67
	Hyundai	60	80	60	60	66.67
	Subaru	60	80	60	60	66.67
	Chrysler	60	60	80	60	66.67
	BMW	60	80	60	60	66.67
6	GMC	60	60	60	60	60.00
	Mercedes Benz	60	60	80	40	60.00
	Chevrolet	60	60	60	60	60.00
7	Mitsubishi	60	40	60	60	53.33
	Volvo	60	60	60	40	53.33
	Nissan	40	40	60	60	53.33
	Dodge	40	40	60	60	53.33
	Mini	40	40	60	60	53.33
	Saab	40	60	40	60	53.33
8	Saturn	40	60	40	40	46.67
	Jeep	40	40	60	40	46.67
	Pontiac	40	40	40	60	46.67
	Scion	40	60	40	40	46.67
	Mazda	40	40	60	40	46.67
	Land Rover	40	40	40	60	46.67
	Volkswagen	40	60	40	40	46.67
9	Kia	40	40	40	40	40.00
	Hummer	40	40	40	40	40.00
	Isuzu	40	40	40	40	40.00
	Suzuki	40	40	40	40	40.00
10
	Excellent
	Very Good
	Good
	Fair
	Poor