Toyota Trucks Dominate 2012 Consumer Reports Reliability Rankings
Tim Esterdahl | Oct 30, 2012 | Comments 3
Consumer Reports have released their 2012 Annual Auto Survey and once again Toyota dominates the rankings with both trucks finishing 1-2. And once again the so-called “Domestic Brands” are struggling to catch up.
Toyota continues to dominate the Consumer Reports Reliability Rankings with both trucks getting top honors.
The survey found that the Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are listed as 2 of the 5 most reliable trucks. While the Ford F-250 (both gas and diesel) and Ram 2500 diesel sharing the honors of least reliable (or not recommended).
Overall, Toyota had the highest brand rating with its three brands – Scion, Toyota and Lexus – taking all the top spots in the different size categories.
For the “domestic” brands, GM was the only brand to improve with better results from Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC helping it move up in the rankings. Notably and contrary to widespread media reports, the Volt was given an above-average reliability rating.
As for Ford, it looks like the automaker has been steady going in the wrong direction. Just two years ago, it was a big winner in the reliability rankings from Consumer Reports. Now, Ford seems to be losing their way in terms of quality. What is causing this big drop? It is a combination of items such as:
- MyFordTouch problems (which Ford should get a bit of a pass on)
- Pitiful reliability of freshly designed models.
This last point about new models struggling with reliability got us thinking. If Ford’s newest models are struggling to meet quality standards, what does that say about the upcoming F150 redesign?
Last and well, last, Chrysler/Fiat continues to dwell near the bottom in the survey. Consumer Reports says that unlike last year they now have sufficient data about some of the recently revamped Chrysler and Dodge models. Good news right? Wrong, these new editions did nothing to pull up its reliability rankings.
Oh and what about the Ram pickup? It is still ranked as unreliable. Again the data confirms what we said in another earlier post: 2012 Ram 1500 Undeniably The Least Reliable Half-Ton Truck On The Road.
The annual survey uses consumer responses about their vehicle history in the last 12 months from both Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org in collecting data. They then look at the last three model years of data (unless the vehicle has been redesigned) and come up with their predicted-reliability scores. For this years survey, they collected survey data from 1.2 million vehicles.
To recap, both Ram and Ford ranked near the bottom, ranking 25th and 27th respectively, out of a total of 28 automakers (Jaguar was last). And Toyota took a clean sweep of the all the top spots.
Is anybody surprised?
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Filed Under: Auto News
Good to see that rankings. But I knew that since I just turned 145k on my 07 CM and the wife turned 115k on her 07 Prius.
I owned a 2001 Camry. I drove it for over 3 years and had virtually no problems – best car I ever owned. My son is now driving it without issue. Consumer Reports may not be the best way to guage car reliability, but owner surveys are fairly accurate. I’ve owned Che ys and Dodges and their reliability hasn’t compared. Consumer reports does indicate that all brands reliability has improved. I currently own an 08 Mariner hybrid. We’ll see how it holds up.
In government crash tests, the Tundra received an overall score of four stars out of five. However, performance varied slightly for the CrewMax, which received three stars in both frontal impact and rollover testing, compared with the other Tundra body styles, which received four stars in those categories.