Most and least reliable cars of 2014

When you buy a brand-new car, the last thing you want is an unscheduled trip back to the dealer to fix some problem that should never have been there in the first place. But every year, our comprehensive annual auto reliability survey tells us that some buyers will be trekking back to service center waiting rooms over and over again.

The biggest news: The area that garners the largest growing number of complaints by far is infotainment systems and associated electronics. These are the audio, navigation, and in-car communications systems that include the touch screen, unified multi-function controller, portable music interface, Bluetooth pairing, voice-command system, backup camera, and so forth.

See our complete guide to car reliability.

• As in the past, most of the top 10 brands were Asian, with Lexus and Toyota leading the league by a comfortable margin. One of the reasons Toyota manages to do that, we believe, is that they introduce new technologies slowly and on proven platforms. In contrast, some manufacturers, such as Ford, will sometimes launch a top-to-bottom, all-new car or redesign which then takes years to find and troubleshoot all the bugs.
• Besides the usual top-reliability brands—Lexus, Toyota, Mazda, and Honda—the formerly trouble-plagued Audi brand landed in the top five for the second year running, and has been among the top-10 for the last three years. Buick cracked the top-10 most-reliable brand list this year, the only domestic to do so.
• While some all-new cars beat the odds with high marks right out of the box, such as BMW's 4 Series coupe and convertible and Kia's Cadenza sedan, many do not.

Perhaps the most important new vehicle with a poor first year was the big-selling, redesigned Chevrolet Silverado 1500/GMC Sierra 1500 pickups. Our standing advice: Wait a year or two after a new-model introduction before taking the plunge.

Bear in mind that Consumer Reports' reliability and road test scores are independent of each other. Road test scores come solely from cars we buy and test, while reliability information comes solely from our subscribers. Those separate scores comprise two of the main ingredients we consider, along with crash-test results, in determining which cars to recommend.

As a consequence, every year we identify plenty of cars that are likely to prove very reliable but their test scores are too low for us to recommend them. Similarly, many vehicles do just fine in our road tests but can't be recommended because their owners have collectively found their reliability sub par.

Our Annual Auto Survey polls Consumer Reports online and magazine subscribers, who indicate any serious problems they've had with the car or cars they own in the preceding 12 months. We gather enough data to let us predict which new cars are likely to be reliable or troublesome. It also allows us to provide insights on the standings of major brands and to spot emerging trends. This survey is the largest of its kind; the 2014 edition generated information from about 1.1 million vehicles.

As multifunction, cross-linked infotainment systems proliferate, the number of complaints associated with them has increased. Previous surveys have shown that common issues include unresponsive touch screens or a reluctance to pair a phone.

While those issues remain, they have been joined by an even-larger list of problems, including multi-use controllers that don't function properly. The worst offender in the latest survey was the InTouch system in the new Infiniti Q50 sedan. More than one in five owners reported a problem with it.

Infotainment system problems generally don't exist in a vacuum. A close look suggests that cars with a lot of complaints about in-car electronics usually have plenty of other troubles, too. Even if we discount that factor, the overall score changes little—rarely improving the score from unreliable to reliable.

There's reason for hope. Updates and changes to Ford and Lincoln's notorious MyTouch systems have made them much less troublesome year by year. Honda seems to have fixed a glitch with its HondaLink that contributed to our not recommending the redesigned Accord V6 sedan last year. (That Accord has now improved to average.) While Chrysler Corp's UConnect touch-screen system was buggy in its first iterations, recent software revisions may be ironing out the wrinkles. Cadillac's CUE and some others, meanwhile, remain problematic for now.

Detroit's Big Three are, as ever, a mixed bag. Buick, represented by six versions in this year's survey, was the top American brand, with all models finishing average or better. All other U.S. brands were in the lower half of the brand rankings. But Lincoln, now 15th of 28 brands, jumped up 12 places from last year, thanks in part to the reliable MKZ sedan, for which we now have data.

Domestic small and compact cars and full-sized pickups aren't helping. The Chevrolet Sonic and Cruze, Ford Fiesta and Focus, and the turbo version of the Dodge Dart are well below average. The recently redesigned Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra 1500 pickups are showing a lot of teething pains, too. The reliability of the Ram 1500 has also faltered.

The MyFordTouch infotainment system, while much improved, is hardly trouble free. We also see elevated problem rates in components such as transmissions in the Ford Fiesta and Focus. A bright spot is the Fusion sedan, all versions of which are now average or better.

Chrysler, and its sub-brands Dodge, Jeep, and Fiat, did not fare well, particularly with their new or redesigned models. Only four Chrysler products, the Dodge Challenger, Durango, and nonturbo Dart and the undistinguished Jeep Patriot managed to scrape up an average score. Fiat finished at the bottom of the class with the 500L being the most problematic new car in the survey.

Historically, European brands were notoriously unreliable—but that's no longer true. The real standout is Audi, near the bottom a few years back but now up there with the better Japanese brands. In addition, the Porsche, Volvo, and BMW brands also finished in the top half of our standings.

BMW seems to have addressed problems it had with fuel pumps in some six-cylinder turbo models. The only below average BMW here was the rear-drive 320i/328i, which had slightly more cooling system problems than the all-wheel-drive variant, which scored better.

Mercedes-Benz was the only European brand to decline significantly in our 2014 survey, dragged down by the newly introduced CLA sedan and the redesigned, top-of-the-range S-Class. Mercedes' best performers from a reliability standpoint were the popular E-Class V6 sedan and small GLK SUV, both above average.

Volkswagen slightly improved this year. It had two bright spots: the new Passat with the 1.8-liter turbo had well above average reliability, and the Touareg SUV finally improved to average.

Most Japanese and Korean brands turned in a strong showing. Toyota and its sub-brands may not make the most fascinating cars on the block but they certainly hold up. If we looked at a list of the 10 most reliable new cars in our survey, nine of them would be a Toyota, Lexus, or Scion.

This year we could rate only two Scions, the xB hatchback, which was the most reliable new car, and the trouble-prone FR-S sports car, which was the least reliable Toyota product. That car has a clone, the Subaru BRZ, which was the only Subaru with below-average reliability.

Mazda, though a small player among the giant manufacturers, managed a sterling third-place finish in the survey.

Kia performed well, including the new Cadenza starting off with well-above average reliability. In addition, the redesigned Soul scored above-average and the Forte scored average.

Honda continued as one of the top mainstream brands, although its luxury Acura division dropped sharply. That's because two very reliable cars, the TL and TSX, were retired, and the newly introduced RLX sedan and redesigned MDX SUV were merely average in their first year.

Nissan and its luxury Infiniti brand turned in mediocre showings. Nissan hasn't been a standout for years. The redesigned Rogue managed an average reliability score, but the Altima, Pathfinder, and Sentra all did poorly. This year Infiniti drifted downward as two of its models, the new Q50 sedan and QX60 SUV, had more than their fair share of problems. 

Along with our test scores and independent safety tests, reliability forecasts play a key role in whether or not we recommend a car.

Here we show how our recommendations have changed based on our latest reliability results. We listed models that are newly recommended or no longer recommended, based on improved or declining reliability.

We also list models for which we have just acquired enough data to make a judgment call.

Models that have changed status are those that turned out better or worse than we thought they would at this time last year.

That happens largely because some predictions are based only on a single year's data and can be somewhat tentative. Many problems don't emerge right away, while others are addressed by the carmaker during production. That uncertainty is one reason we advise people not to buy a car during its first year in the production run.

*Most models for which we now have sufficient data are based on one model year of data only. Some models in the improved or declined reliability group are also based on one model year.

New or rededesigned for 2014 or early 2015

Models that have insufficient data: Audi A3, BMW 2 Series, Chevrolet SS and Suburban, GMC Yukon XL, Ford Transit Connect, Hyundai Genesis and Sonata, Maserati Ghibli, Mini Cooper, Mitsubishi Mirage, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, Volvo S60 (2.0T).

These models earned the highest and lowest predicted reliability ratings, based on Consumer Report's 2014 Annual Auto Survey. Models with an * use data based on one model year only. Most Reliable models that are recommended and did well in our testing are indicated by bold. Not all reliable models are recommended, because they scored too low in our testing (marked in italics), had a poor IIHS small-overlap test score (1), or we have not tested that particular version (2).

This table shows how the brands rank based on the average of their models' predicted-reliability scores. A measure of the brand's consistency can be seen in the span of their scores, cross-referenced by how many different models they produce.

The bars illustrate a brand's consistency by showing the reliability range between its most and least reliable models. The numerals indicate the number of models included. To score a brand, we need sufficient data on at least two models. That led us to exclude Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini, Mitsubishi and Tesla.