These Car Brands Make The Least Reliable Cars, According To Consumer Reports

You probably have a lot of questions when you’re looking at which new car to buy. Is it fast? Can you take it off-road? Electric, hybrid, or gas? Will all of your children fit inside of it? Then of course, there are the simple pocketbook questions of price, insurance, and maintenance costs.

At the end of the day, though, one of your top considerations should be reliability. Because the point of a car isn’t just to get you where you’re going — it’s to get you back home again, too. Over the decades, certain badges have developed reputations for dependability, whether through precision engineering or raw brute toughness. But car companies change ownership and priorities all the time in their hunt for the bottom of the bottom line, and what once was true may no longer be. Which carmakers make reliable vehicles these days?

Fortunately, the good people at Consumer Reports have combed through their massive list of member surveys, averaging out problem rates with a focus on more recent models. According to them, these are the least reliable car brands on sale today.

“German engineering” used to be a byword for dependable engineering, especially for vehicles, especially for cars. While the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche are often out of reach for the wallet of the everyman, Volkswagen, the “People’s Car,” was the carmaker whose mission was to bring that engineering excellence to the masses. Over the decades, trusty models like the Golf and the Jetta have been great all-around options for buyers, and they can be found on any road in the world to this day.

Unfortunately, they might be broken down on the side of that road. The People’s Car manages only a very plebeian 18th place out of 22 CR’s predicted reliability ranking, a bottom-five finish. By contrast, Audi, a sibling within the Volkswagen Group, sits in the upper third with a 7th-place rating. The people do deserve an affordable car, but they should not have to sacrifice dependability for it.

If you’re going to beat the Nazis, you need a 4×4 that can get you anywhere. Whether through freezing snow or muddy tracks, in the woods or across rivers, that car just has to work. The humble Jeep might not be the reason the good guys won World War II, but they sure wouldn’t have won it without the Jeep.

Good thing the Allies weren’t using modern Jeeps, then. The original design’s descendants only average out to 19th place out of 22 on CR’s predicted reliability ranking, which rather cuts against its branding as go-anywhere vehicles. And it only gets worse with age, as Consumer Reports ranks Jeep at a lowly 25th place out of 26 on its reliability ranking for used cars, or second-to-last place. While still an iconic American brand with that distinctive seven-slot grill, the marque’s sales have been in decline since 2018 as prices have surged. Still, if ever there was a car brand that could be the plucky underdog making a comeback against impossible odds, it’s Jeep.

GMC builds its reputation on being rugged and tough. Its trucks are supposed to be muscular workhorses that could haul a space rocket up a mountain and not complain about it. Even the cheapest SUV in its current lineup is called the Terrain, in case you had any doubts about what it’s meant to tackle. GMC even brought the Hummer back as an EV, both in SUV and truck trim, to make toughness environmentally friendly.

Surely such swole vehicles must be bulletproof, right? Well, according to Consumer Reports, it just isn’t so. GMC vehicles average out to a rather dim 20th place out of 22 on predicted reliability, making the brand seem like something of a paper tiger. The GMC Canyon was cited for especially poor reliability, meaning you might not want to drive one into an actual canyon any time soon, at least if you’d like to drive it back out again.

More than any other brand, Cadillac has defined American automotive luxury through the decades. Once famous for crafting beautiful land yachts, these days the marque makes sporty luxury cars like the CT4-V and CT5-V Blacking, as well as gigantic road hogs like the Escalade. While it may have lost its ultra-luxury status to the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley, it’s trying to reclaim their right to that crown with the all-electric $350,000 Celestiq (pictured), which might as well be a land superyacht.

Sadly, if Cadillacs were boats, they might be likely to sink. Consumer Reports rates the brand’s predicted reliability at a woeful 21st place out of 22, putting it second-to-last overall. In particular, the EV Lyriq was cited as being a problem child among all modern cars. This does appear to be a more recent problem, as CR ranks Cadillac a commendable 10^th place out of 26 on its ranking of used-car reliability. Here’s hoping the make can get its modern cars back up to that standard.

All-electric carmaker Rivian first began delivering vehicles in the form of vans exclusively for Amazon in 2019, before offering the R1S SUV and the R1T pickup truck for consumers in 2022. The latter have been widely well received; we praised the R1S in our original review as a fantastic blend of fast, rugged off-road, and luxurious. In addition, Consumer Reports cites it as the No. 1 brand for owner satisfaction, and the only brand to gain a perfect satisfaction score.

Sounds pretty good! Sadly, the brand also has a pretty big catch: Rivian ranks dead last on CR’s predicted reliability scores, 22^nd place out of 22. Of course, this might not be a huge shock, given that its Amazon vans keep catching on fire. As a newer manufacturer, hopefully these are just teething pains that will get worked out. Otherwise, while Rivians might be nice to take off-road, they might not make it back onto the roads again.