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Volvo: Safety Beyond the Star RatingsSubaru Considered Most Reliable Car Brand
Subaru has taken the most reliable new car brand title away from Toyota, according to Consumer Reports, but it’s still in Toyota’s favor.
Toyota Has Been Dethroned for Reliability
Toyota and Lexus have traded the top spot on Consumer Reports’ most reliable new car rankings for years now, but a new brand has taken the reliability throne. Subaru’s new car reliability scores have been excelling lately, and it has helped them secure the top spot for 2024. This comes after Toyota was hit by below-average reliability scores due to issues with their pickup trucks and their bZ4X electric vehicle.
Although, that doesn’t mean Toyota wasn’t still a reliable choice, according to Consumer Reports’ metrics. Four Toyota models scored well above average, four received above average, and seven more came in with average scores that helped keep the Japanese automotive brand in the top three. Toyota’s luxury focused brand, Lexus, still did well too with most of their models carrying average to above average scores placing it at number two.
What Makes Subaru Models Reliable?
Consumer Reports asks its members what issues they’ve encountered with their vehicles over the past 12 months. The company was able to review over 300,000 vehicle ownership accounts that ranged in manufacturer, model, and from 2000 up to 2025 model years. They then take those experiences and bucket them into 20 different trouble area buckets that range from basic issues like poor quality interior materials to out-of-warranty headaches like replacing the entire engine.
Each of these trouble areas are then given a reliability score from 1 to 100 based on the severity of the customers’ ownership account. Those scores are then combined with Consumer Reports own firsthand experience with the vehicles and owner satisfaction survey results to generate an overall score. From there, the overall scores of each model from a certain brand can be compiled to give the automotive brand its own reliability score average.
For Subaru, that reliability score came in at a 68 out of 100, which doesn’t sound like a passing grade in school but was the best out of all the manufacturers reviewed by Consumer Reports. Subaru was able to achieve this score thanks to six of their most reliably scored vehicles – the Forester, Impreza, Crosstrek, Legacy, Outback, and Ascent. Both the Forester and Impreza generated a well-above-average reliability score, while the rest of Subaru’s lineup generated average or above-average scores – except for the Subaru Solterra which was given a below-average score due to the same issues that plagued the bZ4X.
Technically a Win for Toyota Still
While Subaru may have dethroned Toyota and Lexus, it’s still a win for Toyota. Toyota first invested in Subaru in the early 2000s, but the two Japanese automotive brands have been joined at the hip officially since 2020 when Toyota took on a 20% stake in Subaru. With Subaru officially under the Toyota Group umbrella, that places Toyota related brands in the top three over all other automotive brands – at least according to Consumer Reports.
While these metrics do shine a light on the good and bad for different makes and models, it isn’t a complete data set. Consumer Reports themselves stated that they had “insufficient data to create brand rankings for Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Lucid, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar, Porsche, and Ram.” That’s a large portion of the automotive landscape going unaccounted for.
Plus, even the models they do have information on don’t quite match real-world experiences from customers. Rivian for instance sits at the very bottom of the reliability list with a score of 14 since their vehicles have been given a well-below-average reliability across the lineup. Yet, Consumer Reports also credits the brand as #1 in owner satisfaction. So, congrats to Subaru (and technically Toyota) for the top spot(s), but don’t get too comfortable. Honda rounds out the top five with Honda at 4 and Acura at 5, so we could see them leapfrog into the top 3 if Toyota continues to see production issues with some of their lineup next year.
