2025 J D Power dependability study just came out and again Lexus #1. Three years in a row and 12 out of the last 14 years. Any other manufacturer would be ecstatic to win this one year .

 

That Buick is so high in the ratings still surprises me. Although they fdo have some nice looking vehicles.

 

I wonder what pulled Toyota down.

 

7th in 2023 and second in 2024. Don't know if this is true but he said Toyota tries out all new things especially tech items in Toyota's first. All the new tech especially infotainment car play Android Auto etc could be the answer.

 

Consumer Reports just dropped Lexus to second after Subaru...

 

Tacoma and Tundra pickups hurt Toyota's ratings. Both rated "fair" 2/5.

 

And four of the top seven are General Motors products.

 

Not sure how they conduct these studies - what counts against "dependability"? Is it only something that causes the car to be totally out of service, like an engine or a transmission or major component failure (AC, etc)? Or is it any problem for which a customer visits the dealer? For example, this RX has these faulty intermittent windshield wipers, and now this "transmission shift malfunction" error when cold. Do those count? I haven't taken the car in for either of those problems because I know there is no fix for them.

Just speaking for myself - I am 62 years old, I have never owned the same brand of car twice except for BMW (4 vehicles), and across all those brands, I have never had a major issue with any new car (maintenance issues aside as they aged, like brakes etc). So in my experience, all the brands have been "dependable". I will say I have two friends who had bad experiences with their Audis; but again with age (> 75K miles), related to cooling systems and carbon deposits on the valves.

 

Good find didn't notice.

 

It considers almost everything nine different categories.The study considers problems across nine vehicle categories: climate, driving assistance, driving experience, exterior, features/controls/displays, infotainment, interior, powertrain, and seats.

 

To add to what Freds430 said. CR emails consumer surveys to all its members who subscribe to its online and printed magazine publications. They only asks you to respond to products you own or have owed. I have done some of their surveys and the are quite detailed.

 

its so slanted.
I have 3 friends with 2-3 year old buick's who have had unending problems glitches and new transmissions.

 

Large population studies on heterogeneous datasets cannot be fully correctly done with just sampling data (which uses much smaller samples than the overall population), as the latter leads to potentially misleading/incorrect results - this fact gets proven out, for example, in election "polls" that now almost always don't match the final results. In the above dataset, though I don't disbelieve the Lexus/Toyota results, I'm having a hard time believing the "Buick" results - quite a head-scratcher. And how exactly is "dependability" defined ?

A thorough and unskewed analysis can be achieved through databases being built, perhaps, with Carfax.com data. It appears they are networked now both with dealers as well as independent mechanics - who give Carfax data on the work they do everytime a car is in the shop - broken down by categories of work (repair vs. maintenance) to some extent. This independent data from brokers like Carfax.com, which spans almost the full population of cars in owners' hands would probably provide the most comprehensive analysis - if it were actually done. Perhaps CR and JDPowers themselves pay/pull that data rather than rely on only their smaller sampled datasets. An additional benefit of that: The "data" won't be self-reported surveys by owners, but on hard, objective data on why any car/make (i.e. almost every individual car) was actually in the shop floor (i.e. oil change or transmission change ?)

 

F150 is definitely king of that category. My last three (‘97,’09, and the current 2016) were never in the shop a single time for a needed repair. My 2016 is pushing ten years old. It just crossed 50k miles. One set of tires and brake pads at about 47k miles. Heck, even the original battery lasted until about four months ago.
I don’t know why Toyota can’t build a truck as good and reliable as most of their cars.

 

YouTube has two clips of owners of Toyota Tundras with over 1.5 million miles with practically nothing repaired.