What’s the Most Reliable Car? You’re Asking the Wrong Question

Everyone wants to know which car is the most reliable. But what if that's actually the wrong question?

In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick takes a deep dive into what reliability really means in today's automotive world—and why simply looking at a Consumer Reports score or a J.D. Power award isn't enough.

Inspired by a real client trying to choose between a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Subaru Forester Hybrid, and Hyundai Tucson Hybrid, LeeAnn explains how she evaluates reliability when the long-term data doesn't exist yet. From recalls and Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs) to assembly plants, production changes, and owner experiences, you'll learn how to separate marketing from meaningful data.

Most importantly, you'll discover why the "most reliable car" isn't the same answer for every buyer—and how your own priorities should shape your decision.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why Consumer Reports and J.D. Power often disagree
• What "Predicted Reliability" and "Initial Quality" actually measure
• Why not all vehicle problems are created equal
• How recalls and Technical Service Bulletins can reveal important patterns
• Why assembly plants and production dates sometimes matter
• How The Car Chick evaluates reliability when long-term data doesn't exist
• Why your ownership goals should determine which vehicle is right for you 

If you've ever wondered how automotive professionals make recommendations before ten years of reliability data exists, this episode pulls back the curtain.

Need help choosing your next vehicle?
Visit TheCarChick.com to learn more about The Car Chick's vehicle consultation and car-buying services.

You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here. 

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Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick.  All rights reserved.

Transcript

The Car Chick (00:00)
Hey everyone and welcome back to The Straight Shift. Every now and then a client will ask me a question that will inspire an entire podcast episode. And this is one of those times. I am working with a lady here in the Charlotte area who is looking for a small hybrid SUV. Shocker, right? What everybody's looking for. And we've been test driving the Subaru Forrester hybrid, the Hyundai Tucson hybrid, and when we can find one, a Toyota Rav4, which all of those are hybrids now and they're

really hard to find because they're super popular. But for Kelly, her number one priority is reliability. And for a very good reason. Several years ago she had a Kia lose power on her while she was driving on the interstate. Absolutely terrifying. Thankfully she got off the road safely, but yeah, it scared the hell out of her. And ever since then, reliability hasn't been about avoiding repair bills.

It's been about trusting the vehicle that she's driving. So for this reason, I've been leaning a little more towards the Subaru or the Toyota for her over the Hyundai, even though she liked the Tucson the best. And I'm not bashing Hyundai, it's a great vehicle, but in terms of long-term reliability, I thought she might be more comfortable in the Subaru or the Toyota. But what I love is that she has been sending me some really thoughtful questions. Not just your typical, which one's the most reliable.

Her questions have gone much deeper than that. How much of your recommendation is based on Toyota and Subaru being the safe bet versus the Tucson actually being a poor fit for my priorities? Or can the Tucson be realistically a vehicle that I can keep for 10 to 15 years and eventually pass on to my daughter when she starts driving? Is your concern that the Tucson is less likely to be dependable 10 to 15 years from now?

Or that Subaru and Toyota simply have a more reliable track record. And my favorite question that she asked was when the long term data doesn't yet exist,

how do you decide whether a vehicle has earned your confidence as a long-term recommendation? And that was a real eye-opener for me. And it got me thinking: what does reliability really mean? Not just what does it mean to her, but what does it actually mean in today's car market? And how can that be different for different people? So, what it comes down to is how do you predict the future?

When the future hasn't happened yet. And that's what we're gonna talk about today in the straight shift. So let's get into it.

When I start researching vehicles for my clients, and most of my clients do have reliability as one of their priorities, I start in the same places that most consumers do. I look at the reliability ratings. They're a fantastic starting point, but they can also be a confusing one. If you turn on the TV, especially during football season, which is somehow coming up again, time is flying, you'll hear one commercial bragging that their brand was named Highest Ranked in Initial Quality by JD Power.

And then there'll be a different commercial for a different brand that says, Hey, we're the most reliable brand. And then Subaru will tell you it's Consumer Reports top reliable brand. But then Toyota is historically the most reliable brand. And then Edmunds has its top rated awards. And then Motor Trend comes out with its car truck and SUV of the year. And pretty soon you're wondering how can all of these vehicles be the best? Well, the trick is understanding which study

each company is actually measuring because they're not all measuring the same thing. But there are a lot of different studies, enough of which that each manufacturer can kind of pick and choose to make themselves sound the coolest. So I want to break down some of these so that you understand some of the different studies that are done and what they actually mean. And that may let you call bullshit on some of those TV commercials.

So let's start with JD Power. That's probably the biggest name in automotive rewards. This is where you will hear the car commercials proudly proclaiming these things. Highest brand ranked at initial quality or highest dependability. It sounds pretty straightforward, right? That just means it's the most reliable car. No, not exactly. JD Power doesn't actually have one reliability study. They actually have several studies that the manufacturers like to cherry-pick which one they supposedly won.

The biggest one is the initial quality study or the IQS. This study measures problems that owners experience during the first 90 days of ownership. Now, before you dismiss that as totally meaningless, it actually tells us something useful. It's measuring how well the vehicle was assembled and how well the software works right out of the gate. And that indicates how smoothly your early ownership experience goes.

Because that is when you are most likely to formulate your opinions about this car. JD Powers counts every single problem equally. And this is what most people don't realize, and where the data can get a little bit skewed. So if you say the Bluetooth connection won't stay paired, okay, that's one problem. Backup camera freezes, that's a problem.

An engine blows up? Yeah, that's a problem, but still only gets one point. They're all counted in the total problems per 100 vehicles. The study isn't trying to tell you how severe the problems are, it's simply counting how many problems the owners reported. So if brand A has 10 little infotainment system-related glitches,

and brand B has one epic transmission failure. Guess what? Brand B ranks higher than brand A in initial quality. See, these numbers are not weighted. Every single problem is just one point equally. So it doesn't tell you which problems you would rather live with. So that is how that study says: hey, you know, right out of the gate, it might not have any problems.

But a couple years down the line, the transmission might blow up. So it's only sort of useful in terms of long-term reliability. The other study that they do is called the vehicle dependability study. This is the one where they survey owners of three-year-old vehicles and ask about problems they have experienced just in the past year. It's great because this is, again, real-world problems over time from actual owners.

But it's still only three years, which is typically when the factory warranty period expires for most brands, three years or 36,000 miles. So if you're the type of person that likes to lease a new car every three years, both of these studies are totally relevant data. But if you're the person like Kelly who keeps a car 10, 15 years, even just five or six years, it's only the beginning of the puzzle. So to make things even more confusing,

JD Power also publishes studies on things like consumer satisfaction with the dealerships, with their sales experience, with the service departments, even the vehicle's appeal. Like what does that even mean? It's so subjective. And these are not reliability studies at all. But you'll still see the manufacturers promoting these awards and their advertising, of course. So what do I like about JD Power?

It does use enormous sample sizes. So it is statistically relevant. I'm actually using some of the statistics courses I had to take in college. And their methodology is also consistent from year to year, which is key in any sort of scientific study and data analysis. So it gives us a really good snapshot of what real life owners are experiencing in those first few years of ownership.

So it does give you a good indication if there's a lot of problems in those first three years, that's really concerning for pretty much everybody, no matter how long you plan to keep the car, because it's gonna drive you nuts right off the bat. Now, if they resolve those issues quickly, that's great. But again, it doesn't tell you what this vehicle is gonna be like at 100,000 miles or 200,000 miles, or if it even will reach 200,000 miles.

It's measuring ownership experience over a relatively short period of time. So if you're concerned about long-term reliability, like I usually am, you have to start digging a lot deeper. The second source I usually turn to is Consumer Reports. Unlike JD Power, Consumer Reports doesn't sell advertising or accept any money whatsoever from any of the automakers or dealerships. Their entire business model is built around serving consumers.

So they are completely independent and theoretically objective. This is why you have to pay for a yearly subscription to get their information. But let me tell you, it is totally worth the what 40 bucks a year, I think it still is. It's probably going up this year. I'll know when my credit card statement comes through. But they also buy every vehicle that they test and they buy it anonymously instead of borrowing press cars from the manufacturers. And that matters because they are testing the exact same vehicles that you and I

can buy off the dealership lot. It hasn't had anything special happen to it. It hasn't been tweaked in any way. You can trust that it is a sample vehicle from the population of vehicles that would be sold to actual consumers. The data that Consumer Reports uses is from primarily their annual member survey. Every year, hundreds of thousands of subscribers report problems that they have experienced with their vehicles. So if you are a Consumer Reports subscriber,

and you get one of their surveys, fill it out. They need the data. I fill mine out religiously every year. It's probably why they know a lot about the 2004 Mini Cooper S. But Consumer Reports then takes all that data and they sort it into about 20 or so different problem areas. Things like the engine, the transmission, the battery, the electrical systems, the hybrid battery if it has one, climate control, suspension systems, brakes, even things like

paint and trim all the technology, the infotainment system. And that allows them to track patterns across the hundreds or sometimes thousands of owners of each of these vehicles. Now when people look at Consumer Reports, the score they're primarily paying attention to is predicted reliability. Now despite that name, Consumer Reports does not actually have a crystal ball that they look into to predict

said reliability. Believe me, I wish they did. I would buy one of those crystal balls. It would be worth every penny. But no, their prediction is based on historical data. So if an engine family, so the same engine has been used across different models, different years, and that's what manufacturers tend to do. They'll build a certain type of engine and they'll put it in multiple different vehicles so that they can get their money's worth. It's called economies of scale.

That works well for you and me as well, because that gives us more data points to test this engine's reliability. So if that engine family has been reliable for many years, like the old V8 that was in the Toyota Tundra that would go literally a million miles if properly cared for, it was great. That's why when they changed the engine in the Tundra, they started having problems. Yes, it got better gas mileage, but man, that V8 was just indestructible.

If the manufacturer themselves, like Toyota, has a strong track record for reliability and resolving problems. This is all the stuff that goes into the prediction for when a manufacturer comes out with a new model. So when they say a brand new vehicle has above average predictive reliability.

What they're really saying is, based on everything we know so far about the brand, about this model, about all the parts inside the vehicle, some of which may have already been used and proven, some of which may be new, we expect it to perform similarly to related vehicles that came before it. That's why when you see a full redesign of a model, they tend to back off that

predicted reliability unless there's a lot of carryover in the technology, in the engine, in the transmission. If it's a complete redesign, they back up and say, Whoo, okay, we're not really sure about this one because we don't have a lot of data, so it's gonna get a lower predictive reliability score. It is a very reasonable approach, but it is still an educated guess based on historical data. Because there's no such thing as a crystal ball. Dang it.

They also publish what is called an owner satisfaction score. And people often confuse that with reliability. They're completely different. Owner satisfaction simply asks whether owners would buy that same vehicle again. So a car can have excellent reliability, but only a mediocre owner satisfaction because maybe it's not comfortable or it's boring or it's loud.

People are like, meh, yeah, it gets me from point A to point B, but I just don't love it. Or it can have reliability scores, but the owners absolutely love driving it and they would buy one again tomorrow. Like Jeeps. This is why Jeeps tend to have a high owner satisfaction score and are at the bottom of the list for reliability. Some people they're willing to put up with reliability issues for

the appeal and the fun factor and the enjoyment of the vehicle when it is running. That's true of MINIs as well. So, what I love about Consumer Reports is that they're one of the best resources for identifying long-term trends because they are tracking vehicles over many, many years. 10 years is usually the window that I see. Sometimes it can be longer than that. So they can spot patterns that will not show up in a 90-day or even a three-year

study. And that's why I rely very heavily on Consumer Reports. I do take it with a little bit of a grain of salt because it is based on what people report. And people that are not happy with their vehicle or have had problems are more likely to fill out that survey than the people that are just humming along and happy. So fill out the survey if you are a member. It's really important for us to get good data across multiple samples. But the weaknesses...

it's the same limitation of any study. It's looking backwards to try to predict the future.

So the newer the vehicle, the less data that they have. So you have to take their, whoo, yay, we expect this to be fantastically reliable. They could be wrong.

They are just making an educated guess and it's different from actually knowing.

Another source of information is Edmunds, and they're not really in the business of producing things like reliability rankings the way that JD Power or Consumer Reports does. But what they do exceptionally well is road testing and longer-term road testing. So they will buy a vehicle and they will put 20, 30, 40,000 miles on it in one year. Their different reviewers and editors and staff members will drive it all over the place and document every single little thing

that happens along the way. How much maintenance did it need? How much gas did it consume? Did anything break? Were there software updates that were required? How much did all that stuff cost? And when did it start to annoy them after a year of living with it? And it's really fun because it tells you what an actual ownership experience might be like. The downside is it's still just one vehicle over one year.

But they did drive the heck out of it. And I like it because they do use different people to drive it around. So you get different perspectives. So one person might love these things about the car, but these things annoyed the crap out of them.

Whereas another person didn't mind these things, but this annoyed them. So you really get a lot of different perspectives based on different types of people. And they are really good at writing their reviews. They're actually quite hilarious, especially when something has annoyed them over the past year. Magazines, or I guess they used to be magazines. I guess they're just websites now. Are there actual magazines anymore? Motor Trend and Car and Driver do something very similar with their long-term fleet testing.

Again, they're not producing a reliability score. They are documenting a simulated ownership experience over tens of thousands of miles. They are automotive journalists, but they also have access to engineers, product planners, manufacturer representatives. So sometimes they will uncover issues and then explain why it happened

in a way that the average owner never could, or that sometimes other automotive journalists don't do, because they just have a deeper skill set or access to deeper skill sets. Again, it's one vehicle, not a statistically significant sample. And they are also supported by manufacturer advertising like Edmunds. So they have to be careful and walk a thin line and not completely piss off any manufacturer.

That is why they are very diplomatic in the way they present information because they can't risk losing their advertising because they will go out of business. So when you read things, remember there is money changing hands behind the scenes. So again, take it with a little bit of a grain of salt. Kelly Blue Book is another one that doesn't do reliability studies or even ownership studies, but people tend to lump them into the conversation because they do give out awards like the Best Buy Award or the Best Resale Award.

Those awards take into account to a certain extent reliability, but they're really evaluating overall ownership value and looking at resale numbers. This is good if resale value is important to you, but it's not necessarily going to predict whether your transmission is gonna make it to 200,000 miles. However, brands and specific models that have high resale value tend to be

because they are reliable, especially if they still have a high resale value after 10 years. That's why old high-mileage Toyotas still go for ridiculous amounts of money because people know that they will go 200, 300, sometimes 400,000 miles if cared for. So they hold their value. That can imply reliability.

Looking at all of these studies and taking into account Kelly's very thoughtful questions when we were trying to figure out what the right car is for her got me really thinking, i.e., overanalyzing what reliability really means... in trying to help Kelly make these decisions. Because reliability isn't just one thing. It includes the initial build quality, the long-term durability,

software stability, frequency of repairs, the cost of those repairs, recall history, owner satisfaction. Long-term reliability is becoming harder and harder to predict, not just due to all the fancy technology in cars today, but the speed at which that technology is changing and evolving. And that's why I've always said that reliability is graded on a curve.

It's not just as simple as engines and transmissions anymore. And vehicles earning today's long-term reliability reputation, those were engineered 10 years ago, and they have almost nothing to do with today's vehicles. And we just don't know how today's vehicles are going to age. We're talking about evaluating uncertainty. And it really can't be done.

But one thing that I specifically research when I am looking at how, quote, reliable a car might be, or at least identifying what problems one might expect from a car, because I think that's more realistic, because every car is going to have some level of problems. They're just too complex not to. But I look at things like recalls and technical service bulletins or TSBs and repair data, as well as just general

owner rants and complaints. There is some value in looking at that. Most people are familiar with recalls. Recall is issued when a manufacturer, or sometimes when forced by the federal government, determines that a safety defect exists or the vehicle doesn't comply with a federal safety standard. It can be anything from a

fire hazard, like the vehicle might spontaneously combust while you're driving down the road, to an airbag not deploying correctly, to a typo in a label somewhere on the car. So not every recall means you should avoid driving the vehicle. You have to read the details. And sometimes recall is actually a good sign. It means, hey, we found a problem and we are developing, or hopefully have already developed, a fix for it.

And that fix does not cost you any money, just your time to take it into the dealership and have that work done. But what I'm paying attention to is patterns. Is this recall an isolated issue? Or does this recall seem to have one issue after another, multiple recalls? So for example,

Spring of 2025 through March of 2026, Ford recalled more vehicles than the rest of the automotive industry combined. Does that mean I wouldn't ever buy a Ford? No.

But I would probably avoid those specific models after looking at the specific data of each recall. What really was the problem? If it is something as stupid as a label, granted, there's no excuse for a typo in a label, but if it's little things that aren't critical, then I might not worry as much. But it also means that, okay, where are your quality controls? If you're missing something like a typo in a label,

I'm gonna start not trusting your brand as much. Just for the information, on the flip side, here in 2026, Mercedes seems to have the fewest recalls, you know? I would kind of hope so, given the price point of those vehicles. Let's talk about technical service bulletins. I've talked about them a little bit before, but they're different and a lot of consumers have not heard of them because they're not widely shared with the general public. A technical service bulletin, or TSB as we like to call them,

is a communication from the manufacturer to their dealership service shops, to the technicians, and also to independent shops through various database subscriptions that says, Hey, if a customer comes in complaining about this problem, here's what we think is causing it and how to fix it. But as a consumer, yay, you still have to pay for that repair unless the car is still under warranty,

because it's not the level of a recall. It's not a safety thing, but hey, at least it's a known problem, and hopefully they actually know how to fix it. One TSB on a vehicle doesn't concern me. Every single manufacturer issues them on

every single vehicle. But if I start seeing multiple TSBs for that same vehicle, repeated bulletins for the same system, that's another clue I'm gonna pay attention to. That's a pattern and that's something that concerns me.

The reason that you search for these recalls and problems by VIN, if you can, is that the problem may not apply to every model, even within the same model year. It might be specific to certain trim levels because lower trim levels might not have the specific part that's causing the problems. That's common with technology. Or it could be tied to a specific bad batch of parts from a supplier or a manufacturing defect.

It's not uncommon to see these problems that are tied to a specific assembly plant and even a specific time. With the tariff wars of late, a lot of manufacturers are shuffling production of cars to different parts of the world. They're building new plants. And so there's going to be some quality problems associated with all that shuffling and training new people and getting their

Quality control processes, their assembly processes really nailed down in these new locations. It's very much like when a new restaurant opens in your area. It usually takes them a few weeks to work out some of the glitches and make sure that their processes are working and all their staff is properly trained.

So sometimes you have to pay attention to where and when a specific model was built to anticipate if there might be some problems.

Again, it's looking into the past. There are just so many factors that go into reliability. So I'm never looking at one smoking gun. I'm looking for clues. I'm investigating. I'm looking at the ratings and what ownerships tell me they're experiencing. I'm looking at those recalls and the TSBs. You gotta put it all together to start building a clearer picture of whether or not a vehicle will be reliable over time.

Now, what does this mean to you? We've talked about different sources of data, but what does it mean to you and your goals? This is where we go back to helping Kelly figure out what really is the right vehicle for her? What's the right vehicle for you? Because remember, her question wasn't what's the most reliable small SUV? Her question really was, how do I avoid getting burned again? And how do I know I'm gonna be able to trust this vehicle over time?

And unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect vehicle. They all have problems. If you're waiting for a car that's guaranteed to never have problems, you're never gonna get a car. So instead of asking which car never breaks, you have to ask yourself a different question. How much risk am I willing to accept? And what does that look like for my ownership experience?

Are you willing to put up with some quirks and glitches as long as they don't compromise your safety or create too much of an inconvenience in your life? Like if you have to constantly turn the car off and turn it on again to get the backup camera to start working again or to get your Bluetooth to reconnect?

That might be more than you're willing to put up with. Is the potential cost of repairs your biggest concern? And that might be offset by purchasing a good quality extended warranty. Is it more of I don't want to spend time at the dealership and you know be inconvenienced by those repairs? I don't really care about the cost. I just don't want my lifestyle to be disrupted in that way.

Do you even have a good dealership conveniently located to you that has a good customer experience and that can do a good job of diagnosing problems and fixing them?

And does the brand itself, does their reputation matter to you? Not only for making good cars like Toyota, but how they address and solve those problems?

Problems. Some manufacturers are really quick to acknowledge issues. Subaru is great about it. Toyota obviously. Hyundai is really good about that. They have to because they have a long warranty, so they want to address things quickly so it doesn't cost them a lot of money fixing issues under warranty. Are they quick to extend warranty coverage if there is a problem?

To me, it's the biggest factor of whether or not I trust a brand. How do they handle it when they have problems? Because they're gonna have problems. This is why Honda lost my trust for so long and they're slowly gaining it back. But instead of acknowledging they had a problem with their infotainment systems or with some of their engines, they just buried their head in the sand and hid behind their lawyers and said, Nope, not a problem here. Don't know what you're talking about. That really broke my trust. So,

you have to decide what's important to you. What's a priority in your life? Are you willing to put up with some quirks? Are you willing to put up with some high repair costs because you absolutely love the driving experience of that vehicle every day and it is just worth the hassle to you? Or do you just want to be like, I wanna get in my car every day and just know that's gonna get me where I'm going. And as long as I do the maintenance, it's not going to cause me a lot of problems. I can just trust that it's going to run.

This is why I still have my mother's 2003 Corolla. It's old, it's beat up, it's ugly, and it starts up and gets me where I need to go every single day and doesn't suck up too much gas. So, which compact SUV did my client Kelly decide on? Well, right now we are leaning very heavily towards the new Toyota RAV4. We just have to find one that meets her specs and the colors that she wants.

And mostly for her, it was just a blend of Toyota's reputation. And because she just didn't love the technology and the way it worked in the Subaru, otherwise she would have been perfectly comfortable with the Subaru as well. Could the Hyundai Tucson hybrid be a perfectly good vehicle for her? Yeah, it might. And they're great little cars, and Hyundai has come so far in the past decade with their quality. And they stand behind that warranty. I'm a huge fan of their vehicles, but Kelly wasn't looking for

pretty good, or maybe... she was looking for the highest level of confidence that I could realistically give her without said crystal ball, that she would still love and trust this vehicle 10, 15 years from now, and that she would potentially feel comfortable handing it down to her daughter when she starts driving a very, very long time from now.

Reliability isn't about finding a guarantee. That's the whole point of this episode. It's about reducing uncertainty as much as you realistically can in the modern world, and more importantly, knowing what you can live with and what you can't.

At least until someone invents a real crystal ball. Maybe they will. Well, thank you for listening, folks. If you want to know more about how I work with my clients to find that perfect car, you can check out my website, thecarchick.com. And until next time, drive safely. I'm out of here.