There were some strong players, however, with Acura taking out second spot and Lexus ending up as the fifth most reliable brand. Filling out the top five was Honda at third spot and Toyota at fourth.
While Mercedes Benz has improved in reliability, none of its models scored above average and a third are still rated as below average. Audi continues to improve, with two-thirds of its lineup scoring average or better, while Volkswagen has several models rating average or better in our survey. However, the Passat sedan, Touareg SUV, and Eos convertible all rated poorly. BMW managed to show some progress, with most versions of the 3-series and some 5-series models scoring average or better. The 6-series improved to above average.
Porsche, on the other hand, dropped 10 spots this year, a surprising result for the Stuttgart manufacturer considering its strong performance last year.
The best showing from the Detroit 3 came from Ford, which managed to take out 11th place with its Lincoln brand. Ford is producing cars that are as good as many of its Japanese rivals, but its overall average rankings were hindered by poor results from its pickup and SUV models.
General Motors fared worse than Ford, with its highest placed brand, Buick, taking out 18th place in the list. Around 25% of GM's vehicles were given a below average rank for reliability. Chrysler came out the worst of the Detroit 3, with around two-thirds of its vehicles below average for reliability.
According to the survey, the least reliable car on the market today was the Chrysler Sebring Convertible, which experiences almost three times as many problems as the average vehicle. In comparison, the most reliable vehicle, Toyota's Scion xD small wagon, experiences around one-fifth of the problems of the average car.
The survey, which was run by Consumer Reports, is based on the responses of 1.4 million readers that have purchased a new car in the last three years and takes into account the number of problems owners have had with their vehicles.