Japanese brands dominate list of top cars in U.S.

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | March 2, 2006 | Dee-Ann Durbin (A.P.)

[Graybeard58]

DETROIT -- For the first time in nine years, all of the top picks in Consumer Reports' annual vehicle guide are made by Japanese automakers.

The Honda Civic is the magazine's top small sedan, while the Toyota Highlander Hybrid is the top mid-sized sport utility vehicle, according to results released Wednesday. Vehicles from Nissan Motor Co. and Subaru, a division of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., round out the top picks in 10 categories.

Asian brands also fared best in the magazine's survey of vehicle reliability. Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus brand was first, while Honda was second and the Toyota brand was third. Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury brand was the only domestic nameplate to crack the top 10.

Consumer Reports' rankings are important to automakers, even though companies can't use the ratings in their advertising. Consumer Reports spokeswoman Lauren Hackett said the April auto issue is consistently the magazine's most popular, selling more than 300,000 copies at newsstands. That's twice as many copies as its second-most popular issue, the November electronics issue.

Consumer Reports named its top picks based on road and track tests, evaluations of comfort, convenience and fuel economy, crash protection ratings from the government and insurance industry and readers' reliability rankings. The magazine said it recently tested more than 200 vehicles to come up with its top picks.

Honda had the most winners, snagging top picks in five of the 10 categories. Besides the redesigned Civic, the Honda Accord was the top family sedan between $20,000 and $30,000 and the Acura TL was the top upscale sedan between $30,000 and $40,000. The Honda Odyssey was the top minivan and the Honda Ridgeline, which is Honda's first entry in the pickup market, was the top pickup.

Toyota and Subaru each had two winners, including the Subaru Forester for small SUV and the Toyota Prius for "green car." Nissan had one, the M35 luxury sedan, which the magazine called "an excellent balance of performance, comfort and handling."

Reliability rankings are based on a survey of Consumer Reports subscribers who are asked if they have had serious problems with their vehicles in the past 12 months. The survey questions readers about 17 different trouble spots. For this year's survey, readers rated their experience with 810,000 vehicles from the 1998 through 2005 model years.

Consumer Reports said Japanese and Korean brands had 12 problems per 100 vehicles, while U.S. automakers had 18 problems and European makers had 21 problems. Asian and U.S. automakers have been improving their scores but appeared to stall in 2005, the magazine said. European automakers' ratings haven't changed substantially in the last four years, the magazine said.

After Lexus, Honda and Toyota, the brands rounding out the top ten for reliability were Mitsubishi, Subaru, Acura, Scion, Mercury, Mazda and Suzuki. The ten lowest-rated brands were Audi, Infiniti, Saturn, Lincoln, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Land Rover, Hummer and Porsche.

[Thorin]

Consumer Reports is staffed by America-hating traitors who have always acted as shills for the Japanese.

[SZonian]

47.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

I'm going to out myself as a CR subsciber but it's mainly so I can get the product recalls, and misc. household appliance ratings.

So far, CR hasn't sold me down the river on the appliances. Their auto issues aren't a bad place to start for general info., but I don't use their ratings exclusively to determine which car to buy.

That would be DU like.

Cheers!

[SZonian]

oops ...subsciber should be subscriber, but I think you all get the point.

Not that I'm a leftist, tree hugging, Japanese shill.;-)

Cheers!

[When do we get liberated?]

No
Intelligent
Service
Station
Accepts
Nissans

Cracked
Head
Every
Valve
Rattles
Oil
Leaks
Every
Time

Something
An
A$$hat would
Buy

Poor
Old
Negro
Thinks
It's
A
Cadillac

Anybody have any others?

[When do we get liberated?]

Nowhere near as reliable as my 1970 Opel GT. Not a single breakdown in the 5 years it has been in my garage!

[Wonder Warthog]

"I changed the original water pump in my 1987 Toyota Van Wagon at 340,000 miles."

Well, that "radiator problem at 100K" was a while back. I dunno if it'll make 340K, but I'm pretty sure 200K is possible.

BUT--my next vehicle is likely to be a Toyota--given their proven superior track record of reliability.

[staytrue]

I bought a 2002 GMC Envoy and it's a piece of crap.

What I really don't like about the envoy is that I think front visibility is low for an SUV.

[riverdawg]

"Consumer Reports is staffed by ... traitors who have always acted as shills for the Japanese."

In the 1980's, Consumer Reports was very slow to jump on the Japanese bandwagon. Maybe now they are equally slow to acknowledge a narrowing gap between the quality of Japanese and U.S. nameplates. (I won't repeat the obvious fact, highlighted in other posts, that the once-bright line delineating the "origins" of U.S. and Japanese autos has been almost completely obliterated - hence the word "nameplates.")

My first Japanese-built car was a 1980 Honda Accord sedan. The U.S.-built alternatives at the time included the GM X-cars and the Ford Fairmont ...

[mozarky2]

Fella I work with has always had nothing but Audis-has a vanity plate that says HAUDI-only in Arkansas-LOL!

[mozarky2]

Ditto on the Ford Ranger-the parts falling off of mine are of the finest American quality!

[usafsk]

Good point. Drives like a wet mud brick as well. Not much to like about it at all. I don't have any use for GM or Ford at this point. Cars start out as depreciating assets, the worst kind. If I can't rely on it to last well after it's depreciated 50%, I just don't want to buy it.

[staytrue]

Drives like a wet mud brick as well.

I test drove one. I really wanted to like this suv (gmc envoy) because I read it had an engine that rocks. I bought an underpowered buick rendezvous instead. The vous handles very well, it is pretty agile, you can see great out the front, but it accelerates like a turtle. Still the vision and quickness has let me avoid probably a dozen accidents in the last 4 years.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

This report is a bunch of crap because it is well known that consumer reports is notoriously bigoted against the big three.

How so? Consumer Reports doesn't accept any advertising or freebies. They are totally objective.

[Collier]

Consumer's Union and Consumer Reports are two different magazines.

[Collier]

Thanks for the heads up.

Is it too late to buy it now. We bought the Odyssey a couple of months ago.

[Collier]

I paid $16,000 for my 2000 Mazda 626.

I love it.

[Collier]

I agree. We would have bought one if they did.

We wanted a minivan instead of an SUV. Nicer ride.

[xzins]

Mazda is a Ford.

[SuziQ]

It is not patriotic to support inefficient, poorly run US auto companies when the Japanese companies will soon employ more Americans than they do. Capital should reward value and quality, not complacency and laziness.

AMEN!!

[ecomcon]

I spoke to the bias at the magazine, not to how or to whom the cars should be marketed.