I do. I recently had the kitchen renovated. The fridge, oven, dishwasher, and microwave are all the models that did well in CR testing and/or were high on reliability ratings. When it comes to things that I’m not particularly interested in or knowledgeable about, I usually go with what CR recommends. For the most part they’ve done well by me. I still have an old Emerson TV from 1990-ish that still works, though it’s not good for much these days, and I’ve had the same toaster for the past 15 years. As for cars, it’s rare that a car that they deem to be exceptional, also happens to be a car that I actually want.
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Your own individual experiences and mine play a very small part in the overall picture of car reliability. And I surmise that you and I and a lot of the regulars here pay more attention to our cars than the average car owner does, detect and address small issues before they get big, and do much of the maintenance and repairs on our own, so we’re spending less than the average car owner does.
When Consumer Reports crunches data on 640,000 vehicles in the Annual Reliability Survey, your vehicles and mine are a drop in a big bucket.
… and we have to assume that he is still the major drug abuser that he was for almost all of his adult life, despite that lovely '59 Cadillac, and despite his posthumous receipt of an essentially worthless medal.
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My vehicles have never been even a drop. Year after year I’d get my survey and file it in the round file with the hearing aid and life insurance mailings. 
I guess I can only blame myself for the survey results that made no sense to me, year after year.
GIGO (or not in) 
CSA
It is sad when we see how many of those celebrities that seemingly “have it all,” apparently don’t and turn to drug/alcohol abuse.
CSA
…and it is even sadder when we celebrate their well-known, very long history of drug abuse with a medal.
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I heard about the medal, but my first thought wasn’t drug abuse. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that’s not what we’re celebrating.
Certainly this man, who proudly served our nation in the military without ducking his obligation is very worthy of a medal for his fantastic contribution to the music world.
Surely, you don’t want to condemn the entire lives of people who have become drug dependent for reasons I would never assume to comprehend. I am fortunate to be one of few people with no friends or relatives who have fallen to them.
CSA
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I do, too, but it’s because both of my cars are too old for their survey! Not only my cars, but all the other consumer goods they ask about most years!
I’m pleased to see so much interest in Reliability now. I teach courses in Reliability Engineering and maintenance. The students vary all over the map, but nearly all are car-smart.
Reliability is the aggregate figure of incidence-free operation over a certain number of hours. In industry with machinery operating all the time we take 1 million hours as a reference.
The figures published are the result of many companies reporting failures on a certain type of equipment, say a pump. There will of course be some reports of NO failure over 1 million hours and also several failures over that same period. That is what statistical analysis is all about. A high quality API centrifugal pump would have an average failure rate of 4 per million hours, that is one for every 259,000 hours or 10417 days or 28.5 years.
In practice, the pump will WEAR OUT long before that time, and typically gets changed out just before it starts showing excessive wear or vibration. Equipment monitoring is the key here. The lowest maintenance cost is achieved by replacing equipment just before it becomes failure prone.
Depending on the duty your car is exposed to, you might get 500,000 miles out of a mediocre car with only minor replacements. .
So, some of you have gotten good service out of a car with a poor rating for reliability, but your operating style and environment will have played a role.
There is a Toyota Celica from the 80s running around town here with nearly 2 million miles on it and still has the original engine. This car was used in Nevada on courier service delivering documents. A very easy service in a dry climate. The original white paint is a still in good shape.
As mentioned Consumer Reports tabulates the results from a very large number of readers, some of which will have very poor driving habits and live in a difficult environment.
A friend works for a car rental company and they quickly got rid off their Fiat 500s due to very frequent transmission failures.
“Given an appropriate sample, the more data you have, the more statistical confidence you have in your information. A larger sample will always give more accurate information than a smaller sample (assuming, of course, that the data are valid and collected from an appropriate source).”
“A typical model has about 200 to 400 samples for each model year.”
“When we have small sample sizes on vehicles, we use brand history and the reliability of similar models that may share major components. This gives us the ability to predict reliability of brand new vehicles or ones that have been recently redesigned.”
Uh, huh! That explains why the reliability ratings have never matched my real life experiences while subscribing for decades.
CSA
Have you ever done any parts replacement or repairs (or had them done) beyond the maintenance items recommended by the maker of any of your cars? How disruptive was it? How costly?
Let’s say you or I notice a water pump is leaking. We probably notice it before the average car owner would. We’d be less likely to ignore it. We’d probably buy the parts and replace the water pump on a Saturday when it was convenient. The leaking water pump would not be a big memorable or expensive event for us.
I recall the service schedule for a BMW back in the 80s and somewhere before 100,000 miles the head and pan were to be removed the top end de-carboned and the valve train inspected replacing parts as needed, likewise the crankshaft and bearings were to be inspected and replaced as needed and if needed the crankshaft was to be removed and polished. Who would ever need an overhaul with scheduled maintenance like that.
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@Rod_Knox. I can imagine a Chevrolet of the 1930s needing this kind of service. My dad bought a new Chevrolet in 1939. In 1946, he had the engine overhauled at 70,000 miles which the Chevrolet dealer thought quite remarkable for an engine to go that many miles without the head and pan never off the engine. My dad had a 1954 Buick that he bought with 24,000 miles on the odometer from a friend. I bought the car from him in 1963. I sold the car in 1965 with 160,000 miles on.the odometer and the heads and pan had never been off the engine. It used no oil and was still on.the streets two years later. For a BMW in the 1980s to require the maintenance you describe would have steered me to another make even if I had had the money to buy one
@shanonia. I once owned a 1965 Rambler Classic 550. The car was reliable. However, in 1969 I decided to go to graduate school. There was no Rambler dealer in that University town. For parts unique to the Rambler, the parts had to be shipped from a town 55 miles away. A more common Ford or Chevrolet would have served me better.
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Yeah, it worked
I wonder what @UsedEconobox_2_UsedBMW would have to say about it . . .
the only surprises were the rankings of VW and Acura 
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See, when we bought new appliances, I didn’t care what CR said, but went to the local appliance store. Took his advice on which models he liked and were good performers. Plus I wanted US products even though LG is usually listed in CR. But none of them are made the way they used to be and will not last like the ones from 30 years ago. Part of it is the mandatory energy saving aspects of the motors and so on. Ask the repairman.
I don’t want to get flagged again by stereotyping but it is a pretty well established fact that those in the movie business and bands are more prone to drug use. Part of it I suppose is the strain of the schedules. Still I don’t judge any of the Hollyweed crowd or entertainers on anything except their performances, and not their personal lives. Their opinions mean no more than that of a convenience store clerk. Elvis was a great entertainer with a great voice but that’s it and deserved recognition for that.
From my experience that above chart is not very valid. No way I would be paying $19,000 in maintenance on any of my Acuras, or $24,000 on my Pontiac. That would be twice what I paid for it. Compared to $10,000 for Scion maintenance? How would it be that a Scion would need half the maintenance than an Acura? Beats me?
About CR and high miles; that does not help me much. Someone putting easy miles on the fwy in some rural area is going to get many more miles than I am in LA traffic.
Also, when CR says a certain model was more reliable, we are talking about odds of breakdown. So, you can still get lucky with an “unreliable” car. Someone else somewhere is probably suffering from the same car.
I bought a MIstu Galant in 2000; it was a 96 with 100K miles, the transmission was shot. I put a used tranny and drove the thing to 180K miles without a whole lot of repairs. It was burning a lot of oil at the end but I believe some kid who was working for the shipping company I used, had raced the car (long story). This car was not so “reliable” for its first owner but worked for me. Now I changed the ATF regularly, not sure if that helped or not.
OK, maybe i was a little negative on CR. If it works for you great, but it doesn’t for me. Again I’m not sure how they get their information but if it is from the experiences from the general public, I don’t trust that at all. Mountains made out of mole hills, didn’t like the staff, price, coffee, and so on. I just don’t trust the general public to be unbiased in their reporting. If testing in their lab, I dunno, I can see testing features and ease of use and so on, but testing reliability of circuit boards and components from unknown and maybe changing suppliers? I just trust the local guys more where you can talk to them eye ball to eye ball and their business depends on it.
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True on general public being relatively clueless on cars. If you asked my wife which car was the best you would probably buy the worst car we had (she just liked the minivan, she wasn’t doing any of the work or even paying for it). Also have coworkers who would say their car is very reliable, then to find out they did major repairs at relatively low miles. Plenty of examples. But the way you reduce the effect of this is collecting a lot of data.
One thing Toyota has for it is selling a lot of Corolla, Camry and RAV4’s. If there were crappy, the word would get out fast. Can not say the same about Dodge Journey or Mazda CX-9. Low volume sellers.
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