Buick posted 160 problems per 100 vehicles in J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, fewer than any other mass-market brand and enough to beat both Toyota and Subaru, neither of which cracked the mass-market top three. Only Lexus, the study’s overall leader at 151 problems per 100 vehicles, scored better than Buick across the entire industry. J.D. Power published the findings Feb. 12, 2026, drawing on owners who had lived with their vehicles for three years.
“As owners hold onto their vehicles longer, the long-term ownership experience matters more than ever,” said Jason Norton, J.D. Power’s director of auto benchmarking, describing why a study built entirely on three-year-old vehicles carries weight with buyers who no longer trade in every few years.
How Buick Reached 160 Problems Per 100 Vehicles
The score comes from a survey of 33,268 original owners of 2023 model-year vehicles, fielded between December 2024 and November 2025, three years after those buyers drove their cars home. J.D. Power’s Vehicle Dependability Study, now in its 37th year, tracks 184 distinct problem types across nine categories, from engine trouble to touchscreen glitches, and converts them into the “problems per 100 vehicles” score that lets a Buick be compared directly against a Toyota or a Porsche. A lower score means fewer owners reported something going wrong, so Buick’s 160 translates to roughly 1.6 reported problems for every owner surveyed, against 2.04 for the average new vehicle three years into ownership.
Buick’s 160 PP100 kept it ahead of MINI, at 168, and Chevrolet, at 178, the other two mass-market brands J.D. Power named to its top three. It marked Buick’s second consecutive year leading the mass-market segment, a run built on a lineup of three SUVs and a sedan rather than the wider portfolios most competitors field.
Where Toyota and Subaru Landed Instead
Toyota and Subaru, brands whose reputations for reliability have shaped car-buying decisions for decades, both finished better than the industry’s 204 PP100 average this year but outside the mass-market top three Buick, MINI and Chevrolet occupied. Reporting on the study notes plainly that shoppers “won’t see Subaru or Toyota listed in the Top 3” of the mass-market rankings this year, even as Toyota still claimed eight individual segment-model awards, including wins for the Corolla, Camry, Tacoma, Sienna and 4Runner, and Lexus took the study’s top overall model award with the IS sedan.
That split matters for how the results should be read: a brand can build genuinely dependable individual models and still miss the top of J.D. Power’s brand-wide ranking, because the overall score averages every model a manufacturer sells, including higher-volume vehicles that pull the brand average down. Buick’s smaller lineup gave it less room for a single weak model to drag its score, while Toyota and Subaru each sell far more nameplates, spanning trucks, hybrids and low-volume performance models, that all factor into one brand-wide number.
A Score That Ignores Sticker-Brand Reputations
Buick’s win runs against the informal reputation hierarchy many shoppers carry into a dealership, where Toyota and Subaru are treated as reliability shorthand and Buick rarely comes up in the conversation at all. J.D. Power’s premium-segment results show a similar pattern: Cadillac finished second at 175 PP100 and Porsche third at 182, both outscoring luxury nameplates more commonly associated with trouble-free ownership.
The shortfall does not reflect a single bad year for the industry leaders. Lexus has now topped the overall ranking for four consecutive years, and its 151 PP100 remains well clear of Buick’s 160, leaving Buick as close as any mass-market brand has come to challenging a luxury nameplate on long-term dependability in the study’s recent history. Buick achieved that standing with a lineup built around the Enclave, Envision and Encore GX SUVs plus one sedan, a narrower bet than Toyota or Subaru make across far larger model ranges.
The industry as a whole moved in the opposite direction from Buick. J.D. Power’s reporting on the full results puts the 204 PP100 industry average two points worse than the year before, meaning the average new vehicle generated more problems over three years even as Buick’s own score held near the top of the mass-market field.
Whether Buick extends the streak into next year’s study may hinge less on engines or brakes than on the software problems J.D. Power flagged as the industry’s single biggest complaint category, the same infotainment and connectivity issues now affecting mass-market and luxury brands alike, Buick included. J.D. Power has not said whether Buick’s own vehicles score better or worse than the industry on that specific measure, only that the category is dragging the broader average in the wrong direction even as brands like Buick hold their ground elsewhere.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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