Chrysler, GMC, Jeep, Ram and Rivian hold the bottom five places in Consumer Reports’ latest annual brand reliability ranking, and every one of them is a domestic nameplate. Lexus, Subaru and Toyota sit at the top of the same list. The ranking rests on owner surveys covering about 380,000 vehicles and was last updated on December 4, 2025.
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The five brands at the bottom of the list
In the words of Consumer Reports’ reliability page, “The five lowest-scoring brands are domestic automakers: Chrysler, GMC, Jeep, Ram, and Rivian.” The page singles out Rivian, noting that both of its models land well below average. Scores run on a scale of 1 to 100, and the gap between regions is wide: brands based in Asia average 56, European brands average 50, and domestic brands average 41. By body style, cars average 58, SUVs and minivans tie at 46, and pickups come in at 44.
At the other end, Lexus, Subaru and Toyota are again at the top, with Honda and BMW rounding out the first five. Buick is the highest-ranked domestic brand, in eighth place.
How owner complaints become a 1-to-100 score
The raw material is a member survey. According to Consumer Reports‘ own reliability FAQ, respondents report serious problems from the previous 12 months across up to 20 trouble spots, counting issues that involved cost, failure, safety or downtime. Warranty-covered problems count, while accident damage and recall-only issues do not. Surveys have been online-only since 2015, a typical model year draws roughly 200 to 300 responses, and mileage is standardized so that older cars are not unfairly penalized against newer ones. The organization also concedes that its members tend to be more educated and more affluent than the general population.
Experts then weight each trouble area by severity and cost, so a failed transmission pulls a score down far more than a rattling trim panel. Brand scores average model years 2023 through 2025 plus some early 2026 data, and a brand needs at least two models from at least two model years to be ranked at all. Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lucid, Maserati, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar and Porsche were left out for lack of data.
Why Jeep and Rivian keep landing near the floor
Newness is a recurring theme. Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ senior director of auto testing, said in the group’s 2026 brand report card that “the best bet is to steer clear of newly-introduced or newly-redesigned vehicles in their initial model year.” The survey page makes the same point, observing that new and redesigned models tend to score lower in their first and second years. Rivian, with only two models in the survey, has little history to dilute early problems, and a single troublesome model drags the whole brand score. Established nameplates can spread a bad year across a dozen models; a startup cannot. Consumer Reports also stresses that these are predictions rather than guarantees for any individual vehicle, so a low brand score raises the odds of trouble without settling the outcome.
Jeep faces a second problem on top of reliability. In that separate report card, which blends road tests, reliability, owner satisfaction and safety, Jeep ranked last for the third year in a row, with the lowest owner-satisfaction score in the group’s data. Sales figures suggest that shoppers are noticing: Autoblog reported that Jeep sold 128,542 vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, down 20% from a year earlier, and that Ram outsold Jeep for the first time in a quarter.
Model-by-model swings inside brand averages
A brand score is an average, and averages move when single models move. Tesla climbed eight spots to ninth, the biggest improvement in the ranking, as owners reported fewer body, paint and trim problems. Mazda fell eight spots, mainly because of the CX-70 and CX-90. Hybrids generally fared better than fully electric and plug-in vehicles, a pattern that cuts across brand lines. Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y are the most reliable electric vehicles in the survey, with the Model Y rated above average, while the Cybertruck is rated below average. Even inside one brand, then, the spread between a best and worst model can be larger than the spread between neighboring brands.
The clearest domestic counterexample comes from the same family of Consumer Reports work. When the group published its 10 Top Picks of 2026 on February 3, 2026, it named the Ford F-150 its full-sized pickup choice and said improved reliability earned the truck its place. Ford is a domestic brand, and a domestic average of 41 did not stop one of its trucks from clearing the bar. A model can improve even while its badge sits in the lower half of the brand table.
Shoppers weighing any of the five bottom brands therefore have a practical next step, and Consumer Reports keeps model-level pages such as the F-150 listing: look up the specific model and model year rather than the badge. A 15-point gap between Asian and domestic averages describes the typical vehicle, not every vehicle.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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