Rating the carmakers
Hyundai made real strides in the past year
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The best vehicles overall are being built by Honda and Subaru, according to our latest automaker report cards (available to subscribers). But South Korean carmaker Hyundai, which includes Kia, has shown the most dramatic improvement, jumping to fourth place from ninth last year.
Like the top Japanese leaders, Hyundai/Kia makes mostly well-rounded cars that excel in many areas, getting high scores in our road tests and at least average reliability Ratings (available to subscribers).
Our report cards (available to subscribers) reflect the performance, comfort, utility, and reliability of more than 280 vehicles that we've recently tested. Here are some other highlights from our analysis:
- The field was very competitive; the top 10 automakers were within 12 points of one another.
- Among American manufacturers, only Ford improved over last year. It scored one point better to pass Mitsubishi for 11th place in our rankings. By contrast, Chrysler is again in last place and dropped two points since last year. And General Motors placed right where it did last year—second from the bottom—even though it eliminated half its brands and about one-third of its models.
- European reliability has improved. Most models from Mercedes-Benz now have at least average reliability; two years ago, no Mercedes rated average or above. Volkswagen also has average reliability overall.
- Toyota placed third in our rankings, recent recalls notwithstanding. It achieved above-average reliability, according to our Annual Auto Survey, but its average road-test score tied for eighth with Hyundai.
Our report cards (available to subscribers) grade the performance, fuel economy, comfort, and reliability of all the vehicles we've recently tested, provided we had sufficient reliability data and tested at least four vehicles of each brand.
The final report-card grades (available to subscribers) are based on an average composite of road-test and predicted-reliability scores from each automotive manufacturer. We also note the percentage of each automaker's vehicles we've evaluated that earn our recommendation by performing well in our battery of more than 50 tests, having at least average reliability and adequate performance in crash tests, if tested.
