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Within this article you see compiled reviews on how reliability is viewed for many all the cars brand with the highs and lows distinguished. Consumer Reports, who is active in almost every industry, does a very complete look at the car industry for the past years models. I would wonder how “reliability” is measured. Is it in terms of repairs or maintenance needed? Or is it a personal feeling of how dependable the car is? If the rating is an opinion, I think the overall brand image before/during/after the purchase has a lot to do with how the car is measured. The article does mention part of the rating comes from readers “reported problems” with the cars, but that seems pretty vague.

How important is this rating?
Reliability is an obvious point in the car buying decision, but how much would this type of ranking sway you? I would say that a very high reliability rating would help me get over the indecision I had about a car purchase but not necessarily convince me to start looking at a car I was not in the first place. Then again, a low rating in reliability would raise a lot of red flags and would make it very difficult for me to convince myself to buy that car and take that chance. So I guess how car manufacturers may look at this type of rating is being content with being average or better, or a big wakeup call that this car is not looking good to the public.

Why a company makes a turnaround?
Unfortunately I sometimes think that a company (whether it be cars or anything else) may try and get away with cutting corners and losing quality in an effort to cut costs. And this may have been happening before when car companies could sell anything they wanted because of the name on the car and the brand they have built. But post-recession I think the car companies that got burned with these efforts have accepted their mistakes and now focus more on quality. The article talks about how Chrysler was able to move Jeep up to 13th overall, making it the highest ranked Detroit made car. But then again, Ford dropped ten spots to number 20 with its poor reviews given recently by their owners. Companies make mistakes just like the rest of us, but it’s up to them to respond with a better effort or give up and move aside.