Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Associated Press
DETROIT
Toyota continues its winning streak atop Consumer Reports’ annual reliability rankings.
The company’s Toyota and Lexus brands top the survey, while its Scion brand is in the top ten. It’s the eighth year in a row that a Toyota brand has led the rankings.
“Toyota has a strategy that emphasizes reliability over excitement,” says Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ head of auto testing. “They take a conservative approach to redesign and roll out new features slowly. The risk is they may not have the latest bells and whistles, but the reward is world-class reliability.”
Also Monday, Toyota released sales numbers that showed it is on track to be the world’s top-selling automaker this year. Toyota beat out General Motors and Volkswagen in sales for the first nine months.
Japanese brands generally fared well in Consumer Reports’ survey, which predicts the reliability of 2015 model year cars and trucks based on a survey of subscribers who own 1.1 million vehicles from current or previous model years.
Mazda, Honda and Subaru joined Toyota in the top 10. Audi was the highest scoring non-Japanese brand, while Buick was the only domestic brand in the top 10.
Ford’s luxury Lincoln brand moved up 12 spots in the survey, the most of any brand, after fixing bugs in its touch-screen dashboard.
Hyundai gained eight spots, mostly because it had few new vehicles.