Detailed reliability.(automoible survey)

The charts on the following pages give you a model's complete reliability picture for both its used versions (1998 through 2005) and the new one currently on sale. These detailed reliability Ratings are based on our 2005 Annual Car Reliability Survey, for which we received responses for just over 1 million vehicles.

If the reliability charts on these pages were a car, we'd say that they underwent a major redesign for 2006. They don't look much different from previous years (that's intentional), but they have been completely revised to make them easier to use.

Previously, to get an accurate assessment of how well a model held up in each of the individual trouble spots, compared with other vehicles of the same age, you needed to compare the Ratings in its chart with those of an "average model" chart, usually on a different page. That is because the trouble-spot Ratings were calculated on an absolute scale; the problem rate dictated the Rating regardless of how it compared with other models.

That's why some Ratings that appeared to be good, such as a [B] for a newer car, could have been below average when compared with the average model. Similarly, a [C] rating on an older car might not look impressive, but it could have been notably better than the average model.

Our new relative method of calculation factors the average problem rate into the Ratings, so you get an accurate assessment within a single chart. It also brings the trouble-spot Ratings in line with the Used Car Verdicts, which have always been calculated on a relative scale.

The Annual Car Reliability Survey is sent to subscribers of Consumer Reports and ConsumerReports.org. In the 2005 survey, respondents reported on any serious problems they had with their vehicles in any of the trouble spots included in the chart below during the previous year (April 1, 2004, through March 31, 2005) that they considered serious because of cost, failure, safety, or downtime. Because high-mileage vehicles tend to have more problems than low-mileage ones, problem rates are standardized to minimize differences related to mileage. The 2005 models were generally less than six months old at the time of the survey and had been driven an average of about 3,000 miles.

How to use the charts