Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus was once again the most reliable brand on the 2014 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study, with Buick coming in at a rather distant second place.
The annual J.D. Power study polled owners, asking them how many problems they experienced with their cars or trucks after a three-year period; this means that all the vehicles covered are from the 2011 model year. Nonetheless, Lexus was the only brand with less than 100 problems reported per 100 vehicles, with 89 problems cited by owners. Buick came in at second place with 110 problems, allowing the automaker to move up three places from the 2013 survey. The rest of the top ten featured Toyota (111), Cadillac (114), Honda (116), Porsche (116), Lincoln (118), Mercedes-Benz (119), Scion (121), and Chevrolet (123).
As seen above, American and Japanese brands were quite prominent in the top ten, as Porsche and Mercedes were the only European automakers listed above. Ram also made some big improvements, as did Mitsubishi and Scion. As for the bottom three, SUV makers took two of those three spots – Jeep (197) and Land Rover (258) were third- and second-to-last respectively in J.D. Power’s study. Fiat (273) had the ignominious honor of finishing dead last.
As for individual cars, Toyota and General Motors again proved to be manufacturers of some reliable cars and trucks. List-toppers included the Lexus ES and GX, the Toyota Corolla and Sienna, and the Scion xD, xB, and tC among vehicles under Toyota’s umbrella, while GM’s big guns included the Buick LaCrosse, the Chevy Malibu, Camaro and Silverado HD, and the GMC Terrain, Sierra LD, and Yukon.
Common problems were largely related to infotainment features such as Bluetooth and voice recognition, and it was also revealed that tech was a major selling point for consumers more so than it was on previous surveys. 15 percent of owners said they would not buy a vehicle if it didn’t feature high-end, contemporary technology, up from 4 percent on the previous year’s survey.