English: Car Brand Quality in 2010 by the Average of Overall Reliability Ratings

To compute brand quality ratings and assemble a brand quality ranking using Consumer Reports' overall reliability ratings, a number is associated with each rating. A +1.0 is ascribed to a rating of Much Better Than Average, a +0.5 to a rating of Better Than Average, a 0 to a rating of Average, a -0.5 to a rating of Worse Than Average, and a -1.0 to a rating of Much Worse Than Average. Then an average is taken over all of the brand's model years and models offering an overall reliability rating. CR's 2010 overall reliability ratings are found in the Used-Car-Verdicts row of its reliability charts.

For this measure of quality, the range is from +1.0 (the best possible) to -1.0 (the worst possible).

The quality ranking of the car brands by the foregoing computations, together with their quality ratings, is given in the bar graph above. Only those brands with at least 5 overall CR reliability ratings are included.

Important Point: If the Toyota-engineered Pontiac Vibe is deleted from the Pontiac's reliability computations, the Pontiac brand would appear among the 10 worst brands, just below the Chevrolet brand.

For a Google Knol that summarizes the changes in car brand and manufacturer ranking by this quality measure from 1990 to 2010, visit http://knol.google.com/k/james-bleeker/automobile-quality-by-car-brand-and/3o3u27f0whd6k/2?hd=ns# .