English: 2000 Car Brand Quality 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 Better Than Average, a 0 to a rating of Average, and a -1.0 to a rating of Worse Than Average. (In 2000, Consumer Reports employed only three overall-rating grades - Better Than Average, Average, and 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 2000 overall reliability ratings are found in the Reliability-Verdict row of its reliability charts.

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

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

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# .