Top Car Brands 2025: Japanese Dominate, Tesla Advances

The traditional evaluation of the reliability of car brands has once again confirmed that Japanese ones are the best in the long term. In the year-on-year comparison, the shift of Tesla is interesting, the American Rivian, which focuses mainly on electric cars, finished at the tail again.

The American non-profit consumer organization Consumer Reports has been publishing a regular overview of the most reliable car brands for a given year since 2000. It collects data from its members, i.e. real users, and based on it compiles a consumer ranking, which in the case of plug-in hybrids takes into account up to 20 problem areas, from squeaky brakes to engines, transmissions or traction batteries.

For internal combustion engines, the organization monitors 17 areas, for electric cars it is only twelve. On the contrary, in the case of classic hybrids, there are 19 of them.

Real-world experience has shown for several years that, for example, classic hybrid drives are in most cases at least as reliable as classic gasoline and diesel engines, although there are of course exceptions. After all, you can read about it in last year’s overview. You can find a link to it a few lines above.

Just like last year, we can find manufacturers from Japan on the first three rungs. If Subaru won last year, Toyota will take the gold medal this year. Of the European brands, only BMW (5th place) made it into the top ten, for which this means a year-on-year improvement of three positions. Tesla also improved, finishing seventeenth in 2024 with a score of 36. This year it is in a decent 9th place with 50 points, with higher being better.

In its case, the shift is mainly due to the reliability of mass models 3 and Y, which became the most reliable electric cars in the overview.

Compared to last year’s ranking, Mazda fell from a split 5th to 6th place to 14th position, with the decline mainly due to the new generation SUVs CX-70 and CX-90, especially their plug-in hybrid variants with a higher number of problems with engines, transmissions and electrical components.

Martin Vaculík examined the three-cylinder Toyota Corolla after 200,000 km • Source: auto.cz

The rating includes approximately 380,000 cars from model years 2000 to 2025. A small portion also includes the latest cars from this year, which in the United States, where Consumer Reports takes its data, indicate as a 2026 model year.

Source: Consumer Reports and Motor1, photo and video: auto.c