File:1975 to 2010 Automobile-Manufacturer Quality Ranks by Overall Reliability for Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation and Chrysler Group.png

English: Line Chart of the Motor-Vehicle Quality Ranks of Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, and the Chrysler Group, by Overall Reliability, in Years 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010

Ranking automobile manufacturers by overall reliability provides a measure of how well each manufacturer's models performed over the entire model-quality spectrum.

This ranking by quality uses the reliability-charts section of the April issues of Consumer Reports, and its formation involves several steps.

To compute car-maker quality ratings and compute a quality rank using Consumer Reports' overall reliability ratings, a number is first associated with each of CR's overall ratings. 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 manufacturer's model years and models offering an overall reliability rating. Lastly, the automobile manufacturers with at least 5 overall reliability ratings are ordered from best to worst for each of the years 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 2000, 2005, and 2010. The best manufacturer in a given year has a quality rank of 1. The worst quality rank varies from year to year and ranges from 13 to 19.

As Consumer Reports did not offer an overall reliability rating in its 1995 reliability charts, a simple average of the manufacturer's reliability percentrank averages for model years 1988 to 1994 was taken. The manufacturer reliability percentrank averages for these model years may be found at http://CarsOnInfo.net/1988to1998CarReliabilityPercentrankAveragesOfTheMajorCarManufacturers.aspx . Then, as above, the companies are ordered from best to worst. The best manufacturer in a given year has a quality rank of 1.

Automobile manufacturers with a rank in at least one year include American Motors Corporation, BMW AG, the Chrysler Group (previously Chrysler Corporation, the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler AG, and Chrysler LLC, and presently Chrysler Group LLC), Ford Motor Company, Fiat S.p.A., General Motors Corporation, Honda Motor Company, International Harvester Company, Isuzu Motors Ltd., Jaguar, Kia Motors Corporation, Mazda Motor Corporation, Daimler AG (previously Daimler-Benz AG and the Mercedes-Benz division of DaimlerChrysler AG), Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Porsche AG, Saab, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., Suzuki Motor Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation, Volkswagen AG, and Volvo.

For several of the above years, Saab was a division of General Motors Corporation; however, for all of the above years, it has been treated as a separate company.

General Motors Corporation encompasses its now bankrupt predecessor, renamed in GM's 2009 bankruptcy proceeding as Motors Liquidation Company.

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# .

For a Google Knol that summarizes car manufacturer product quality from 1975 to 2010, visit "Car Quality from 1975 to 2010 - A History of U.S. Automobile Manufacturer Quality Ranks" at http://knol.google.com/k/james-bleeker/car-quality-from-1975-to-2010-a-history/3o3u27f0whd6k/9# .