New Report: The Most and Least Reliable Cars for 2020

Reliability is perhaps a car’s most valuable asset. Before you drive off the car lot with a vehicle, you should have the confidence that it can stay out of the repair shop and on the road. So what are the most and least reliable cars for 2020?

Consumer Reports’ latest car reliability guide shows which vehicles should hold up best through the coming years based on problems owners reported with various models in the past. The survey includes data on 420,000 vehicles from model years 2000 to 2019 (and a small sampling from 2020).

2020 Model Year Vehicles You Should and Shouldn’t Rely On

Car shoppers looking at 2020 model year vehicles can use this report to gauge how likely a visit to the mechanic will be for a particular car.

To arrive at the results, Consumer Reports studied 17 vehicle “trouble areas” — things like issues with four-wheel drive systems, squeaky brakes and engine problems — to come up with an overall score that factored in the following:

• Safety data
• Owner satisfaction surveys
• Track testing
• Predicted Reliability Score

To make it easy, we’ve listed the rank, make and model along with the Reliability Score (0 to 100-point scale) for each vehicle.

Let’s get into the cars that Consumer Reports says are the most reliable:

Here Are the 10 Most Reliable Cars for 2020

As you probably know, reliability also matters when it comes to resale value. So, you’ll want to keep that in mind as you consider the vehicles listed.

Now, we’ll look at the cars Consumer Reports says are the least reliable. The results don’t necessarily mean that these are bad vehicles, just that they’re more likely to end up in the shop at some point.

Here Are the 10 Least Reliable Cars for 2020

Money expert Clark Howard also has some sage advice when it comes to buying vehicles that are reliable.

“It used to be that vehicles turned into pumpkins at 100,000 miles,” he says. “Nobody wanted them. They were considered trouble-prone…but the Great Recession taught us otherwise.”

In other words, when finances forced people to squeeze as many miles as they could out of a car we learned the real value of vehicles that could be driven for years and years with minimal repair costs.

Want to know more about how to purchase a vehicle? Here are Clark’s guide to buying a new car and Clark’s guide to buying a used car.

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