Subaru Makes America’s Best Cars, Fiat at Bottom of List

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 31, 12:22AM EST · Published Feb 22, 6:25AM EST

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Subaru Makes America’s Best Cars, Fiat at Bottom of List — © Courtesy of Subaru

The Consumer Reports ranking of the best (and worst) car brands in America is among the gold standards of auto research. In its most recent annual study, the inexpensive, durable Subaru took first place. Fiat, which has had quality and sales problems for several years, finished last, tied with Jaguar.

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Consumer Reports says it examines four factors for its evaluation. Brands are then scored from 100 to 0. The factors:

First is a vehicle’s road-test score, which assesses performance in more than 50 CR evaluations. Next, we include the latest predicted reliability and owner satisfaction ratings from CR’s exclusive Auto Survey. And last, we consider the presence of key safety features and crash-test performance (when completed).

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Subaru, based in Japan, has another major distinction. All the other brands with high scores are in the luxury category. Just behind Subaru, which had a score of 81, are Genesis (80), which is the luxury division of Hyundai, Porsche (79), Audi (77) and Lexus (76), which is the luxury brand of Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM | TM Price Prediction). Also tied at 76 were Mazda, another Japanese company that makes inexpensive cars, and BMW.

Fiat’s problems continue to pile up, and it is a wonder that parent, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU), continues to sell the brand in America. The other major car research firm, J.D. Power, also gives Fiat low marks in most of its studies. Fiat only sold 26,482 cars last year, down 41% from 2017. The brand cannot be of much help to its dealers. Whatever Fiat Chrysler spends on development and marketing has to be a waste of its money. Fiat had a score of 44, the worst of 33 brands measured, tied with Jaguar. Also near the bottom, Fiat Chrysler’s Jeep posted a poor score of 50, which put it in 29th place. Its Alpha Romeo brand was 28th with a score of 53. Dodge, another of its brands, ranked 25th with a score of 58.

Surprisingly, several luxury brands that have some very expensive models in their lineups did very poorly. As mentioned, Jaguar was at the bottom along with Fiat. Land Rover, made by the same parent as Jaguar, posted a score of 48. General Motors Co.’s (NYSE: GM) Cadillac brand ranked 26th with a rating of 57. Cadillac’s management has attempted to build cars, crossovers and sport utility vehicles to take market share from BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Lexus. That attempt has failed.

Ironically, Subaru and Fiat both compete in the low-priced, high-gas-mileage portion of the U.S. car market. The quality of their cars could not be further apart.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.