The Best Car Brand in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 9, 6:30AM EST

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Car companies anxiously wait for the J.D. Power U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study every year. The 2024 edition is out. One of America’s most iconic brands took the bottom spot.

The study looks at factors after cars are owned for three years. The metrics cover 184 possible problems across nine categories:

Climate
Driving assistance
Driving experience
Exterior
Features/controls/displays
Infotainment
Interior
Powertrain
Seats

The study mirrors the results of the J.D. Power Initial Quality, which polls people after they have owned a car for 90 days. Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power, commented: “This can likely be attributed to the tumultuous time during which these vehicles were built, and owners are keeping their vehicles for much longer.” (These are the car brands Americans dislike the most.)

The scores are reported based on problems per 100 vehicles (PP100). The average score across all brands was 190. One trend that has not changed over the past several years is that people find infotainment and driver assistance features overly complex and likely to develop problems.

The Best Car Brand in America

As has been the case for decades, Japanese models tend to do well, and this year they took the top two spots. Lexus (Toyota’s luxury brand) finished first with a 135 PP100. Toyota was second with 147.

The Lexus brand was launched in 1989 and was on the market at U.S. dealers that September. Its primary competitors at the time were Lincoln (the luxury division of Ford), Cadillac (the luxury division of GM), BMW, and Mercedes. Two other Japanese luxury car brands entered the U.S. car market at about the same time. These were Acura (a division of Honda) and Infiniti (Nissan).

The Lexus ES is the second best-selling luxury model in the United States after the Tesla Model 3.

According to J.D. Power, these are the five best car brands in America:

Lexus (135)
Toyota (147)
Buick (149)
Chevrolet (174)
Mini (174)

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.