America’s Best Car Brand

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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America’s Best Car Brand

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Consumer Reports is out with its latest car brand ranking. The study is influential, widely read, and likely affects many car purchasing decisions. BMW was at the top of the 34 brands that Consumer Reports evaluated.

The results were based on a survey of Consumer Reports. Among those things evaluated was reliability, which was based on its tests. It also tests cars for customer satisfaction and safety. Another category is “green,” which is based on engine admissions. (This is the least dependable car brand in America.)

Brands could score between zero and 100. The firm divided brands into two categories: luxury and mainstream. BMW won the luxury category and had the best score among all brands at 82. Subaru was the top mainstream brand with a score of 80, which tied it with luxury brand Porsche. Jeep finished last with a score of 46.

The Best Car Brand

best car brand
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BMW 3 Series

BMW is among the top-selling luxury car brands in America. BMWs first graced American roads in the late 1950s. They started to sell well in the 1970s and 1980s. At that point, BMW and Mercedes began to challenge the sales leadership of American brands Lincoln and Cadillac. Today, cars from countries outside the United States dominate the luxury car market. Several brands from Japan have joined BMW and Mercedes, led in sales by Lexus, which is part of Toyota.

BMW is the primary brand of publicly traded Bayerische Motoren Werke. It sells 20 U.S. models, including sport utility vehicles, coupes, sedans, and convertibles. It has several electric vehicles and a high-performance division brand, the M series. BMW has several “low-priced” cars, including the 2-Series line, with a base price below $40,000. It also has several models that sell for over $150,000.

BMW has long been considered a gold standard of luxury cars. Consumer Reports has helped it uphold that image.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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