‘Consumer Reports’ gives love to Tesla,
Performance, safety played big in survey. Reliability? Not so much.
Sure, Consumer Reports magazine is known for its annual survey that asks car owners about reliability. But do owners actually like their cars?
That’s the question the magazine tries to answer in its January issue. It looked at what owners thought of their cars, 230,000 from the last three model years. It’s a survey aiming to rate which cars are considered most satisfying.
The favorite of all of them was the Tesla Model S, already top rated by Consumer Reports. Some 97% of its owners say they would buy the luxury electric car again, based on its performance and the low costs of ownership — electricity from their own garages or using Tesla’s free Supercharger network.
It ranked 40th, however, when it came to satisfaction on long trips.
Next came another car that has a passionate owner base, the Chevrolet Corvette, and three Porsches — Macan, 911 and Cayman. Consumer Reports notes that the Tesla, Corvette and Macan had worse-than-average reliability scores, yet are still loved by their owners.
As for the cars that owners disliked the most, it’s a rogues gallery of cheapo economy cars, models late in their life cycles or those being discontinued.
The least satisfying car is the Kia Rio, an entry-level subcompact, although Consumer Reports says the finding is based on only a single year of ownership, not three years like the rest of the pack. It is followed by the Nissan Sentra, an economy compact, and the Jeep Compass and Patriot, which are being discontinued.
Of the top 10, Nissan and Fiat Chrysler each has four.
The magazine says fuel economy and safety features played heavily into how much owners like their cars. “Poor fuel economy can be a crushing blow,” the magazine writes, with it showing up in every one of the 10 least-satisfying models. And it noted how Subaru owners loved the optional EyeSight safety system on their cars.