Lexus, Mercury, Cadillac top reliability survey

By MSN Money staff and wire reports

Lexus once again stands alone atop a closely watched list of vehicle dependability after Buick slipped from the No. 1 spot it shared with the Japanese luxury brand last year, J.D. Power and Associates said Thursday.

It's the 14th straight year Toyota's high-end brand has held the highest ranking in the annual study, which measures problems experienced by the original owners of vehicles after three years. Lexus had 120 problems per 100 vehicles, down from 145 last year.

"That's a pretty good track record," said Dave Sargent, J.D. Power's vice president of automotive research. "They benefited to some degree ... where a couple of their very important models in their second year on the market -- the ES and the RX, which together account for over two-thirds of Lexus sales -- both improved significantly."

Ford's Mercury brand ranked second, followed by General Motors' Cadillac. Toyota was fourth, and Honda's Acura luxury brand was fifth. All of Ford's domestic brands were above the industry average.

Land Rover, which Ford sold this year to India's Tata Motors, was the worst-performing brand, with 344 problems. And some surprising slips came from Honda, Subaru and Toyota's Scion brand.

The industry average improved to 206 problems per 100 vehicles, from 216 a year ago.

Saab improves most

Buick, owned by GM, fell to sixth place in this year's study with 163 problems, although its now-discontinued Buick Century was the top-ranked vehicle in the midsize car segment.

"The lower score is largely due to vehicles that are no longer in the marketplace," Sargent said. "The vehicles are still out there, so the study is still relevant. But obviously they had some problems."

GM's Saab brand was the most improved in this year's study, improving to 254 problems from 319. More than 60% of the 38 brands in the study improved from last year.

The No. 1 problem cited in the study, based on responses from more than 52,000 original owners of 2005 model-year vehicles, was wind noise, followed by noisy brakes, pulling to the left or right, dashboard issues and window fogging. The study weights all problems equally.

Vehicle dependability has been steadily improving across the industry overall, Sargent said. Since the 2005 study, the industry average has improved from 237 problems per 100 vehicles to 206 this year. That equates to slightly more than two problems per vehicle.

Continued: See the most dependable cars in each class

Problems per 100 vehicles
Make	2008 study	2007	Make	2008 study	2007
Lexus	120	145	Pontiac	225	220
Mercury	151	168	GMC	226	222
Cadillac	155	162	Mazda	228	289
Toyota	159	178	Subaru	228	192
Acura	160	207	Chrysler	229	249
Buick	163	145	Dodge	230	236
BMW	164	182	MINI	233	247
Lincoln	165	182	Chevrolet	239	226
Honda	177	169	HUMMER	241	242
Jaguar	178	197	Scion	243	220
Porsche	193	252	Volvo	244	230
Mitsubishi	197	228	Saturn	250	274
Hyundai	200	228	Jeep	253	219
Ford	204	221	Volkswagen	253	298
Infiniti	204	215	SAAB	254	319
Industry average	206	216	Isuzu	274	322
Audi	207	234	Kia	278	288
Mercedes-Benz	215	212	Suzuki	302	324
Nissan	224	274	Land Rover	344	398

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