Consumer Reports publishes their 2016 rankings on the Best Car Brand and found that BMW comes in fifth place. The way these rankings are put together is not at all what you’d expect. Consumer Reports says they take into account the road-test score they record while testing more than one product of each brand and the predicted reliability score. As you’re probably guessing, both of these scores can be as subjective as they wish them to be, the result of their number crunching methods therefore should surprise anyone.
According to them, Audi is the best car brand in the U.S. this year, posting an overall score of 80 points, with 83 points on the chart for the road-test and a decent predicted reliability. Mind you, the predicted reliability isn’t even a number, but a shape. Coming in second is Subaru that somehow managed to squeeze in between premium brands with an overall score of 78 points. Third is Lexus with 76 points tied with Porsche and BMW comes in fifth.
Interestingly enough, to make things even blurrier, BMW seemingly scored better in the Consumer Reports road tests than Porsche. What’s even more surprising is that Mercedes-Benz came in 14th, below MINI, with a score of 67 points. The full rankings can be seen in the image above.
