Car Buying Advice
Step-by-step: Buying a used car
- Choosing a used car
- Avoiding a lemon
- Buying a used car
In this section
- Pros and cons of buying used
- What kind of car do you need?
- Used car reliability
Avoiding a lemon
Used car reliability
Consumer Reports provides the most comprehensive reliability information available to consumers. It's based on CR's annual surveys of our approximately six million magazine and Web site subscribers. These surveys ask about any serious problems they've had with their vehicles in the preceding 12 months. They generate hundreds of thousands of responses-the 2010 survey, for instance, provided information on 1.3 million vehicles-which give us a solid foundation for our reliability ratings.
For used-car buyers we give Ratings for 17 different trouble areas over 10 model years, so you can see a model's individual strengths and weaknesses. We also provide a Used Car Verdict for each model year that sums up its overall reliability. The verdicts are weighted to emphasize areas such as the engine, transmission, cooling system, and drive system, which can be more serious and expensive to repair. See our reliability histories for average problem rates on 2000-2010 models.
