What Goes Into CR's Overall Score for Cars
The score factors in road-test performance, reliability and owner satisfaction from surveys, and safety
No single attribute makes a car truly great by itself. That’s why Consumer Reports empowers members by sharing findings from more than 50 evaluations and tests conducted on every vehicle we purchase, along with detailed insights from owners.
Photo: John Powers/Consumer Reports Photo: John Powers/Consumer Reports
Four Factors in the Overall Score
Every car we test gets a score that encapsulates four key factors: road test, reliability, owner satisfaction, and safety.
1. Our road-test program looks at how vehicles perform in the real world. The staff lives with these vehicles, day in and day out. Once cars accumulate 2,000 break-in miles, testing can begin. We run roughly 50 new cars and trucks each year through more than 50 tests at our 327-acre test facility in Colchester, Conn. Those tests include acceleration, braking, emergency handling, and fuel economy, among others. We also evaluate usability, fit and finish, noise, ride, and safety systems. For electric vehicles, we consider factors such as speed and ease of charging, and range.
2. We survey Consumer Reports members to predict the reliability of new cars. Every year, we collect detailed information on their experiences with hundreds of thousands of cars. The data is presented online from among 20 key trouble areas. (Learn more about how you can contribute to the CR Quarterly Questionnaire and help make cars better.)
3. Owner satisfaction is based on whether a Consumer Reports member would definitely get the same car if they had a chance to do it over again, effectively measuring whether a car lived up to its owner’s expectations. In our exclusive Auto Survey, owners also rate their cars for the driving experience, comfort, and value.
4. Safety influences the final weighted average by incorporating test performance from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, if it has been conducted, and the presence of critical active safety features as standard equipment. Points are added or deducted based on IIHS test results, including front crash prevention tests for pedestrians.
We award extra credit to vehicles that feature advanced safety systems proven to reduce crashes, injuries, and deaths when offered as standard equipment across all trim levels of a model, including automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning, and rear cross traffic warning. Likewise, we take points away from cars without those features and from models that have active driving assistance (adaptive cruise control with lane centering assistance) but lack an effective driver monitoring system.
The Overall Score is not static. As new data on testing, reliability, owner satisfaction, and safety become available, the scores will be updated on CR.org. That means members should always check the website for the most current assessment and to learn which cars are the best-driving, most reliable, most satisfying, and safest.
Photo: John Powers/Consumer Reports Photo: John Powers/Consumer Reports
The Overall Score is not static. As new testing, reliability, owner satisfaction, and safety data become available, the scores will be updated on CR.org. That means members should always check the website for the most current assessment of what makes the best-driving, most reliable, most satisfying, and safest cars.
See the latest CR car ratings.
