America’s Best Car Brands

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 12, 9:15AM EST

24/7 Wall St. Key Points

Subaru and BMW perform the best out of 31 brands in Consumer Reports ratings.
BMW is a top luxury brand in the United States based on sales and has a broad model lineup.
If you're focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income. That is exactly what The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income was created to solve, and it's free today. Read more here

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

America’s Best Car Brands — © Keikona / iStock via Getty Images

There are two car awards that auto manufacturers want to win and don’t want to lose. The first is a series from J.D. Power. The other is the annual Consumer Reports Overall Score auto brand ratings from the famous testing organization. The Consumer Reports rating is based on the magazine’s road tests, safety assessments, reliability, and owner satisfaction surveys. The total number of tests each brand goes through is just above 50.

These reports are so important because many car buyers use the results to make purchase decisions.

The Consumer Reports Overall Score rating includes 31 brands. Each receives a rank with a numerical score. At the top is Subaru with an overall score of 82. After a few considerations in subcategory scores, BWM finished a close second with a score of 82.

BMW is at or near the top luxury brands in the United States based on sales. BMW sold 371,346 vehicles last year. Lexus sold 345,669, and Mercedes sold 324,528. No other luxury car brand was close in unit sales.

BMW has one advantage over some other car companies. It has a very broad model line based on price, type, and fuel. Its lineup includes SUVs, sedans, coupes, convertibles, and tour cars. It also has an ultra-performance set of models known as the M Series. In total, BMW has over 50 models.

BMW’s range of prices is huge. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of the 228 Gran Coupe is $39,600. At the higher end, the X6 M Coupe SUV has an MSRP of $134,600.

For decades, BMW has been considered one of the leading sports car brands in the U.S. It appears it will stay in that place for a long time.

Snow-Ready Rides: The Best Winter Vehicles

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.