Consumer Reports: Ford, GM climb in reliability

The Ford Fusion is the most reliable family sedan sold in America, General Motors continues to move up in the reliability rankings and Chrysler Group LLC is showing signs of life.

Those are among the results of Consumer Reports' annual car reliability survey, released Tuesday at an Automotive Press Association luncheon in Detroit.

While Motor City carmakers showed continued improvement, Asian carmakers remain the reliability powerhouses.

Toyota Motor Corp., despite recalling millions of vehicles in the past year, and Honda Motor Co. dominated the top of this year's survey. Toyota and Honda each led in five categories.

Europeans lagged behind other carmakers in general with poor quality. Three European luxury brands, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, scored among the worst this year.

Dearborn-based Ford was the only U.S. automaker with top scores, in two categories: family sedan (Fusion) and large SUV (Flex with EcoBoost). GM improved the most among the domestic companies.

Helping propel GM upward was a slew of new products, such as the Chevrolet Camaro, Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac SRX, Consumer Reports officials said.

"Typically, the first year of a new vehicle is when it scores the worst on reliability so this is very good news for General Motors," said David Champion, senior director of Consumer Reports Auto Test Center. "It's easier to keep a vehicle reliable if it was engineered to be reliable from the start."