Only two years ago, Ford was Detroit’s poster child for reliability. It cracked the top 10 among brands in our predicted--reliability scores, with more than 90 percent of its models being average or better. Since then, a perfect storm of reliability problems has dropped Ford to next to last among the 28 brands in our survey. And Lincoln, Ford’s luxury brand, placed just a notch higher.

Toyota, on the other hand, excelled in our latest ratings. Its three brands—Scion, Toyota, and Lexus—swept the top spots. They were followed by four other Japanese makes: Mazda, Subaru, Honda, and Acura. All of the models produced by the top seven brands had average or better reliability. And of the 90 Japanese models reflected in our brand comparison, 86 were average or better, with 35 earning the highest rating.