These Are The Least Popular Car Brands In America According To Consumer Reports

Dissatisfied customers don't hold back when writing anonymous reviews on the Internet. However, Consumer Reports goes a little farther than simply averaging ratings from angry reviewers. It conducts owner satisfaction surveys based on overall comfort, driving enjoyment, cabin storage, usability, and ownership cost. The company then releases the results in a list of the most and least popular brands. Not every brand gets to be ranked. CR needs enough data on at least two models from a brand in order to include it.

The 2025 list features 27 brands. It was topped by luxury names like Lexus, Porsche, and BMW. Tesla also made the top, coming in third, while Rivian got the top spot overall. Most of those top brands also earned spots in Consumer Reports' list of most satisfying cars to own in 2024. Which brands scored the worst? Those would be Chrysler, Nissan, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and, at the very bottom, Jeep. All of these brands scored just 2 out of 5 when it came to customer satisfaction. Surprisingly, there's not a lot of crossover here with CR's list of least reliable vehicles.

We do like reading individual customer reviews, however, especially the angry ones. So, we compared CR's results with reviews from sites like Edmunds, Kelly Blue Book (KBB), and Consumer Affairs. For the most part, these reviews jibe with what Consumer Reports found. It turns out customers don't enjoy bringing their vehicles back to the dealership over and over again for repairs and would prefer it if the manufacturer pays for those repairs, especially if the car is under warranty. Who knew?

Ah, Chrysler, how far you've fallen. It wasn't so long ago that this venerable automaker had a varied lineup of standout models, like the 300 luxury sedan, the uniquely-shaped PT Cruiser hatchback, the Sebring convertible, and the three-row Town & Country SUV. Now, the brand's lineup consists of the Voyager minivan and the Pacifica minivan, which is really the Voyager, but with more features. Despite its tiny roster of vehicles, Chrysler insists it's still a car company.

For a company that gets to concentrate on making one vehicle, Chrysler didn't do so well on CR's list of most and least loved car brands. It took the 23^rd spot out of 27 brands for owner satisfaction. CR notes that the Pacifica "lags behind other minivans" when it comes to road tests and reliability scores. It's not as if the minivan category, Chrysler's current specialty, is crowded with competitors. You had one job, Chrysler!

To be fair, the Pacifica itself gets generally positive reviews with KBB and Edmunds, with average ratings of 4 out 5 stars or higher on both sites. However, over at Consumer Affairs, reviews for the brand overall, including older models, are pretty miserable. The automaker gets an average 1.2 out of 5 stars on that site.

One review on the Consumer Affairs site says, "I expected much better service and support, but all I've received is frustration and poor service. Chrysler clearly doesn't care about their customers once the sale is made. I would not recommend purchasing from them, not even to my worst enemy. Buyer beware!"

Nissan is somewhat of an outlier among automakers from Japan. It's not Toyota or Honda by any stretch, especially when it comes to reliability. In fact, the brand's sales were so poor last year that we said Nissan is screwed. CR's rankings back that up, too, as both Toyota and Honda claim spots significantly higher on the list, while Nissan comes in 24^th place out of 27 brands. CR states that Nissan vehicles come with low overall scores  "because of up-and-down reliability and average to below-average owner satisfaction." Even though Nissan's vehicles usually perform well on CR road tests, the brand still lags behind many competitors and ranks just 22^nd out of 32 road-tested brands.

That up-and-down quality is pretty evident in the customer reviews on other websites. The Frontier gets decent ratings on Edmunds, while most of the reviews for the Altima on the KBB site carry 5 stars. That said, the reviews for the brand overall on Consumer Affairs were not as kind. A whopping 783 out of 946 reviews (as of this writing) gave the brand just 1 star.

Many of those reviewers complain about customer service at Nissan's dealerships. You can spot a similar theme in reviews for Nissan over at Trustpilot, where consumers gave the brand got an average score of 2.3 out of 5 stars.

The reputation of German engineering precedes itself. Apparently, someone forgot to tell Volkswagen. The brand came in 25^th place out of 27 brands when it comes to popularity. It also ranked just 18^th out of 22 brands for new car predicted reliability. CR has mostly good things to say about the Volkswagen, though, praising its "well-built, agile, fun-to-drive cars," but concedes that the brand's "downsides include unintuitive controls and infotainment systems, and below-average reliability for new cars." In fact, there's some speculation that VW's unintuitive controls could be causing a rise in EV crashes.

Over at Consumer Affairs, a 1-star reviewer remarked, "Don't buy a VW especially a Taos. I have owned 6 VWs in the past and will never buy another." We'd like to say that these kinds of reviews are outliers, but out of 560 reviews on Consumer Affairs for Volkswagen models, 480 of them come with an abysmal 1-star rating.

Apparently, Mercedes-Benz is another brand not living up to German engineering's reputation. It ranked 26^th out of 27 brands on the list, with its lowest rankings being in the categories of owner satisfaction and maintenance and repair cost. It ranked toward the middle in the luxury brand, road tests, and used car reliability categories. CR acknowledged the "industry-leading comfort and technology" that Mercedes offers, but went on to say, "The cost of that experience is an expensive base price with expensive options and below-average reliability."

To be fair, we're not sure that the staff at CR agree with many of the Mercedes owners they surveyed. The rest of the write-up for this brand consists mostly of praise. The same paragraph states, "Generally, Mercedes-Benz fit and finish, inside and out, is exceptional and helps justify prices."

But the customer reviews for the brand at Consumer Affairs haven't been so complimentary. One owner shares this horror story, "My 2017 AMG GT Mercedes Benz dash board leather quality is horrible, now the leather is bubbling. I brought back to the Mercedes dealer but no help, they instructed me to call Mercedes Corp and I called but no help. Horrible brand and service."

Jeep is at the very bottom of CR's list, and, honestly, we're not surprised. Consumer Reports found that only 51% of Jeep owners say they would buy another Jeep. We have to say that sounds high to us, but we're not the ones taking surveys. Out of the 27 brands ranked for this list, Jeep took the 27^th place for owner satisfaction. It didn't do great in other rankings, either, coming in 25^th out of 26 brands for used car reliability. CR concludes, "The Jeep Wrangler has poor fuel economy, wind noise, an uncomfortable interior, and reliability scores near the bottom of Consumer Reports' rankings."

Not only is Jeep at the bottom of this popularity list, but it didn't do too well in CR's road tests, either. Out of 32 brands ranked by CR, Jeep, again, ranked dead last at 32^nd.

Reviewers over at Consumer Affairs agree. One Jeep Cherokee owner said, "My overall experience with Jeep has been horrible. Worse auto brand ever."

We should note that each of these brands, even Jeep, has its supporters and at least a handful of positive reviews. However, you might want to do a little extra research if you're thinking about buying one of these brands' vehicles.