This Car Brand Scores The Worst For Owner Satisfaction In Consumer Reports' Ranking

There's no getting away from it: Jeep today has a decidedly split personality. On the one hand, the brand remains a cultural icon, "a community, a club, an attitude and an outlook all rolled into one," according to USA Today. Jeep was also named the most patriotic brand in the country — for the 24th consecutive time — earlier this year. But there's a dark side to Jeep ownership for many people, including the editors at Consumer Reports. According to them, Jeep has among the lowest scores for owner satisfaction in the industry. What Consumer Reports says about Jeep reliability isn't all that positive either.

And all that's coming from the drivers themselves. After all, the CR numbers were based on the website's 2025 annual auto surveys. CR did ask respondents to take into account things like price, performance, reliability, and comfort, but the heart of the matter, per the website, came from a specific hypothetical situation: Knowing what they know now, what would folks do if they could go back in time to when they purchased their current cars?

Satisfied customers were those who would go ahead and buy the same car — for Jeep, that was only 51% of those surveyed, the lowest mark of any qualifying brand. However, it's worth mentioning that this year's 2025 CR survey did not have enough data to provide results for numerous brands, including  Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lucid, Maserati, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar, and Porsche.

Diving into the data, it turns out the Jeep brand also finished at the bottom of the barrel in another key category, road tests. It makes sense, since a bad driving experience alone can be enough for a vehicle to come out on the wrong side of CR's hypothetical question. Now, you may think the chief culprit here is the Jeep Wrangler, yet the brand's icon has a split personality of its own. Despite harsh words from CR for its on-road performance — and a noticeably low score for predicted reliability — the Wrangler's predicted owner-satisfaction grade was essentially on par with that of the Honda CR-V.

In fact, overall, this is a case where the sum of the parts (satisfaction scores for individual models) seems to add up to more than the whole (the brand's overall satisfaction grade). The Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer, and Gladiator all joined the Wrangler in bettering the overall predicted satisfaction performance of the Jeep division, with the Wagoneers having the same sort of predicted owner satisfaction scores as the Toyota Highlander, and the Gladiator trailing only the Honda Ridgeline for satisfaction in the midsize truck segment.

Bringing up the rear for Jeep satisfaction — among current vehicles fully tested by the website — was the Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe. The thing is, while owners didn't feel they got their money's worth for the Grand Cherokee's plug-in hybrid, and it's being recalled again for sand in its engine, it actually did pretty well in the satisfaction sub-categories of driving experience, comfort, and styling.

Rounding out the five brands with the worst CR owner-satisfaction grades were Mazda, Nissan, Audi, and Volkswagen (going from higher to lower scores). For Mazda, the main issue seemed to be the same as for Jeep: an inability to satisfy owners with plug-in hybrid technology. For instance, the Mazda CX-70 and CX-90 SUVs are available with both traditional gas engines and plug-in powertrains. With both nameplates, the pure-gas versions significantly outscored the PHEVs for value and overall satisfaction.

The Nissan lineup shows a slightly different approach to the problem. Yes, eight of the brand's vehicles earned CR recommendations, but many of those rides, including the Nissan Rogue, had only average results for predicted owner satisfaction. Enthusiasts may be interested to know that, even though the Nissan Z Nismo is finally getting a manual transmission, the Z trails the Chevrolet Corvette and Mazda MX-5 Miata for predicted owner satisfaction in its class –- it ties with the BMW Z4/Toyota Supra and comes out just ahead of the Porsche 718 Boxter.

Audi's owner satisfaction was dragged down by the brand's high costs for maintenance and repair, as well as poor value for cars like the A4 — the driving experience, comfort, and styling components of its satisfaction grade were about twice as high as its value component. Audi's corporate cousin, Volkswagen, stood out in a different way, finishing 25th on CR's satisfaction list, while clocking in much higher — at number 12 overall — among mainstream brands.