Consumer Reports 5 Most Reliable Vehicles For 2016 Are Mostly Niche Models You Won't Buy

Buick grabbed much of the limelight when Consumer Reports released its 2016 reliability survey results yesterday, earning the best-ever brand ranking of any domestic marque. But atop the leaderboard, Lexus and its Toyota parent brand continued the automaker’s reign.

Not surprisingly, three of the five most reliable vehicles in America are therefore Lexus and Toyota products. With the Lexus GS and Toyota 4Runner, the top 10 list is half-filled with Toyota products. Only one vehicle in the top ten is a domestic, the eighth-ranked Chevrolet Cruze.

They may be reliable, but do Americans actually want these vehicles? We took a look at the five least reliable vehicles in America and realized that, yes, in some cases, Americans do want them. In fact, the vehicles on the least reliable list account for 2.7 percent of the U.S. new vehicle market.

When it comes to the five most reliable vehicles in Consumer Reports’ survey, less than 1 percent of the market’s buying habits are represented.

LEXUS GX

U.S. sales of the extremely reliable GX460 are on track to fall below 24,000 units in 2016, the second-best year of the last decade but well off the pace from 2004, when more than 35,000 were sold.

AUDI Q3

Through three-quarters of 2016, the Audi Q3 has already produced more sales volume than in all of 2015. But in the nascent and still rather small subcompact luxury crossover category, the BMW X1 and Mercedes-Benz GLA both sell more often than the Q3, America’s 68th-best-selling utility vehicle.

INFINITI Q70

Infiniti sold more than 25,000 copies of the M, the Q70’s predeccessor, a decade ago. Reliability is not remotely enough to stir up demand for the six-year-old Q70 now.

LEXUS CT

With few changes, Lexus has sold the CT200h since 2011. Related to the now replaced third-gen Prius, the CT200h is likely to generate fewer than 10,000 U.S. sales in 2016, down from an average of nearly 16,000 over the previous half-decade.

The CT may be the most reliable Lexus, but it only accounts for 3 percent of the Lexus brand’s U.S. volume.

TOYOTA PRIUS

Yet with fuel prices low and far more competitors than the Prius faced even five years ago, sales of the new Prius are falling fast. Year-over-year, sales of the Prius are down 9 percent to 78,372 units through 2016’s first nine months. That puts the Prius on pace for slightly more than 100,000 sales in 2016, enough to be one of America’s 20 best-selling cars but still the lowest-volume year for the core member of the Prius family since 2004.

Including the C and V, total Prius family sales are on track to fall to a five-year low.

[Images: Toyota, Infiniti, Audi]

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.