How reliable are Nissans? This is what Consumer Reports says – Jalopnik

Every year, different car manufacturers go to the battle with each other in the Consumer Reports (CR) Reliability survey. The study offers data about which car brands build the most and least reliable new models that you can buy. The findings are based on surveys from the owner, in which thousands of subscribers are asked to share their experiences with their vehicles in the past 12 months. Creats the cars in 20 problem areas, including motorcycle problems, transmission errors and interior problems.

This year’s study included more than 300,000 vehicles with model years from 2000 to the beginning of 2025. According to the results of the survey, Nissan was in 12th place of the 22 manufacturers, making it the lowest ranked Japanese brand in the study. Other Japanese car manufacturers dominated the top 10, where Subaru was the first to enter the ranking, followed by Lexus, Toyota, Honda, Acura and Mazda, in that order. If you have kept Nissan, you know that the matte performance is par for the course compared to other Japanese brands.

In many circles, Nissans are not considered as reliable as vehicles from other mainstream Japanese car brands. Indeed, the Yokohama-based automaker is often criticized because of its difficult continuous variable transmissions (CVTs) and continuous problems with the smart but problematic VC-Turbo engine with variable compression. Both the 2.0-liter four-cylinder VC-Turbo and 1.5-liter three-cylinder versions of the engine have undergone intense control. Nearly 450,000 Nissans and Infinitis were recently recalled and the subject of a Class Action rights shop became due to problems with variable compression.

Nissan used to be the highest rated car brands for reliability. It will therefore be as little surprise that many consider older, used Nissans of higher quality than newer ones. CR’s list of the most reliable brands for used carberariesNissan places those vehicles between 5 and 10 years old in eighth place. That is four places higher than the 12th place it has achieved in the new car rankings.

The study rated used vehicles with model years between 2015 and 2020, including Nissan models such as the Altima, Leaf, Rogue, Rogue Sport, Frontier, Murano, Pathfinder and Sentra. Interestingly, some of these Nissan vehicles have experienced problems because they were equipped with CVTs delivered by Jatco that caused major problems, which led to recall actions and lawsuits for several years. Some of these vehicles had such serious problems that they made our list of cars that you would never recommend anyone who buys.

These defective transmissions can cause various symptoms, including problems such as shudders or vibrations, strange noises and severe overheating, so that the vehicle enters the weak mode. Although these problems were fairly common, not every person who has a Jatco CVT-Uitste Nissan confronted with them, which can explain the top 10 placement of the brand here.