There’s no way around it: Jeep has a distinctly split personality these days. On the one hand, the brand remains a cultural icon, “a community, a club, an attitude and a vision in one,” according to USA today. Earlier this year, Jeep was also named the country’s most patriotic brand for the 24th time in a row. But for many people, including Jeep editors, there is a dark side to Jeep ownership Consumer Reports. According to them, Jeep has among the lowest owner satisfaction scores in the industry. What Consumer Reports says about Jeep’s reliability isn’t all that positive either.
And it all comes from the drivers themselves. After all, the CR figures were based on the website’s annual car surveys for 2025. CR did ask respondents to consider things like price, performance, reliability and comfort, but the crux of the matter, according to the website, came from a specific hypothetical situation: Knowing what they know now, what would people do if they could go back in time to when they bought their current car?
Satisfied customers were those who would buy the same car; for Jeep, it was just 51% of respondents, the lowest figure of any eligible brand. However, it’s worth noting that this year’s 2025 CR survey did not include enough data to provide results for numerous brands, including Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lucid, Maserati, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar and Porsche.
What’s causing Jeep’s poor CR satisfaction ratings?
Looking through the data, it appears that the Jeep brand also finished at the bottom of the list in another important category: road testing. That makes sense, since a bad driving experience alone could be enough to land a car on the wrong side of CR’s hypothetical question. Now you might think that the main culprit here is the Jeep Wrangler, but the brand’s icon still has a split personality. Despite harsh words from CR about its on-road performance – and a noticeably low predicted reliability score – the Wrangler’s predicted owner satisfaction was essentially on par with the Honda CR-V.
In fact, overall, this is a case where the sum of the parts (satisfaction scores for individual models) adds up to more than the whole (the brand’s overall satisfaction score). The Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer and Gladiator all joined the Wrangler in improving the Jeep division’s overall predicted satisfaction performance, with the Wagoneers having the same kind of predicted owner satisfaction scores as the Toyota Highlander, and the Gladiator trailing only the Honda Ridgeline in satisfaction in the midsize truck segment.
As for Jeep satisfaction – one of the current vehicles fully tested by the website – was the Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe. The point is that while owners didn’t feel like they got their money’s worth for the Grand Cherokee’s plug-in hybrid, and it’s being recalled again due to sand in the engine, it actually did quite well in the driving experience, comfort and styling subcategories.
Other brands with poor owner satisfaction
Rounding out the five brands with the worst CR owner satisfaction ratings were Mazda, Nissan, Audi and Volkswagen (from higher to lower scores). For Mazda, the main problem seemed to be the same as for Jeep: the inability to satisfy owners with plug-in hybrid technology. For example, 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 scored significantly better than the PHEVs in terms of value and overall satisfaction.
The Nissan range shows a slightly different approach to the problem. Yes, eight of the brand’s vehicles received CR recommendations, but many of those drives, including the Nissan Rogue, had only average results in terms of predicted owner satisfaction. Enthusiasts may be interested to know that even though the Nissan Z Nismo finally gets a manual transmission, the Z trails the Chevrolet Corvette and Mazda MX-5 Miata in predicted owner satisfaction in its class – tying the BMW Z4/Toyota Supra and coming in just ahead of the Porsche 718 Boxter.
Audi owner satisfaction was depressed by the brand’s high costs for maintenance and repairs, as well as the poor value of cars like the A4 – the driving experience, comfort and styling components of the satisfaction rating were about twice as high as the value component. Audi’s corporate cousin, Volkswagen, stood out in another way, finishing 25th on CR’s satisfaction list, while finishing much higher (at No. 12 overall) among mainstream brands.
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