Your comment is an interesting, you've correctly identified the phenomenon at play but misattributed. > The new car market is chock full of feedback loops that

Your comment is an interesting, you've correctly identified the phenomenon at play but misattributed. > The new car market is chock full of feedback loops that make perception more important than strict "by the numbers" reality. I can only assume you put "by the numbers" in quotes because you're referring to something other than actual numbers and statistics. When you look at something like the Consumer Reports Reliability Index for the last 30 years you will find the 3 most unreliable brands are the big 3 US automakers. If you look at CR's used cars to avoid list, guess who dominates? The same 3. Most people don't have access to CR but there are plenty of sites that make their info available. This one is a little dated but it does a good job showing historical data: http://autooninfo.net/ http://autooninfo.net/