On the Consumer Reports survey, respondents are asked to self-report the perceived severity of a failure along with the amount of time they were left without th

On the Consumer Reports survey, respondents are asked to self-report the perceived severity of a failure along with the amount of time they were left without the car. I'm not sure about the algorithm used to turn these inputs into the simplistic CR circle-ratings, but I suspect that safety and total-inoperability issues are weighted heavily. Regardless of how the results are compiled, it's obvious that cars which already have a perfect score are susceptible to "fall off" due to moderate annoyances.