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Oct 28, 2009 - Dust Collectors

From freep.com

The trusted magazine Consumer Reports heaped praise Tuesday on Ford Motor Co., which continues to gain momentum in the face of the global recession.

"Ford is the only domestic automaker that's producing vehicles with world-class reliability," Rik Paul, Consumer Reports' automotive editor, said. He was in Detroit to announce the magazine's 2009 Annual Car Reliability Survey.

Collectively, Detroit's vehicles ranked closely to European-made models. But Asian automakers were the top performers, with 94% of their models ranked average or better.

While 90% of Ford's models were ranked as above average or better, just 44% of GM's and 4% of those made by Chrysler were similarly ranked.

The magazine recommended 24 Ford and 8 GM models. Chrysler, which had no recommended vehicles last year, has just one, the Dodge Ram 1500 pickup, on the recommended list this year.

"They really need to do a major overhaul," Jake Fisher, senior automotive engineer for Consumer Reports, said of Chrysler.

World-class reliabilty could mean anything, but when you only score 44% or 4% on anything that's being handed out, especially when others in the class are getting 90%, it's going to be hard to twist that into an ad slogan.

3:10 am | Categories: automotive news Permalink | Alert Administrator

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