Consumer Reports has been testing new cars and writing about them since the 1930s. They also became semi-famous for their dot charts showing the repair incidence of used cars with data supplied by their subscribers, numbering about 100,000 in the 1960s. This was really revolutionary because prior to this, the average car buyer had no “impartial” source of information about new and used cars. In this multi-part series, we’ll be looking at some of the highlights of the last 60 years of owner surveys.
This page is from the May 1960 issue. All American makes fit on one page! 1954-1959 is an interesting range–it covers a few independents before they became “badge-engineered” versions of other cars. In the early dot system, a blank square = much better than average; a shaded circle = average; and a dark circle = much worse than average. A few observations:
–The worst car [in terms of reliability] is the 1958 Mercury. 1957 Buicks and 1958 Lincolns are also bad. The best car is the 1958 Rambler. A 1955 Oldsmobile is also good.
–Chrysler makes the best engines. However, Plymouth engines (built by the same corporation), are among the worst.
–Despite claims that poor Packard quality in 1955 hurt their 1956 sales, it seems that the ’55 Packards were about average, and ’56s were rather exemplary, except for transmissions (which is quite an exception, but still).
–Studebakers were remarkably trouble free [Surprise!] Ditto 1957 Nash and Hudson [Another surprise!]
It’s 1963 now, and we can see how cars of the ’50s have aged over time. The most reliable used car now is . . . a 1957 Chevy with a six. Cadillacs are also relatively free of troubles, although Cadillac and Chevrolet quality is starting to slip as the ’60s progress. ’57 Buicks are still bad, but Buick quality is actually improving.
1960 was the first year of the Big Three compacts. The Corvair is off to a bad start. So is the all-new Slant Six used in 1960 Valiant, Plymouth, and Dodge. (I thought that engine had a “bulletproof” reputation!) The 1960 Comet has the best record.
The worst car is now the 1959 Studebaker Lark with a six (9 black marks). Even the dreaded 1958 Mercurys and Lincolns are holding up better than that by this time. Meanwhile, 1958-59 Ramblers (Consumer Reports’ darling) are now developing serious engine troubles (valves, piston rings, engine bearings). And 1957-58 Plymouths are rapidly disintegrating, and are about as poor reliability-wise as the Stude.
1964 may be the first year that CR included foreign cars as well. Volkswagens are great (except for the engines???)
So that’s the story of cars manufactured during that fascinating slice of time, 1954-63. Some were good, some were bad; but even the bad ones had their charms and were loved, and some of the good ones let their owners down at some point. Cars are a lot like people that way.
After all is said and done, I am left with these questions:
–Do good or bad ratings of cars made 40-70 years ago have any relevance to owners today? Will I have less trouble with a 1955 Oldsmobile than a 1958 Mercury? Both cars would have long outlived their intended lifespans, and all their worn or broken parts will have to be replaced or may have already been replaced. Anything that old will require a lot of attention, no matter what.
Yes, there’s a story behind each of those dots–a real-life story of disappointment, anguish, of getting stranded, of something breaking at the worst possible time; arguments with the dealer, used car salesmen, mechanics, spouses–the added expense, finding the right parts, getting those parts installed correctly, the tarnished reputation of car brands, and on and on.
And finally, is there some way all of this trouble could have been avoided? Whose fault is it?
Coming soon, Part II: Consumer Reports rates used cars of the 1960s.
Note to self: don’t buy a ’58 Mercury…
Apparently the ’59-60 Studebaker Lark was a much more reliable car if you ordered the V8, rusting less, having fewer body creaks, less carb problems, and a much more dependable transmission. Stude V8s are magical!
Also notable how the categories were different back then, with things like valves, piston rings, bearings, and camshafts broken out into separate items. By the time I started reading CR these had been combined into “engine”. OTOH, they didn’t think to rank HVAC (which some cars barely had) or infotainment systems (an AM radio).
As an admirer of the 1958 Mercury, now I understand why there aren’t more around. Sad.
Similar to the case with the Studebaker Lark, the Chevy V8 was less likely to rust than its six-cylinder counterpart.
While I don’t always agree with Consumer Reports, I respect what they pioneered in the realms of product testing and reliability surveys. But sometimes results like these leave me scratching my head, unless perhaps V8 owners take better care of their more-expensive cars.
“1958 Rambler: Reliable, solid–but not cool.” Sounds like a modern day Camry.
It’s interesting that back in those days reliability did not translate into sales.
exemption is vw
The VW data actually helps make the point, as VWs were pretty unreliable by CR’s metrics.
Having to tear into the engine every 5000 miles couldn’t help. Nor could the tendency to seize in traffic. It’s a good thing the VW engine was easy to replace…you needed to.
Having driven two Beetles past 100k on their original engines that had no real mechanical issues, I would beg to differ. And my brother’s ’66 went well past 100k too; only needed to pull the engine for a new clutch at about 90k, and that was a quick and easy job. That original engine had over 130k on it when I lost track of it.
YMMV.
3,000 mile valve adjust = camshaft trouble?
3,000 mile valve adjust = camshaft trouble?
Almost certainly, along with “valves” trouble. Very easy, 15 minute job to adjust the valves but it did have to be done on schedule. Waiting to 10K miles might well result in a dropped valve.
100K on a VW…with poor cooling, and no oil filter? I am, to put it mildly, skeptical.
Cooling in the Beetle was not inadequate, just because it was air instead of liquid. Seize in traffic? I drove them all over the desert West and LA summer traffic jams. The key was doing the 3000 mile service religiously, preferably at the excellent dealer service department or a VW specialist.
It’s interesting that back in those days reliability did not translate into sales.
It very much did. Buick sales tumbled starting in 1959, due to unhappy owners from the ’55-’58 era.
And of course the same thing happened to Chrysler after their bad ’57s.
Some of these are spot-on, like the black circle for cooling systems in Olds F-85s for 1961, or for body noises in the 1959 Plymouth.
One weakness of these ratings is that they do not distinguish between bad designs (that are harder to keep fixed) and good designs built badly (or with bad components) that are addressed once and then seldom thereafter – most Mopar problems fell under this category.
Consumer expectations are huge here – The big difference between the 6 and 8 cylinder versions of the 59-60 Lark, I can’t think of any other explanation. History says both are very robust (beyond rust problems). Were the 6s bought by more folks who almost bought a VW and were expecting more than they got? A mystery.
The other interesting thing is how even the GM brands were widely disparate. Oldsmobile was a far better car than was a Buick in the 50s, for example. But then the cars were quite different too.
Buick was no. 3 in sales and was pushing hard to increase production. New assembly lines and poor QC created lots of quality problems from around 1956 to at least ’58.
I don’t know what the quality problems were. The nailhead engines were solid but possibly the later triple turbine Dynaflow’s may not have been.
Looks like the good ol days weren’t that good and we should be happy that they don’t make them like they used to.
My aunt was a longtime CR subscriber, and every time we visited their house I spent hours reading these dots! Familiar territory.
The Edsel dots were about like the Ford dots, while both Mercury and Lincoln were horrible. Most ’58 Edsels were Ford-based, so the pattern makes sense.
VW excellent except for the engine? YES. This was realistic.
“The Edsel dots were about like the Ford dots, while both Mercury and Lincoln were horrible. Most ’58 Edsels were Ford-based, so the pattern makes sense.”
You remind me of how I have read for years that one of Edsel’s problems was terrible quality. It looks from this perspective that the Edsel wasn’t any worse than Pontiac or a lot of other new cars of the time. Most Mercury buyers may have wished they had bought Edsels. 🙂
Hmm, 1963 Beetle has less camshaft problems but that’s exactly what I’ve got on mine 🙁
I suppose I can’t complain after almost 60 years.
It breaks my heart a bit to see TWO 1958 Plymouths in the final photo there. Also interesting is that the 1950 Desoto looks to have been in far better condition. Assuming this is 1966 from the Olds plate the Plymouths would have fallen apart by this point, and the Desoto was probably scrapped for looking outdated.
I was surprised at how complete most of those cars look. Nowadays cars are far more picked apart before being sent to the crusher.
I’m surprised to see Plymouth is so much worse than the rest of the Chrysler brands. I thought they were all the same car underneath built in the same lines.
I would have liked to see some British brands in the imports section. I’m surprised there aren’t any.
I wonder how much owner neglect (especially of cheap cars) played a part in that.
Neglect shouldn’t be a factor for one- or two-year old cars. My aunt bought a new ’57 Plymouth Savoy sedan with the flathead 6 and automatic (probably the Powerflite 2-speed). She lived with us at the time, as she had not yet married. The car was garaged next to our ’55 Chevy. She took the bus to work in downtown Pittsburgh, so the car didn’t see commuter duty.
She had so much trouble with it (don’t recall exactly what went wrong; I was only 5 in 1957) that she swore off Mopar and traded it for a 1959 Chevy Bel Air 6 with Powerglide.
Yeah, the tin monster & other problems definitely lived in the low half of the Chrysler Corp. range. Ex’s style was always fabulous, but the engineering just wasn’t there in the late 50s to support big-butt fenders & gigantic headlight eyebrows. 🙁
And the Dauphine? Gawd, just GAWD. If ever there were a car that did not belong on American roads (naturally discounting the Yugo & GM’s X-cars), that was it. I actually still see one of those puttering around locally, & I always wonder — “HOW??”.
I’d rank the Subaru 360 highest in that category
Here in California, where rust is less of an issue, I had two close high school friends that bought very used Renaults, for about $50 each around 1970. Sold quickly for more like $5 because dismantling yards didnt even want them. Both ended up with VW’s.
“Renaults, for about $50 each around 1970. Sold quickly for more like $5 because dismantling yards didnt even”
When even the junk yards don’t want your POJ, it’s the ultimate insult.
Albeit a R10 rather than a Dauphine, my Dad traded his (bought new in 1968) in 1974. I think he got more than $50 for it (of course that was right after the first gas crisis so any car that got pretty good mileage was in some demand).
I think that Renaults were often sold at dealers who didn’t really back them well, combined with them not selling well created problems for owners. They did manage to sell cars in the US until the 80’s when they combined with AMC , but I think part of the problem was due to them not being very common cars, so they weren’t well backed. Also, since they aren’t common it isn’t unusual that a wrecking yard would want to avoid them, since they make more money when they turn their inventory, which of course would take a lot longer on an uncommon car. If they only wanted the car for scrap metal, yes, but if someone needed parts off it they might be able to get more out of it (more of a question about how long they would have to hold onto it to get money out of it). There’s probably more metal in an R10 than a beetle, so the scrap metal value might actually be slightly higher on the Renault….the beetle would have much quicker turn on selling parts off of it since it was so popular.
The poor reliability of american cars back then was because the industry was an oligopoly with the UAW having a monopoly on labor. What was it like in the factories? Read A Savage Factory by Robert Dewar. Its his story about being a foreman at a Ford transmission plant in the 70s. You’ll be shocked that the cars could even drive after you read that book.
The 70s of course were a different era, with issues/causes different from the 50s/60s. 🙂
Could you please show the Cigarette test referenced on the cover?
On allpar, there’s an interview with Chrysler engine designer William Weertman, who talks about the early Slant Sixes having a bad piston ring design. They switched suppliers from McQuay-Norris to Sealed Power and that apparently solved the problem.
H’mmm. Y’sure? I find this interview with Pete Hagenbuch, and if you’ll search the page for McQuay you’ll find this:
I entered “the lab” in 1958 after graduating from Chrysler Institute of Engineering and was assigned to the Piston Group. My first project was the development of the 170 cid slant six followed closely by the 225 version.
I also did a lot of production contact working on field problems like a newly approved piston ring source who gave us a different metallurgy for production than the stuff we tested and approved. The worst of this was the new rings that created such heavy cylinder bore that wear that the engines were junk after 20,000 miles. The name McQuay Norris still gives me chills!
There is also this other interview with Hagenbuch, and if you search that page for lower rings you’ll find this:
Do you know anything about the lower rings letting oil through at idle in the very early slant 6s?
Absolutely, that was my job! They were terrible. The 225s only, the 170s didn’t have a problem. You gotta go back in time, back then we used a cast iron oil ring, with a spring expander behind it. It was vented all around, there were oblong opening spaces for the oil to pass through back into the crank case. On the 170, there was no problem at all. On the 225 it was 200 miles per quart. It was the first engine we got into the 3 piece type ring which I kind of assume everybody uses now. I can’t remember the names of the rings but a Sealed Power design was the one we used eventually. You know, two thin steel rings, chrome plated, and an expander to keep them out against the bore. The 225 was the first place that Chrysler ever used a ring like that.
Which is interesting, because Hagenbuch’s “No problem at all on the 170” account seems to contradict this vexingly unattributed account; search the page for introduction day and find:
As an Introduction Day promotion, someone in the crack Chrysler Marketing Group came up with what seemed like a great idea at the time. Why not show off the new Valiant on the streets of New York City as taxicabs?
I seem to remember it was something like 200 new Valiants, but give or take, it was a bunch of taxis. Now, the Valiant had been tested in every conceivable manner, and nothing bad ever happened to the test cars. They were truly bulletproof. However, they were never tested in the one thing taxis do a lot; they sit and idle. No initial production Valiant could idle 15 minutes. Within an hour of starting, all the Valiant taxis had died at curbside, and could not be restarted. They were sheepishly towed away and shipped back to Highland Park Engineering.
Every spark plug of every engine was saturated in oil. When the plugs were replaced, the engines immediately restarted. They were left to idle in every available open area in Highland Park, with the exact same results. In hardly any time they all died like mayflies. It turned out the lower oil ring developed a flutter at idle, and instead of keeping oil in the crankcase, was happily operating as a tiny oil pump delivering the oil past the piston.
The folks in the engine lab had a new oil ring in production in about two weeks, a near record in response time. As for the original production cars, well, hopefully no one used them for taxis.
If none of these is what you have in mind, could you please post a link to the one you’re thinking of?
Nope, it must have been the Hagenbuch interview. Mea culpa.
I consulted these CR charts faithfully from around 1970 to ’90 and found that their reported problems correlated very closely with my own experiences with the many cars I owned over that period, they provided very reliable and useful data. Hope to see more of these reproduced, up to around 1980 if possible!
The only problem is…they had (and still have) a serious GIGO problem.
Yes, very much so, and it’s not the only trouble with their methodology. A lot of people take CR’s advice—whether for automobiles or toasters or life insurance or whatever else—as gospel truth, in blissful ignorance of how it’s made. A lot of people enjoy sausages the same way.
The day I saw them rate identical cars differently (Prism/Corolla, Probe/MX6, Century/Cutlass) I knew they were useless. Seeing them deliberately stack a comparison test drove it home.
We share a sceptical view of CR, but those bricks you’re using to build your road to it aren’t as structurally sound as they appear to you. The Prizm and Corolla were not identical cars. They were similar cars built in the same plant, but there were quite a lot of differences. Nothing giant, but a whole lot of relatively minor differences in surface finishes of hardware and metal components, component specification, and otherwise like that. A cheaper alternator worked just as well on the Prizm as the better one on the Corolla…until the cheaper unit’s higher failure rate came along to bite a Prizm owner, to grab just one example.
The bogus “differences” CR reported between a Century and a Cutlass don’t stem from that same kind of cause, they’re more an effect of the selection bias inherent in CR’s data collection method. Different kinds of people bought the Cutlass versus the Century…with different tendencies in their answers to questions like “Did you experience trouble with…” and different ideas of what constitutes “minor trouble”, “major trouble”, etc. They bought ’em from different dealerships, too, with different service managers, etc.
As a hip young teen in the early 80’s, I remember reading the reliability ratings of the new cars in CR at the library.
I went in sort of expecting American cars to be at the top of the ratings. Imagine my surprise when it was black dot after black dot, seemingly ALL of them had below average expected reliability.
It actually pissed me off, and I wondered how that could be the way it was. Imports were these little irrelevant cars that people only bought for gas mileage. How could a Civic be more reliable than a Trans-Am?
I assumed this was a temporary thing and US cars would be up at the top where they belong.
Took several decades but now we are about average.
So proud.
I felt the same way as a kid. There was still alot of “buy american made in usa is the best!” Propaganda back then. Then Id ride in my friends parents Hondas Toyotas and was blown away with how much better the build quality was than my dads Plymouth reliant. Then I learned the differences between the japanese and american management systems and saw the whole buy american was just propaganda. Meanwhile the foreign car companies were building us plants while the us automakers were trying to outsource as much us production as possible. Bottom line is buy whats best for your needs not for politics.
I remember the same sort of thing. What’s worse, the jingoism of a lot of American car buyers also played into it. I was driving a ’79 Toyota Corolla into the early & mid-’80s & got untold grief from “patriotic” jackasses. “You’re a Amurrican, aintcha? Drive an Amurrican car!” I had standard answer: “When American cars get 30 mpg, don’t cost $3000 more than they should, & don’t fall apart before they’re paid for, I will.”
Ford improved their quality enough in the ’90s that I did just that, getting first a ’91 Ford Escort & then a series of Ford products, all of which I was quite happy with until my ’10 Grand Marquis cracked the manifold at 80k miles & I went Hyundai Sonata on the strength of their 10-yr warranty.
Some curious discrepancies: the ’60-’62 Chrysler slant six got rather different rankings depending on which car it was in (Plymouth, Dodge, or Valiant). But then that’s hardly the only mystery here.
The problem with these is that there’s obviously a hard cutoff point between the three dots. So if the results were just on one or the other side of that cutoff point, it’s going to make a big difference. There should have been a different grading system,like a chart.
That’s one of the longstanding problems with CR’s rating “blobs” (as they formally call these dots): there’s no way to know the real, practical difference between average and worse than average (or any other two adjacent blob categories), and no way to get a useful grasp of the spread between much worse than average and much better than average.
That discrepancy you mention—different rankings for the Slant-6 depending on whether it was in a Plymouth or a Dodge—is a clue to other problems with CR’s data-gathering and rating protocols.
I see you changed your byline, I had always wondered if Poindexter was your real name:). I did the same thing a few years ago. I figured since I put so much work into writing articles I hoped I could be proud of, I should have my real name attached to them.
Very interesting analysis here! Looking forward to future editions.
During this time alot of new big 3 assembly plants opened up around the country. Gmad framingham near where I live opened then. I wonder how the quality of all the newer plants was compated to all the older prewar facilities.
I think there’s still a generational component that’s still relevant. I remember being four or five years old, in the living room watching my dad fix his ’61 Dauphine, mid-winter, with the back of the car pulled up to an open front window to keep from getting frozen. He never owned a foreign car after that until I gave him a ’73 Super Beetle autostick for my mom to drive. And I took care of all the repairs for that car.
Broken down cars leave long memories. And while I have no option to buy a new French car in the US (that I know of) I would be really hesitant to do so. That is unless Consumer Reports had an unblemished five-year reliability rating of it.
I recall one year in the 80s looking into the CR reliability reports and seeing the engine and transmission on the Ford Probe were both “worse than average”, while those on the Mazda MX-6 were “better than average”. The magic of a Mazda badge on an engine! Or else all of the lemons from the Mazda powertrain plants were mysteriously sent with instructions to be installed in Probes. I settled on Mazda buyers wanted to believe in the Japanese mystique and cut their cars a break, and the Probe buyers were like, “yeah, it’s a Ford, another POS”, when the same faults occurred.
They did the same with the Toyota Corolla and Geo Prism. And I think the Geo Tracker and Suzuki Sidekick.
Also, the Taurus/Sable and Century/Cutlass. GIGO.