Consumer Reports Gets Patriotic, Names Best American Cars For 2010

While the Congress frets about the millions of Toyotas on the road that probably shouldn’t be, our grease-monkey brothers at Consumer Reports were busy getting domestic. They just released the list of their Top Picks for vehicles put out by American car companies.

For Consumer Reports to consider a car or truck as a Top Pick, it has to meet the following criteria:

• The vehicle must rank near the top of its category in our ratings

• It must have average or better reliability, according to our latest Annual Auto Survey

• It must have performed well if included in a government or insurance-industry crash or rollover test

• It must provide electronic stability control (ESC) as standard or a readily available option

With that, here’s CR’s list of the Top Picks in each category, along with the American vehicles with the highest scores from the Consumer Reports testers. In five of the categories, the Top Pick was also the high-scorer.

In explaining their selection of the Ford Fusion Hybrid — which was also named Top Pick in the Green Car category — as Best Car Overall, CR states, “This category goes to the top-scoring recommended car in our tests. The awesome Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is our highest scoring domestic-branded car, but its reliability is below average. The highest-scoring recommended domestic car is the Ford Fusion Hybrid.”

You might have noticed that no domestic vehicles were listed under the Family Hauler category. “In our primary Top Pick list, this went to the Mazda5,” CR explains. “This mini-minivan doesn’t have domestic competition yet, but the Chevrolet Orlando and Ford C-Max are on the horizon. As for full-sized minivans, the only domestic offering is the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan twins. But their reliability is well below average, so they aren’t recommended.”

Head over to Consumer Reports to check out the complete story.

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