Every year, American publication, Consumer Reports conducts a reliability survey from its subscribers' experience with 1.2 million vehicles over the last three years. In this year's report, the biggest surprise is Ford's free fall from inside the top 10 in 2010 to 27^th of the 28 brands rated. Only two years ago, Consumer Reports had hailed Ford as a "poster child" of reliability.

According to Consumer Reports director of automotive testing Jake Fisher, consumers encountered a lot of problems with Ford's Powershift Dual-clutch transmission and 'MyFord' Touch infotainment system. These systems were introduced to a number of new or revised models such as the Fiesta, Focus and Explorer.

On the report, Ford commented that the results matched the internal data the company had received and added that the company had made major improvement earlier this year, and that the survey lagged behind current trends.

As usual, Japanese brands dominated the top positions in the survey. Toyota took the top three places with its Scion, Toyota and Lexus brands, followed by Mazda, Subaru, Honda and Acura. From a personal experience, my family's previous Japanese cars have been to the workshop lesser than the current VW during the first three years of ownership.

Audi deserves a pat on the back for moving up to 8th in ranking, a huge improvement from the 26^th position in 2011.