10 cars to avoid according to their current owners (via Consumer Reports) | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Fast facts:

Consumer Reports surveys its over six million members annually about their experience with their cars.
One survey question, designed to measure overall satisfaction, asks car owners if they would buy their car again, given the chance to make the decision over.
In 2025, the two cars with the least satisfied owners came from the same American automaker. Two luxury models from different makes also made the list.

If you buy a pair of wireless headphones and realize after a month or two that they lose charge quickly and tend to fall out of your ears when you go up flights of stairs, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe it wasn’t the best $39 you ever spent, but you can still use them at home, and the inability to return them isn’t going to push you into bankruptcy.

If that pair of headphones were a brand-new car, however, the stakes would be a little higher. After all, new cars lose around 10% of their value as soon as they’re driven off the lot and an additional 10% by the end of their first year. At five years old, a car is typically worth just 40% of its original purchase price, according to Carfax.

That’s why, when car shopping, it’s important to end up behind the wheel of a car you’re not going to resent. Of course, safety and reliability are among the most important factors in a car-buying decision, but satisfaction is also an important consideration, especially given the fact that Americans spend an average of 17,600 minutes in their cars each year — that’s almost 300 hours.

Luckily, we have a window into which cars tend to delight their owners — and which don’t.

What is Consumer Reports & how does it measure owner satisfaction?

When most people think of auto experts, they think of AAA, Kelley Blue Book, or the guys from “Car Talk.” But the auto-minded folks at Consumer Reports are just as good a resource, and CR has something these other sources don’t—decades of data from millions of actual car owners spanning every make and model.

Consumer Reports, founded in 1936, is a non-profit consumer protection organization that tests cars (and other products, like appliances and electronics) for safety, efficacy, and performance. The organization purchases cars anonymously at full price and rigorously tests them for everything from acceleration to handling to braking to emissions at its private driving course and automotive testing facility in Connecticut.

It also surveys its over six million members annually about their experiences with their own cars, including any issues they’ve encountered and repairs they’ve had to pay for.

As part of this survey, CR also asks each member if they would purchase their current vehicle again, knowing what they know now about its performance, reliability, and comfort.

The 10 least satisfying car models according to Consumer Reports

The cars listed here got the lowest scores on this survey question, which is designed to measure overall owner satisfaction. This means that these are the models whose current owners, on average, would be least inclined to purchase their car again, given the chase to go back in time.

Audi Q4 E-Tron