When you think of car brands that are the most reliable, you would probably name Lexus, Toyota, perhaps Honda, and a few others. But a new commercial from Chevrolet says you better think again. It claims that Chevrolet is more reliable than Toyota, Honda, Ford, and 23 other brands.

The commercial shows real owners of other car brands being surprised when the spokesperson reveals that “Based on a recent survey, Chevy is more reliable than Toyota, Honda, and Ford.” At the end of the ad, four 2019 Chevrolet vehicles are unveiled and the claim is repeated and expanded to include 23 other car brands.

In case you missed it, there was a little fine print disclaimer on the screen for about three seconds.

*MOUSE PRINT:

This informs the viewer of something very important. They are relying on the results of a study of 2015 cars to make a broad claim about Chevy’s reliability today. Really?

The 2018 study indicates that close to 50,000 car owners returned surveys indicating whether their 2015 vehicle needed repairs in the prior 12 months. In essence, this is getting feedback on repairs needed in the third year of ownership.

To check how legitimate Chevy’s reliability claim is, we reviewed the dependability studies of two prominent and well-respected sources — J.D. Power and Associates and Consumer Reports.

J.D. Power questioned about 37,000 owners of 2015 vehicles in late 2017 for their 2018 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study. Here are their results:

This study is most like the one done by Chevy because it focuses on 2015 vehicles and asks about problems that needed fixing in the third year of ownership. It supports Chevy’s overall conclusions about the reliability of their 2015 cars compared to the competition.

Consumer Reports, however, does its reliability studies differently, aggregating survey data from about half a million of their readers for 2000 to 2018 vehicles combined. It asks about problems that car owners have experienced in the past 12 months, as well as other issues. This is a much larger universe and provides a broader prospective on predicted reliability using a span of model years, not just one.

The magazine paints an entirely different picture of Chevy reliability, ranking it in the bottom quarter of car brands, and below the brands it said it beat in the commercial.

It seems to us that Chevy is inappropriately using its good reliability ratings for the 2015 model year to imply that its current 2019 vehicles are equally dependable.

We asked General Motors to justify that leap, explain the details of its survey, and whether it will modify or pull the advertisement. The company explained the methodology, that it used standard survey techniques by a noted market research company, that the results were reviewed by independent statisticians, and that their definitions of reliability came from professional organizations.

The Chevy spokesperson did not respond to our question asking if it had any survey results for 2016, 2017, 2018, or 2019 vehicles that would confirm that it continued to beat Toyota, Honda, Ford and 23 other companies for those model years too. But the company attempted to justify why it was using the reliability of 2015 cars with this explanation:

“You need some time to develop a measure of actual reliability so you have to look back at previous MY [model year] vehicles.” — Chevy spokesperson

While it is certainly true that car companies can’t instantly provide reliability data for vehicles new to the market, they can be careful not to make broad, unqualified claims for new models using historic data. And clearly explaining the nature of that historic data rather than burying it in a fine print disclosure would go a long way toward creating transparency. As such, we call upon General Motors to pull its current series of misleading commercials.

Thanks to David B. for bringing this commercial to our attention.

Note: An update to this story will be posted on Monday morning.