CR rates their reliability rating based on the service repair records it gets from the car manufacturers. They collect all that data and then break it down by catagory such as electrical, brakes, transmisison minor, transmisison major, etc etc.. Then they group the cars into its class and then compare the results across the class and comes up with a baseline for an average and rate the cars as such. I normally don't like how CR tests products, but the vehcile reliability ratings are not tests that they perform, but repair data they collect from the car companies and analyzed. I think it is a very good indicator of reliability. Hence you would normally see the trend of first model years having higher reliability issues since they are still working out the bugs.