Consumer Reports has revised its car ratings

The state of the art continues to move. In cars, we’re seeing greater performance in many areas and a slight shift in consumer priorities, inspiring our latest ratings recalibration.

If you tour the Cars section of ConsumerReports.org, you’ll see some scores no longer match those in our ­recent Annual Auto Issue. We’ve recently modified our scoring ­system so that the individual ratings we give to certain aspects of a vehicle’s ­performance align better with our ­testers’ assessments and our written ­reviews.

For example, we’re now giving more weight in our scoring to ride comfort and quietness, which are important to many car buyers. And with the acceleration and braking performance of many vehicles improving in ­recent years, we’ve raised the bar in those areas.

One recent example highlights just how cars continue to improve: The Chevrolet Corvette and Porsche 911 each delivered shorter braking distances than any other cars we have tested—ever. (Road tests on those impressive sports cars are coming soon.)