Honda and Toyota have built a reputation for having solid cars. We do see Hondas and Toyotas, but not at the same rate we see cars from many of the other brands. Also, from dealing with Honda and Toyota, they tend to be much more customer friendly, in that when a customer has a problem, they tend to own up to it and do what they can to fix it versus telling the customer to pound salt.
Kia and Hyuandai are a little more mixed. When I first started at my law firm, we saw quite a few Kias in particular. Kia has improved their quality dramatically (at least based on how many Kias we see), but it takes time for a car to lose a bad reputation for quality.
Chevy and Ford tend to have a LOT of cars on the road. They aren’t terrible companies to work with most of the time, but building more cars and often at a slightly cheaper price point means you see a lot more of them having problems. Ford in particular has suffered from transmission problems in their Ford Focus and Fiestas.
Ford and Chevy don’t seem to care as much about loyalty as some of the Japanese brands do — if you have a bad one, they don’t necessarily go the extra mile for you. If you swear never to buy another Ford or GM, they tend to shrug and say oh well. They’ll just sell a Ford or Chevy to someone else.
A lot has been asked about what car brands or models to purchase or avoid. As aforementioned, you can get a bad one in any make or model. There are definitely models with common problems a mechanic would stay away from (like the Focus and Fiesta), but the only car company I would personally never buy a car from is FCA. (That is Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, and Ram). Their cars tend to be more unreliable than average, they are constantly in trouble with NHTSA and take a lackadaisical view on safety, and they treat even their loyal customers like dirt.
