Overhead shot of 2020 Porsche Cayenne Coupe driving on roadWhen you keep in mind that Porsche was founded back in 1931, analyzing all of the company's products for reliability is obviously beyond the scope of what we're doing here today. Instead, we're going to focus on the more recent model years, which get you past the intermediate shaft bearing problems and are indeed pretty reliable.First, though, a reminder about those IMS bearings. They were used to help support driveshafts in the automaker's M96/M97 engines, found in Porsches from model years 1997 to 2008, but owners quickly began to notice they weren't up to the challenge, with many failing after only a few thousand miles of use. Nowadays, with this a known issue, folks can take preventative steps to reduce the chance for a disaster. Many, however, still shy away from Porsches of the time.As for more current models, Consumer Reports has good things to say about them in general, reporting that "the brand tends to do well in our reliability rankings," and in the 2026 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability, Porsche was the No. 3 premium brand — with fewer problems per 100 vehicles than not only natural rivals like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but also other mass-market brands with strong reputations for dependability, including Toyota and Honda.The thing to keep in mind, however, is that reliability and maintenance costs don't necessarily go hand in hand. Due to their expensive precision-engineered components, even a reliable Porsche can cost you some serious coin to maintain in proper driving condition. In fact, Porsche trailed only Land Rover in CR's 2025 look at which brands have the highest maintenance costs. Porsche is a top pick for dependability according to J.D. PowerA black 2023 Porsche 911 S/TTo make things simpler, we'll first focus on the J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study, starting with the 2019 edition. Now, that may seem kind of random, but Power said this was the first year it named a single most dependable overall vehicle in the study — and it was the Porsche 911. The brand as a whole extended its reliability story by tying for second overall in the 2019 study with Toyota, with both rated at 108 problems per 100 vehicles. The leader in 2019 was Lexus, at 106 per 100. Remember, however, that the study is based on vehicles that had been on the road for three years already, so the 2019 edition covered cars from the 2016 model year. And that kind of dependability momentum has — for the most part — carried on over the years.The 911 did its share, earning honors as the most dependable car again in 2021 and 2022 — a feat J.D. Power called "a remarkable achievement." Regarding the brand as a whole, Porsche did stumble in the 2023 study, falling to well below the industry dependability average for 2020 model-year cars, yet that seems to have been an outlier. After all, the 2023 study was the only one of the past eight in which Porsche was below the industry average.Other VDS highlights for the brand include finishing fourth overall in 2020 and second overall in 2021, being named third-most dependable premium brand in 2022, 2025, and 2026, and garnering honors as second-most dependable premium brand in 2024. (If you'd rather shop by initial cost instead of dependability, check out some of the cheapest used Porsches you can buy.) Porsche picks from Consumer ReportsA 2023 Porsche Macan GTS parked off road in NorwayBrand-level data from Consumer Reports is a little harder to come by, mostly because Porsche is among the brands that don't always turn up enough customer data for accurate judgments. For example, Porsche this year didn't qualify for the list of CR's most reliable car brands — and neither did companies such as Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lucid, Maserati, and Mini. Nor has CR been all that thorough when it comes to testing Porsches itself, although this is no doubt at least partly because CR pays for the cars it tests out of its own budget.Anyway, if you take the time, you can still glean a few notable factoids concerning what the magazine thinks of some Porsches. Consider the Porsche Macan. CR says the brand's compact SUV — now also available in the electrified and driver-focused 2026 GTS trim with 563 horsepower — has been more reliable than other cars from the same model year for 2023 to 2025. The highlight came for 2024, when the Macan was the most reliable member of its 14-vehicle class, with a practically perfect rating. The gas-powered Macan led its class in reliability for 2025, too.It's a similar story with the Porsche Cayenne, one of the only other Porsches with a track record of CR reliability scores to analyze. For the Cayenne, the outcome was four years with above-average reliability (2020, 2023 to 2025), led by two years as the No. 2-rated vehicle for reliability among midsize luxury SUVs. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox, and add us as a preferred search source on Google.
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