What CR doesn't say:

1. The data are already about five months old, and will be over a year old when many people use them to buy a car next summer.

2. The average problem rate isn't very high, probably around 18 problems per 100 cars for the 2008s (based on past years; they didn't have a number when asked this year). So the differences between the different "blobs" is three or four problems per 100 cars. In both cases, the numbers are probably much lower than many people think.

For a site that promptly updates its vehicle reliability information four times a year and posts the actual repair rates:

http://www.truedelta.com

After all, do you want to know how reliable a car was a year ago, when it was a year younger, or how reliable it has been recently?