It seems most folks "know" that Honda and Toyota are reliable cars with good quality. They have good reputations - but does past performance guarantee future performance?

It also seems that cars can change faster than perceptions, so if a company makes a drastic improvement or decline, it isn't always noticed right away. For example, I have heard the new Buick is first rate, while some recent generations of General Motors had a poor reputation. Of course one vehicle in a line might be much better or worse than the rest of the line. My '03 Ford isn't as good as the '01 Civic . . . but that was 12 years ago - is the same true today?

What is it about a car that makes or breaks it in terms of reliability? I assume some things are difficult to measure/know (the particular alloys and heat treating of certain parts would be invisible), and other things are quite obvious (this one has peeling paint, 4 small drum brakes, and the sheet metal seams don't align). On bicycles, a mechanic can show the plastic internals of cheap parts and the steel equivalents on better parts. The specifications on chromoly tubing are different than hi-tensile tubing.

I've found the adage "you get what you pay for" to not always be true. Sometimes I pay a lot and get very little! In the car world, it is hard to tell if the "cheap" car is a marketing ploy trying to bring people to the brand like a 99cent turkey at the grocery store, or if it is made cheaply by cutting corners on materials.

My question is, other than hunches, perceptions, past history/anecdotal evidence, are there ways to evaluate a particular new automobile and determine if it is good quality or poor quality?

More to the real point - could a Honda Fit really be worth the $4000 more the base model costs?