One of the biggest inside jokes in the HVAC industry is consumer reports and when they "rate" HVAC equipment per reliability.
Honestly, I've never put much faith at all in any reliability or quality "reports".
There is a phrase either I came up with or quoted (can't find it online), "percieved reliabilty vs actual reliability" (perhaps a spin off of interpreting data). I think some brands also rely on their image more than actual facts.
Long story, while ago (perhaps around 2016), took my 1998 toyota avalon up to Pa by myself for some reson (at least to visit my father back then). Car starting driving "weird" after 8 hours of driving with 45 minutes to go to my dads house. Keep in mind, the car had about 320k on it at the time. I took it to my "old local mechanic" around my dads place the next morning (he still remembered me about 20 years later LOL). I really do trust this guy, never left me hanging and always does what he says he's going to to when I lived in the area. Talking about cars in general and how happy I was with the Avalon overall (bought it at a good price with only 72K on it) he said something that floored me. He told me he saw a lot of stupidity from Toyota in their engineering process on parts on models after 2004 or 2005 that can cause a lof of issues, and he wouldn't buy one himself now. Perhaps Toyota has changed things since then, but here is a guy who works on cars 24/7, can pretty much fix anything (if it's worth fixing) and he was "bad mouthing" Toyota.
All that said, perhaps there is a person here who bought a brand new 2006 Toyota, still has it and NEVER has had a problem with the car other than average maintence.
No different than "chevy vs ford" guys and even orange vs green tractors.
I used to drive used VW's in my youth, my choice of car. That worked fine up North. Once I moved down south, I honestly swore off VW's to the local support I could find when I needed it (even through dealers). My local VW dealer up north was heads and shoulder's better than the local dealers I could find in NC. Point being, product support through the people selling the product also plays a role "quality".
Look at Kia. Long time ago they seemed to be a cheap joke. My supervisor just bought a brand new Kia Telluride (sp?) at a pretty IMO for his family. Go figure.
End of the day, the biggest question is if a product absolutely sucks and is garbage, exactly how do they stay in business selling a horrible product?