While General Motors->ke1024 and Ford->ke31 seem to be on the right track to re-establishing their brands in America, the same cannot be said for Chrysler->ke21.

In a recent survey highlighting vehicle quality, Chrysler seems to have fallen way short compared to its two other American competitors. It’s another blow to a company that, like GM and Ford, is trying to regain its foothold in America.

After a series of bad decisions, which was aggravated by the global economic crisis, it seems that Chrysler would – or should - have done something, especially in terms of producing high-quality vehicles, before the whole thing went into a tailspin.

The alarming figures for Chrysler begin with the fact that more than half of its cars were rated below Consumer Reports’ testing and subscriber survey. Compounding the situation even more is that this particular survey is one of the largest running surveys on vehicle quality. This year alone, the magazine has collected responses on 1.4 million vehicles.

Continued after the jump.

David Champion, the senior director for the magazine's auto testing operation, said that unlike Chrysler, GM and Ford are slowly picking up from where they left off, although he stresses that there’s still a long way to go before both companies return to their past glory days.

On Ford: “Ford Motor Co.'s quality has been getting better and better. The company is extremely close to Honda and Toyota in reliability. All it needs is to make its models ‘a little more exciting’”.

On GM: “ General Motors Corp. has a very good model portfolio. Its trucks are good. The (Cadillac) CTS is good, in test results, although, as a whole, GM still is hit or miss on reliability.”

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Chrysler, which needs a lot of heavy lifting to do before it can catch up with GM and Ford.

It is a shame that these hard economic times affect the way that the automakers do business, in tight markets performance and luxury are sacrificed for efficiency, but now that at least two of the big three are getting back on track we can expect to see some very cool cars coming in the near future.