Posted on Tuesday 29 January 2008
Influential magazine Consumer Reports has come out with its annual list of the top rated car brands and once again Japanese makes have dominated the field. First and second places were taken up by Toyota and Honda but this year’s result also saw U.S. automakers improve their standings, with three of the top five spots going to one of the Detroit 3 brands.
The survey focuses on how consumers perceive and rank car brands in seven crucial areas, including safety, quality, value, performance, environmental friendliness, design, and technological innovation. It also looks at which of those factors are most important to consumers when buying a vehicle.
The survey data was collected from 1,720 adults whose households own at least one car. The most important aspects consumers looked for in brand were safety, which was considered most important by 63% of those in the study, followed by quality on 58%.
The field of worst performers shows just how mediocre some brands are considered in the U.S. despite being popular overseas. Audi, which scored just 14 points, will have to work extremely hard to overcome its poor image if it has any hope of trying to compete with the likes of Mercedes and BMW.
The results of the study are as follows.
Best:
Toyota - 189
Honda - 146
Ford - 112
Chevrolet - 110
GMC - 102
Worst:
Buick - 25
Mercury - 22
Mitsubishi - 21
Audi - 14
Acura - 8
“The survey focuses on how consumers perceive and rank car brands in seven crucial areas, including safety, quality, value, performance, environmental friendliness, design, and technological innovation.”
Acura and Audi are below Ford, Chevrolet, and GMC in these categories? What in the world?
Doesn\’t surprise me. Audi is always overlooked in my parts and Acura is almost non-existent. I think Audi has a serious problem on its hands.
Acura has no one to blame but itself: they wanna be considered luxury but don’t have power passenger seats; they wanna be considered performance but don’t have RWD or V8s. Acura makes great cars but they really have to figure out who the are but the public will perceive them any better. Not mention, where are all the Acura ads? Or even product placements??
Audi is overshadowed by Mercedes & BMW - being associated w/ VW cannot help either.
I think that Acura may target certain areas of the country better than others. They advertise more heavily than most car manufacturers in my area, relying on the dulcet tones of James Spader to push their products. I’m not quite sure which parts Bob inhabits, but it sounds like the survey was taken there, too. I realize the numbers are high enough to be statistically significant, but that doesn’t mean bias didn’t creep into the study. Given the robust performance of Audi and Acura in the US in general, I’m quite sure they’ll be taking these results with a heavy pinch of salt.
Just more proof of how retarded the average consumer is. mercury is a jazzed up ford, but it gets on the opposite end of the ranking,… and acura is at least a jazzed up honda if not more, and the same thing happens.
Seeing toyota beat out honda and ford by such a huge margin (by the way, i love ford and all but who really thinks that highly of them?) makes me think that eco-friendly image was weighted second only to bland and boring selection. maybe thats how ford got so high (taurus any one? ford tried to out-camry the camry and nearly did it)
I was actually reading about this on another site and someone mentioned that the survey method is flawed. He said that all CR does is ask someone to mention the first car manufacturers that come to their mind. People immediately scream Toyota, Honda, Ford, and Chevrolet. Then CR makes up the points based on that single question. That’s why some luxury brands did worse than clearly inferior products, people just think about the big names first. I can’t say if this is true, just that I read this in someones comment on another car news site.
skyline i doubt that is 100% true but it sounds basically like what this report is. CR probably gives you a list of brands, and says “in your view, rank only the top 5 brands for each category: environmental policy, safety, technology, design, percieved quality…. now rank these items in order of importance to you” so that the guy who gives toyota top honors in quality and environmental policy and then says that those two items are the most important to him has effectively said that he loves toyota. basically toyota has a great image in peoples minds cause they are cheap… have high perceived quality (even though WE know that that isnt the case any more) and have huge credo with the environment cause of the prius (god i hate even typing that word).
basically this survey is telling us auto enthusiasts what we already knew… that toyota is king in the eye of the average consumer, when in truth, all companies have relatively close CAFE ratings (the whole field spans a 5MPG range… i mean cmon.)… and quality is more or less hit or miss from one model to the other these days, not from one brand to the next.