Daily Research News Online no. 5580 - Good News for Domestic Auto Industries in US and UK

Good News for Domestic Auto Industries in US and UK

June 6 2006

Cadillac beats Lexus to first place in luxury car customer satisfaction in the US, according to a study by AutoPacific. Meanwhile a satisfaction study among British customers, by J.D. Power and Associates for 'What Car?' magazine, finds that many of the top brands are produced in the UK, albeit for Japanese manufacturers.

AutoPacific released a summary of results from its VSA (Vehicle Satisfaction Award) study, which benchmarks satisfaction among owners of new cars and light trucks. Cadillac out-pointed perennial leader Lexus with the top rated Entry Luxury Car (the CTS) and solid performances by the rest of its lineup. The Lexus LS430 is the top rated Luxury Car, but Lexus overall rates just below Cadillac.

The top rated Mainstream Brand is Honda, with two category wins - Honda Ridgeline is the top rated Sport Utility Truck and the Honda Odyssey is the top rated Minivan. Hyundai was second despite having the top car overall (the Azera) and the top rated Mid-Size SUV (the Santa Fe).

The vehicle registering highest overall satisfaction in 2006 is the Lincoln Navigator Luxury SUV, top in both the truck and Luxury SUV categories. Sport Utility Vehicle owners are generally more satisfied with their vehicles than Car, Pickup or Minivan owners.

The VSA calculates satisfaction based on 45 specific areas related to a vehicle's operation, comfort, safety and the overall purchase/lease experience. Tustin, California-based AutoPacific is online at www.autopacific.com .

In the J.D. Power and Associates/What Car? magazine 2006 Car Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) StudySM, Japanese brands continue to dominate but four of the top 10 most-satisfying models are built in Britain - these are the Honda Civic, Toyota Avensis, Toyota Corolla and Jaguar S-Type. British brands Mini and Jaguar rank within the top 10 nameplates with Skoda, BMW and Volvo the other European leaders.

Luxury Japanese brand Lexus tops the nameplate rankings for a sixth consecutive year with a customer satisfaction score of 873 index points on a 1,000-point scale, and is also the most improved with a 25-point increase from the 2005 study.

The highest-ranking model in the study is the Lexus IS, with 868 index points, followed by the Honda Jazz (861), the winner in 2004 and 2005.

'Despite the recent, well-documented problems faced by the UK car manufacturing industry, Britain continues to build great cars,' according to David Motton, editor of What Car? magazine. 'While Lexus continues to set the benchmark for customer satisfaction, it is encouraging to see British brands such as MINI and Jaguar performing strongly, signifying that with the right investment and management, British-built vehicles can be a pleasure to own.'

Skoda, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen were European brands showing good results or strong improvement in overall customer satisfaction.

Frank Parisi, Director of European Automotive Research at J.D. Power and Associates, says an overall c-sat improvement of 5 points over the year reflects 'a substantial improvement in satisfaction with the performance of the UK's car dealers when the customer takes their car in to be serviced or repaired. This year, 24 of the 30 ranked brands have shown an improvement in this area which is a very encouraging trend.'

The study is based on the evaluations of nearly 15,000 UK car owners after an average of two years of ownership, and includes 30 brands and 105 models ranked on 77 different attributes.

J.D. Power and Associates is online at www.jdpower.com . More detail will be available in the issue of What Car? published on 8th June ( web site www.whatcar.co.uk ).