LexFather

Alfa Romeo, Mercedes tie for second place

Douglas A. Bolduc
Automotive News Europe
June 24, 2009 15:00 CET
UPDATED: June 24 17:20 CET


MUNICH -- MUNICH -- Toyota Motor Corp. small-car subsidiary Daihatsu passed BMW and Audi on its way to top honors in vehicle ownership satisfaction among German car owners, according to a J.D. Power and Associates study published Wednesday.

In the 2008 study, Daihatsu was sixth while BMW was No. 2 and Audi was fourth.

Daihatsu's victory comes despite is sales of 13,726 units in Germany last year compared with Audi's volume of 251,393 units and BMW's 253,967 sales.

Audi and BMW also fell behind arch rival Mercedes-Benz, which tied for second with Alfa Romeo.

Mercedes beat No. 4 BMW by a point and was four points ahead of Audi and Toyota, which tied for fifth.

The vehicle ownership satisfaction study tracks how satisfied customers are for 27 car brands and 113 individual models in Germany. The study takes into account vehicle performance, vehicle quality, ownership costs and service satisfaction.

Daihatsu scored very high in service and ownership costs, Martin Volk, senior research manager at J.D. Power and Associates, told Automotive News Europe.

Also making the top 10 were Mini, Skoda and Mazda, which tied for seventh.

Honda slipped to 10th place after finishing No. 1 in 2007 and 2008.

At the bottom of the list were No. 27 Smart and No. 26 Chevrolet.

The Mercedes E class was named top luxury car and the CLK class won best sports car. Toyota Motors Corp swept the mass-market car categories with the Toyota Aygo, top city car, Toyota Corolla, top lower-medium car, and the Daihatsu Sirion, top small car.

PRESS RELEASE: J.D. Power and Associates and AUTO TEST Report: Daihatsu Ranks Highest in Satisfying New-Vehicle Owners in Germany

Munich: June 24, 2009 --Daihatsu ranks highest among automotive brands in satisfying new-vehicle owners in Germany, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Germany Vehicle Ownership Satisfaction Study (VOSS)SM released today in cooperation with AUTO TEST.

For the first time since the launch of the study in 2002, Daihatsu ranks highest with a score of 843 on a 1,000-point scale. Daihatsu performs particularly well in two of four key measures: service satisfaction and ownership costs. Rounding out the top five brands are Alfa Romeo and Mercedes-Benz (tied at 835), BMW (834), and Audi and Toyota (tied at 831).

"Providing an exceptional vehicle ownership experience requires an understanding of customer expectations from the purchase process throughout the entire ownership lifecycle," said Martin Volk, senior research manager at J.D. Power and Associates. "For example, low fuel consumption and maintenance costs are among the most important purchase criteria for Daihatsu owners. High-ranking brands consistently understand the most important needs of their customers and exceed their expectations."

Mercedes-Benz and Toyota each receive two segment awards. Mercedes-Benz models earning awards are the E-Class (executive/luxury car) and CLK-Class (sports car), while Toyota receives awards for the Aygo (city car) and Corolla (lower medium car). Also receiving segment-level awards are the Daihatsu Sirion (small car), Renault Laguna (upper medium car), Skoda Roomster (MPV) and Nissan Qashqai (SUV).

German automakers perform particularly well in the executive/luxury car and sports car segments. In the executive/luxury car segment, models by Mercedes-Benz and Audi capture the top two rank positions, while Mercedes-Benz and BMW sweep the top three rank positions in the sports car segment.

"The change in awareness towards customer satisfaction seems to have impacted the results of German manufacturers in a positive way, with Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz models performing well," said Olaf Schilling, chief editor of AUTO TEST. "This is positive news among the negative headlines that have appeared during the past several months."

The study finds that satisfaction levels and brand loyalty are strongly linked, with more than 74 percent of highly satisfied customers reporting they "definitely will" consider buying the same vehicle make in the future. Conversely, only 30 percent of customers who report having a less-satisfying experience intend to do the same.

"In these challenging times, building on a loyal customer base by providing an excellent ownership experience could help automakers weather the current storm and come out even stronger once the automotive market recovers," said Volk.

The redesigned 2009 Germany Vehicle Ownership Satisfaction Study (VOSS) is the successor study to the Germany Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) Study. The 2009 study is based on more than 16,200 online interviews with German vehicle owners after an average of two years of ownership. The study includes 27 brands and 113 models. Owners provide detailed evaluations of their vehicles and dealers, which cover 67 attributes grouped in four measurements of satisfaction. In order of importance, they are: vehicle appeal (32%), which includes performance, design, comfort and features; vehicle quality and reliability (26%); ownership costs (22%) including fuel consumption, insurance and costs of service/repair; and dealer service satisfaction (20%).

The annual J.D. Power and Associates study gives consumers access to reliable and accurate information about many vehicle models, and helps manufacturers provide high levels of satisfaction to their customers. More comprehensive study results are published exclusively in AUTO TEST, which is on sale Wednesday, June 24, 2009. A summary overview can be found in the June 26, 2009 edition of AUTO BILD.

The G Man

I guess how satisfied a customer is with their new car differs when one pay $10000 for a Daihatsu as oppose to $50000 for an Audi.

mmarshall

Daihatsu, IMO, should have stayed in the American market; in fact, in Japan, they are considered a minicar expert. They started selling the small Charade coupe/sedan and small Rocky SUV (which was much like the Chevy Tracker/Suzuki Sidekick) here in the late 1980's. In fact, a small Daihatsu dealership, in my area, moved into a former Renault-Peugeot dealership that was selling and servicing only used cars after the French companies left the American market. But, even with clever TV advertising, Daihatsu officials apparantly just didn't have any paitience....when sales didn't skyrocket here in the U.S. immediately, they panicked and pulled backed out after only about 2-3 years, just like Daewoo did when they tried to sell vehicles here under their own nameplate.

A close friend and former co-worker of mine liked the Rocky and was seriously considering a purchase. At his request, I had found one, inspected/test-driven it and OK'ed it for purchase, when the Daihatsu withdrawl notice came down the very next day......just as my friend was going to sign for it and take it home. Needless to say, he's glad he didn't....that was a close call.

I liked the Rocky myself, though it was somewhat crude and unsophisticated. It was like the similiar Chevy/Suzuki small SUVs in a lot of ways, but seemed more solidly-built and didn't rattle and shake as much. Also, unlike Suzuki, Daihatsu has smart enough to build the American-spec Rockys with a wider-track than home-market models, so that it would be less-prone to tipping and rollovers, which was a major problem with the Suzuki Samurai.

FKL

JD Power is a joke. We still listen to these fools?

IS-SV

That's a bit amusing. And I had a friend with a Rocky, sturdy enough. Good press for Daihastsu at least.

mmarshall

I agree. See my comments, above, on the Rocky.

IS-SV

I did, and I like the Rocky more than the original Suzuki Suicide.

btw - I had a rental car last November that was made by Daihatsu, certainly gutless, but still could cruise at 80mph for 100 miles.

LexFather

Sorry but not taking this seriously is a joke. Its the first time they won, seems in the past Honda was #1 and BMW,Benz,Audi are in the top 5/10.

Until YOU come with a better survey, you have to include this valuable info in decisions about quality/reliability.

FKL

If you want to act like a slave/whip to these car surveys, that's your business. I don't know why some of you continually defend these moronic "depictions" of deluded reality when all the reasoning in the world is right in front of your eyes to fully discredit them, or at least raise serious doubts and questions.

There is no doubt in my mind that some of you will jump to my side on this issue the second Lexus starts slipping. This is just brand loyalty, you like what they have to say when "your brand" is on top, so you defend them. It's getting old when the "reports" contradict themselves over and over, however. I could care less if "Audi" is on top in this German survey (gee, home country perceptions must have NO sort of resonance at all with the end results, right?? ), the report is a bit jumbling piece of useless crap that was released from a horses a$$. The only joke is trying to purvey this stupidity wrapped in a survey as some sort of unequivocal truth.

IS-SV

My preference is not to be slave to surveys, especially when they involve rankings. But I find the data to be useful and worth some review. Certainly each reader can use this information differently. Final decision(s) for me are educated decisions based on too many factors to list here.

LexFather

Where the hell did I say be a slave to these surveys? If you would read instead of angrily typing a response you would see I said you have to use their feedback. I didn't say ONLY use their feedback. Its part of the process, personal experience, talking to owners, reading forums, surveys, mag reviews= coming to a reasonable conclusion with many sources.

To omit a very tedious study that is seen by many automakers as the industry standard is completely foolish.

We have posted every JD survey we can find, from Asia to Germany to the U.k to the USA. Its not some conspiracy you think it is. When Lexus slipped in the rankings the general tone was it was accurate. We had people complaining about their vehicles in the forums and the survey seems to accurately portray these problems.

The SURVEY is completed by OWNERS. Its not an educated guess.

FKL

These "surveys" are only perceptions from the car brands in their given countries, sorry. How else do you explain the disparity between Audi in the US rankings and the German ones. VW's rankings in the American survey and their placement in the German one. These surveys are good to gauge perceptions of brands in a given country, but that's about it from where I see it. And I still fully stand by my last point - I've seen it here for myself when Buick somehow mysteriously out-Lexus-ed, Lexus.

Any educated car buyer won't use this trash in their car buying process solely, but these "results" are regularly used by brand lovers / trolls alike on all scopes of the web. They are used as justification why "European cars suck", "I will never buy euro-trash, look at the JD power ratings"...Yada yada yada, I don't have enough time to county on how many occasions I've read this bewildering garbage, espcially on kiddie Honda/Acura forums.

mmarshall

Although it helps, one does not necessarily have to be an owner, either, to note quality gains or losses over previous models . A number of them, especially for initial quality, can be noted just in reviews and test-drives. You and I, of course, already know that.

DustinV

One thing I have always wondered about is how exactly performance is measured. I believe there is a large difference between how Europeans and Americans view performance in a variety of cars.

A BMW 530i for example is considered a powerful car in Europe so it probably scores high marks in the JD Power European surveys in the performance category. Quite the opposite could be true in the US where its performance might be labeled as "adequate" (which, in my unbiased opinion, is seriously retarded because the 530i is a very good performer).

Performance is, however, subjective. I personally find the performance of my current Mercedes E230 to be more than adequate. I'm wondering why they even build the E280 or E350!


Kudos to Daihatsu, though. I love their Copen, but it is too small for me and my wife.

The G Man

Come on people, this is a ownership satisfaction survey, its a lot different from a initial quality survey or a long term reliability survey. Owner who paid $10000 for their Daihatsu are just happy that it runs and starts every morning. On the other hand, owners to paid 5 times as much expects a little more from their car.