A new survey is out by the American Customer Satisfaction Index and they found that Cadillac and Toyota with their Lexus subsidiary have topped this year’s annual ranking of automakers.
Based on a scale of 100, Toyota was the only non-premium brand on the top five list tying with Cadillac and Lexus at a score of 87 out of 100. Lincoln and Mercedes-Benz were next at 86 with BMW at 11th place with a score of 83, making it the lowest mark for BMW since 1997 when the Bavarian make was rated at 80.
“The Toyota score is a surprise,” said Claes Fornell, who created the index in 1994. “Toyota makes a fair amount of fairly low-priced cars. For them to be that well-received is impressive, especially when you have a company like BMW scoring lower.”
The survey was conducted with about 70,000 customers and about 5,000 other studies. In the grand scheme of things, the auto industry’s rating average improved by one point to 83 out of 100 while on the opposite of the spectrum, Chrys’er ranked the lowest-rated brand at 76 out of 100.
Increases in scores were found with Mazda, Honda, Nissan, Kia and Hyundai. Volkswagen saw the largest increase while Ford and Chevrolet also experienced an increase, but not as substantial as Volkswagen’s.
- By: Chris Chin
Source: Automotive News
