Porsche, Hyundai Rule Car-Owner Satisfaction Survey

Porsche is the top brand for owner satisfaction, with Hyundai the top non-premium brand, per a new study by auto-industry experts J.D. Power.

The German automaker was the highest-ranked nameplate, for the 10th consecutive year, in a survey of 86,000 new buyers who’d owned and driven their new vehicles for 90 days.

Porsche scored a high of 882 out of a possible 1,000 points by drivers who were asked to evaluate their cars in 77 different areas, in the survey of Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout, also known as APEAL.

Porsche’s Cayenne was named top Midsize Premium SUV, while its Boxter took the Compact Premium Sporty Car category and its 911 the Midsize Premium Sporty Car.

Hyundai was named best non-premium brand overall. Its Accent won best Small Car honors.

Domestic brands were runners-up.

The top U.S. brand overall was Lincoln, running behind six European and Japanese nameplates.

Dodge’s Challenger, Charger and Dart won in their category awards. Also winning in multiple segments were Audi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan.

The top ten winners overall, in order, were Porsche, Jaguar, Audi, Land Rover, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Lincoln, Cadillac and Infiniti.

J.D. Power also conducts an annual Initial Quality Study (IQS) survey, asking new owners to report problems experienced during their first 90 days of ownership. Hyundai was named top non-premium brand in that survey, too, becoming the first brand in the history of the surveys to win in both the IQS and APEAL studies in the same year.

The ten brands scoring lowest of the 33 companies tracked were Ford, Nissan, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Scion, Fiat, Subaru, Jeep and Mitsubishi.

This article appeared in print in the July 28th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.