Foreign brands swept the top rankings in a customer survey released today that gauged not only consumers’ quibbles and complaints about their vehicles, but also how they felt about them.
Honda Motor Co. was the top-rated automaker in the 2005 Total Value Study by the California consulting firm Strategic Vision Inc. BMW’s Mini Cooper was the highest-scoring vehicle, and Toyota Motor Corp.’s Scion brand racked up the best score for a single nameplate, beating out previous winner Lexus, also a Toyota brand.
The findings echo the results of other independent industry surveys, suggesting that domestic automakers are not yet delivering the winning mix of reliability, fuel-efficiency, affordability, prestige and overall attractiveness in their vehicles that some highly-rated foreign nameplates offer.
"You could list the hot products that Detroit has to offer without taking your other glove off," auto analyst David Healy at Burnham Securities said. "Detroit products are better executed, the quality is improving, but I think that as far as value for the price and appeal of the models, the imports still have the edge."
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