Each year, when the big car owner surveys are published, car companies clamour to issue press releases with their own particular spin on the results. As long as the results are favourable to them, that is.
Those who don't get good results tend to stay silent or, when pushed, point to other statistics that place their products in a better light. The reality, of course, is that there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
So, who do we believe? Which surveys are the most reliable and which, more importantly, reflect the most accurate standing of particular cars from a consumer viewpoint?
Jerry Flint of Forbes business commentary unit identifies one of the main problems with surveys through the example of Ford and Mercury models which are made in the same factory, on the same assembly line and by the same workers with the same components - yet they rate very differently when it comes to customer satisfaction ratings.
"I think it's because any car, even from a highly ranked manufacturer, can have trouble," says Flint. "I also believe that treatment at the dealership has a lot to do with the owner's feelings. Then there's also the question of what's a quality issue, what's a design problem and what's due to negligence on the part of the car owner."
Car companies will use any study or survey to suit their own ends, so it's perhaps wisest to take what they say with a pinch of salt. I rate very few surveys and tend to rely on the few that have a significant consumer record and a wide reach.
Top of the list here is the J.D. Power/TopGear annual owners survey, in which Britain's national vehicle registration agency takes part to ensure a broad representation. This year it will have almost 40,000 responses from owners of almost every car on the British market. The fact that the British market tends to mirror our own makes it even more valuable.
The annual Which? magazine survey is also a very broad canvas and allows the potential buyer to make up their minds about a particular car with all the information they need.
I also like the fact that the BBC survey tells you exactly how the survey was conducted and what the key questions asked of respondents were. Respondents are actually asked for personal and registration details so that the accuracy and integrity of the results can be verified.
There are four key questions covering overall satisfaction with build quality and reliability, driving experience, customer care and ownership costs, according to TopGear. Satisfaction levels are registered by ticking either: "extremely dissatisfied", "dissatisfied", "neutral" or "completely satisfied". Each car's score is then made up from the key answers, with a weighting of 30 per cent placed on each for build quality and reliability, 27 per cent for the driving experience, 16 per cent for customer care and the remaining 27 per cent for ownership costs. After all that, you will obviously want to be reminded of the winner of last year's top slot - Lexus.
So it's important then to be aware of the nature of a survey, the questions asked, who paid for it and how the conclusions were arrived at before you trust it. Garel Rhys, professor of motor industry economics at Cardiff University Business School, agrees that people should be sceptical of what they are being told. "There was one survey published that showed German cars had slipped right down the quality table," he says, "but if you read the survey carefully it showed that German cars were packed with electronics which were giving trouble at the time. The reality is that, when it came to overall considerations such as build quality and safety and so on, the German cars were still superior to most others. The whole thing was quiet illogical."
Surveys are hugely important to car companies when they get good results, says Rhys. "What a lot of people forget is that there are no really bad cars out there anymore - the car is about as good now as it is humanly possible to make it. The car companies take these surveys so seriously because they seize on any opportunity to make customers think their product is better than the others. And buyers have fickle loyalty these days".
He is critical of surveys that depend too much on expectations. "When questions are based solely on expectation, you will find cars such as Skodas coming to the top because people didn't expect them to be as good as they are."
Rhys agrees that people can be biased against a particular car because of the way they were treated by the dealer. "The dealer is the interface between the customer and the manufacturer and the manufacturer is often let down by the dealer".
Just how far out surveys can be is illustrated by the fact that in one survey in the US BMW's new Mini was ranked 2nd out of 30 brands in one survey and 25th of 28 in another. Apparently it dropped way down in the latter because of the fact that its cup holder could not accommodate a tall latte, the speedometer was mounted in the centre of the dashboard and the ride was bouncy. "Something you would expect in a 12-foot front wheel-drive car", the chief executive of Mini in the US dryly told USA Today at the time.
Probably the best way to finally make up your mind about what brand or model you want to spend your money on is to get a hold of the Which? consumer report and the JD Power/TopGear reports and compare notes. You will get a pretty independent perspective and the help of almost 80,000 car owners in making the big decision.