VW’s appeal goes Up as European brands top customer satisfaction survey

For the first time ever, European brands have overtaken their Japanese opposition in the JD Power customer satisfaction rankings. The survey, carried out in the UK by the US-based JD Power research company in association with What Car? magazine, placed Jaguar joint top brand with Lexus, while the Volkswagen Up was the best individual model overall. The worst -performing model and brand both carried a Chevrolet badge as the US marque, which is now in the process of abandoning the European market, came bottom, as did its Spark city car.

It’s the second year in a row that Jaguar has been the best-performing marque in the survey, and only the second time in a dozen years that Lexus has either come second or had to share the top spot.

In the individual vehicle categories, though, it was a comprehensive victory for the Volkswagen Group. Of the 10 best-performing cars overall, VW Group cars took the top three places, with the VW Up in first place, the VW Golf Plus in second and the Skoda Yeti in third.The Scirocco and Tiguan came fourth and fifth while the Skoda Octavia came joint seventh.

“Naturally we are delighted with this result,” said Simon Elliot, MD of Volkswagen Group Ireland. “It shows that in terms of reliability and ownership satisfaction that our cars as a group are first-class. And with a range of our brands scoring so highly, it illustrates that the same exact standards of quality are applied right through our brands.”

The individual category winners were the Volkswagen Up as the best city car; Citroën's DS3 took small car honours, the VW Golf Plus took best small family car, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class took best family car and the Volvo V70 was judged the best executive car. The VW Scirocco was the best fun car, the Kia Venga took best small MPV, while the Volkswagen Touran was best MPV. Skoda's Yeti took the SUV category while the Lexus RX was the best large SUV.

Citroën was probably the brand with the most mixed results. While the DS3 came top in the small car category, three other models, the C1, C3 and C4, were in the bottom 10 cars overall. “The Citroën C1, C3 and C4 generated more than 63,400 sales during the period of registration surveyed by JD Power,” said a spokesperson from Citroën. “All three remain amongst our biggest sellers alongside the multi-award winning DS3, which has been rated as the Best Small Car for the second year running. Customer satisfaction is a priority for the brand and we are actively working towards replicating the result with DS3 across our entire model range.”

Other notably poor performers included the Fiat Punto, Alfa Romeo Mito, BMW X1, Ford Ka, Smart ForTwo, Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Spark. It's worth pointing out, though, that the JD Power survey isn't exclusively about vehicle reliability. That facet makes up only 22 per cent of a vehicle's overall marks. The other categories are vehicle appeal (31 per cent), ownership costs (25 per cent) and dealer service satisfaction (22 per cent).

What Car? editor Jim Holder said: "The Volkswagen Group deserves special congratulations for having six cars in the top 10. It is clearly building cars that have showroom appeal and, even more importantly, deliver in real life. Cars that perform in customer satisfaction surveys are a great recommendation for car buyers, and act as a great barometer to a car's quality."

The survey included more than 15,000 car owners, covering more than 550 million kilometres.