New survey: The car brands that satisfy

German car owners have named Volvo as the most satisfying car brand to own.

Latest JD Power car ownership survey, conducted in Germany, ranks Scandinavian brand top for satisfaction.
German car owners have voted a non-German car brand as the most satisfying to own, according to the latest JD Power report.
Brands and makes of cars are ranked on a 1000 point scale, with Volvo scoring 841 to pip German brands Mercedes-Benz (second; 839 points), Audi (equal sixth; 820), BMW (eighth; 815) and Volkswagen, which fell below the industry average score of 807, ranking 12th with 806 points.
The lowest-scoring brands included General Motors-owned brand Chevrolet, which scored just 730 points to take 28th spot - 44 points behind its nearest competitor, Citroen (774). Mitsubishi (776), Daihatsu (777) and Smart (779) rounded out the bottom five. German GM brand Opel - which is scheduled to be launched in Australia in 2012 - also fared poorly, coming in 21st position with a score of 793 points.

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Rankings of individual models saw Mazda's 2 city car and 3 small car top their respective categories, while fellow Japanese manufacturer Honda took out the mid-size category with the Accord.
Mercedes-Benz's C-Class came in first ahead of BMW's 3-Series and Audi's A4 to top the compact luxury car category, with Benz also taking out the SUV segment with the M-Class narrowly beating Audi's Q7 and VW's Touareg.

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The JD Power study - which surveyed more than 17,000 owners of two-year-old vehicles - measures levels of satisfaction across four criteria with different weighting for each condition. The most important aspect is vehicle appeal, at 32 per cent, which encompasses performance, design, comfort and features; quality and reliability accounts for 26 per cent; ownership costs make up 22 per cent (it includes fuel consumption, insurance, servicing/repairs); with dealer service satisfaction accounting for 17 per cent of the total score.
The JD Power report found that overall satisfaction levels have fallen from an average 813 in 2010 to 807 in 2011, with company spokesman Brian Walters saying the results should serve as a wake-up call to manufacturers.
"The decline in vehicle quality and reliability, coupled with the decline in vehicle appeal, is an important reminder to manufacturers that the product is a critical driver of ownership satisfaction and will remain a key differentiator among brands in the increasingly competitive automotive market in Germany," Walters says.
"The auto market in Germany may be 125 years old, but owners in Germany still require specific performance levels and reward the brands that deliver it."