mustangcat

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/auto...-car-shoppers/

Safety, quality, value, performance, design/style, technology/innovation, and environmentally friendly/green.

While consistently a dominant brand, Toyota has lost significant ground to Ford in consumer regard over the last two years, according to Consumer Reports' 2011 Car Brand Perception Survey. Now, the two brands rank a close first and second in overall perception, with Ford having a clear advantage in the factors that matter most to car shoppers: Safety, quality, and value.

The scores in our survey reflect how consumers perceive each brand in seven categories: safety, quality, value, performance, design/style, technology/innovation, and environmentally friendly/green. Measuring across those categories gives us the total brand perception and does not directly represent the actual qualities of any brand's vehicles.

Ford has advanced by 35 points over the last two years to accumulate 144 total points this year. Meanwhile, Toyota has plummeted by 46 points and clings to a narrow lead this year with 147 points. Honda, in third place, has also lost ground, sliding 28 points since 2008.

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A brand's reputation as being environmentally friendly or green continues to become a less important factor to car buyers. Only 28 percent of our respondents found it to be an important factor when considering a car. This is down by 4 percentage points since last year and by 12 points since 2008. This drop is probably a sign of the leaner economic times and unwillingness to spend more for green technologies.

Toyota still leads the environmentally friendly/green factor by a large margin, with a score of 46, compared to Ford, in second place at 18. Without that big Toyota victory in the green category, Ford would have clearly claimed the top overall score.

Best and worst in brand perception

The chart below shows the overall scores for the top and bottom 10 brands, according to Consumer Reports' 2011 Car Brand Perception Survey. Overall scores are an aggregate, reflecting a brand's total perception level across seven areas. They are rounded to the nearest whole number. The top five brands in each area are listed on the Brand perception by category pages.

Brand
Brand
Toyota
Isuzu
Ford
Suzuki
Honda
Mitsubishi
Chevrolet
Land Rover
BMW
Saab
Mercedes-Benz
Jaguar
Volvo
Mercury
Lexus
Jeep
Cadillac
Mini
Subaru
Volkswagen

Consumer perception has many influences, from hands-on experience and word of mouth to media reports and marketing. Because it may take time for experience and external influences to shape perceptions, they can be a lagging indicator and a predictor of future behavior.

JIM5.0

Ford has worked very hard to improve the quality of their cars. Some are still lemons form the factory (just my opinion), and others are true gems, like our 'Stangs! Also, Ford trucks are also great, the F #50 series (the Super Duties are really nice, up there with Chevys in my opinion).

Toyota made a mistake in their move to become the world's largest car manufacturer: They sacrificed quality in favor of massive amounts of numbers!
In the automotive industry, that is an axiom: Haste makes waste!
And worse, to also cut corners, they approved quality-sacrificing measures o keep costs down while pushing to produce a larger number of cars.

95 BLOWN GT

old myths die hard... my mom says foreign cars are better and it drives me crazy...its like talkin politics.....dont get me started.