The Rolling Stones once waxed lyrical about how they couldn’t “get no satisfaction” no matter how hard they tried. Well, according to a Consumer Reports study it appears that The Rolling Stones were not Toyota Prius owners.
Consumer Reports gauges customer satisfaction by the percentage of owners that would want another exact model if they had the chance to go through the buying process again.
Prius owners are tops. Rounding out the top three most satisfying automobiles to own are the Chevrolet Corvette ZO6 and Mini Clubman with over 90% of respondents saying they would buy another one. There were four versions of the Mini; two of the Corvette; and four BMW 3 series variants that rounded out the top of the list.
The results were taken from 425,000 respondents to the annual Consumer Reports Automotive Ownership Survey. The exact wording used in the survey was, “considering all factors (price, performance, reliability, comfort, enjoyment) would you get this car if you had it to do all over again?”
Hmmm. One the other side of the coin, which cars were least satisfying to own according to the Consumer Reports survey? It appears that this was not a good year to own an SUV or truck. The V6 4wd Jeep Commander SUV came out at the bottom of the list followed closely by the Chevy Equinox and Chevy Colorado. Let’s hope that Congress didn’t get a look at those numbers before they signed over all of those bailout loan checks.
Of the automakers with the nastiest and least satisfying cars it appears that The Big Three (ala General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) had quite a stellar showing. The bottom 20 cars were made by GM (with 11 entries), Chrysler (with seven), Ford (with only two) and one apiece from Volvo, Kia, and Mazda.
So what sort of advice would a Toyota Prius give to all those vehicles that are giving their owners so little of that hard to find satisfaction? Perhaps a Prius would take a line from the Janet Jackson song, “Nasty.” Because we all know that no one likes a “nasty” car:
“I am not a Prude/ I just want some respect/So close my doors if you want me to respond/Because Fuel Efficiency is my Middle Name/My last name is reliability/No, my first name isn’t boring/ It’s Toyota/Toyota Prius if you’re nasty!”
Our view? While we realize that cars don’t actually sing (yet) about their capabilities, strengths and actions all of these attributes speak volumes about how we perceive them. Whether or not you have a “satisfying” or “nasty” car, one way to tell the world about your car is to fill out the Consumer Reports annual Satisfaction survey.