Toyota, Ford Top Consumer Reports Car-Brand Perception Survey

Toyota remains the automotive brand with the highest perception among American consumers, according to an annual study by Consumer Reports Magazine, with Ford and Honda coming in close behind.

In a significant development domestic automotive brands accounted for half of the Car-Brand Perception Survey’s Top 10, according to the widely followed non-profit publication – with the California-based electric vehicle start-up Tesla Motors rounding out the list in tenth. The other domestic brands included Chevrolet, ranked fourth; Cadillac, at seventh; and Dodge, at ninth. The other brands in the Top 10 included Mercedes-Benz, ranked fifth, followed by sixth-ranked Volvo, and BMW in eighth which, in an unexpected development, saw a decline in its brand awareness score.

The survey is a compilation of a variety of factors covered in a random phone survey of more than 2,000 adult Americans. It explored how the respondents perceived each brand in seven categories: quality, safety, value, performance, design/style, technology/innovation, and environmentally friendly/green. The magazine’s editors stressed that the results of the study were not an indication of the actual qualities of any brand or its vehicles.

Toyota’s strong lead in the survey is particularly significant considering the maker’s problems of recent years, especially when it comes to safety issues. For the third time in the past four years, Toyota recalled more vehicles in 2012 than any other maker operating in the U.S. The study was conducted in early December, before that fact was formally confirmed by federal safety regulators but followed a significant number of recalls involving a broad range of Toyota products.

Significantly, brand perception does not appear to directly correlate with vehicle quality. Toyota’s Lexus brand, which routinely tops most quality charts, ranked just eleventh in the Consumer Reports survey, behind Tesla. The Toyota brand scored 133 points in the study, compared with just 50 for Lexus.

Meanwhile, Toyota’s youth-oriented brand Scion was stuck at the bottom of the list, tied with struggling Mitsubishi, with a score of just 6. Chrysler’s Ram truck scored only slightly better, at 7, followed by Fiat at 8.

The other brands in the Bottom 10 were Mini, Land Rover, Jaguar, Mazda, Jeep, and Porsche.

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