Author Archive: George Peterson

Owners of the 2012 Honda Odyssey rate the vehicle Most Ideal Minivan in AutoPacific's 2012 Ideal Vehicle Award research. Odyssey also won AutoPacific's 2012 Vehicle Satisfaction Award. Winning both awards in the same year is an impressive achievement.

Who will win?  Front-wheel drive? Rear-wheel drive?  All-wheel drive?  Some don’t care who wins!  And we have the enthusiasts, who begrudge anything with front-wheel drive and performance in the same sentence.

Let’s fast forward five years…

Mercedes' top of the line SUV, the 7-passenger GL, is new for 2013. As the top selling premium luxury sport utility vehicle, GL certainly is a healthy profit contributor to parent company Daimler AG. Built at Mercedes-Benz Tuscaloosa, Alabama assembly plant, 53% of GL production is sold in the United States. The 2013 GL is the second generation GL and continues to be derived from the platform that also underpins the 5-passenger ML. About 80% of the GL is all new for its second generation.

The demise of the personal use pickup has been well documented, what with fuel prices making the urban cowboy think twice about driving a gas swilling truck to get himself (and just himself) to and from the office.

Psychographics are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. Each year, AutoPacific includes a battery of questions in the New Vehicle Satisfaction Survey that allows us to determine what the psychographic profile of each brand and model. The results are often fascinating, or simply obvious, but confirming perceptions you might have had about a brand.

The top satisfying car, and top rated Premium Luxury Car for 2011 and 2012 is the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the sedan flagship of the Mercedes lineup. The S-Class scores top of class satisfaction ratings in 33 of 48 attributes contributing to AutoPacific’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award. This is a gargantuan feat.

The top satisfying car in the Aspirational Luxury Car Class for 2012 is the Mercedes-Benz C-Class. The C-Class wins not by achieving top scores in many categories in AutoPacific’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award research, but by having a solid performance in most.

The top Large Car for 2012 is the Chrysler 300, the sedan flagship of the Chrysler lineup. The owners of the Chrysler 300 give the car satisfaction scores at top of its class in 11 of 48 attributes contributing to AutoPacific’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award research.

The top satisfying Premium Mid-Size Car is the all-new 2012 Volkswagen Passat. That Volkswagen can pull off this feat in its first year of an all-new design of a car assembled in an all-new assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee is remarkable. It normally takes a couple of years to fine tune the process. The owners of the new Passat gave the car class-leading satisfaction ratings in 21 of 48 attributes that contribute to AutoPacific’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award.

Owners of the Subaru Legacy give the car top satisfaction marks for the second year in a row. Legacy owners gave the Legacy top satisfaction ratings for 25 of 48 attributes contributing to AutoPacific’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award research.