Lincoln Winner, VW Loser in Happy-Customer Index

Lincoln is the big winner and Volkswagen the big loser in the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index that measures how happy consumers are with their purchases.

Ford’s luxury brand Lincoln brand may only place fifth in U.S. luxury-vehicle says, but it captures the ACSI’s top spot with an improved score of 87. Honda claims second place (86). Toyota and BMW tie for third at 85.

The most notable decline is for VW, which is embroiled in an emissions-cheating scandal. In a year of improving customer satisfaction, Volkswagen drops to 78, tied with Jeep for the lowest index score among mass-market vehicles.

“The combination of fines and fallen stock price are a big hit to Volkswagen’s finances, but it may prove even harder to recover from the reputational hit the company will take for deceiving customers and the general public,” says David VanAmburg, director of University of Michigan-affiliated ACSI. “Many customers or would-be customers could be turned-off of VW for life, and it’s hard to put a value on that.”

Ironically, Audi, VW’s luxury brand, improved its ACSI standing, going from 78 in 2015 to 83 in 2016

Customer satisfaction with vehicles in general is up 3.8% to 82 on ACSI’s 100-point scale. Luxury cars long have dominated the satisfaction rankings, but the top tier is now evenly split between mass-market and luxury vehicles, with GMC (84), Chevrolet (83) and Ford (81) scoring relatively strong. All domestic automakers improved overall this year.

“The rise of mass-market vehicles may well be at the expense of luxury brands in the sense that buyers now see little differentiation between luxury cars and regular ones,” says Claes Fornell, ACSI chairman and founder.

The ACSI report is based on 3,776 customer surveys collected in the second quarter of 2016. Click here for a download of the full report.

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