Kia topped the rankings for initial quality of new vehicles sold in the United States based on owner responses for the second consecutive year, business consultancy J.D. Power said on Wednesday.
Hyundai Motor’s Genesis cars came second in the survey, followed by sports luxury brand Porsche.
Fiat Chrysler’s Ram and the Ford brand shared fourth position. In fact, American brands outperformed foreign brands as a whole for the second year.
Fiat, Jaguar Land Rover’s luxury car brand Jaguar, and Volvo were at the bottom.
BMW’s Mini was the most improved brand, with owners reporting fewer problems than in 2016. Ford was also among the brands with strong improvement in quality, the study said.
Brands of Hyundai, General Motors and BMW were among the highest ranked in the survey.
According to the study, initial quality across the board has never been better.
“Automotive manufacturers are responding to consumer feedback and producing vehicles of the highest quality,” said Dave Sargent, vice president of global automotive at J.D. Power. “The industry has improved significantly in each of the past three years. Today’s vehicles have more things that could go wrong but fewer things that actually do go wrong.”
J.D. Power received more than 80,000 responses from owners of new 2017 model-year vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. In a 233-question survey, the owners reported problems encountered with their purchases.
Infotainment systems (aka audio, communications, entertainment and navigation, or ACEN) continue to be the area that registers the most consumer complaints. But even that area was improved over last year.
Reporting by Arunima Banerjee
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