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The best and worst car brands for servicing: 2019 JD Power report

Former local favourites Ford and Holden are struggling on the sales charts, and things aren't much better at the service desk.


Holden (770/1000) scored below the mass market average (788/1000) for customer service satisfaction, narrowly ahead of Jeep (769/1000), while Ford matched the industry average in a consumer satisfaction survey.

Despite the seemingly mediocre results, the latest study represents a modest improvement for both brands – Holden's result is 1.1 per cent better than it managed in 2018, while Ford improved 4.2 per cent to meet the mass market average.

Mitsubishi was Australia's lowest-performing brand (761/1000) among the 13 results published, finishing narrowly below Kia (766/1000) in JD Power's survey data. Nissan (783/1000), Volkswagen (781/1000) and Suzuki (777/1000) also fell below the industry average.

Japanese brands again owned the top three; Mazda (819/1000) topped the charts for the fourth year running, followed by Toyota (799/1000) and Honda (793/1000), with Korean brand Hyundai (790/1000) trailing slightly behind.

Subaru (789/1000) rounded out the top five, a significant improvement on its below-average result in 2018.

The JD Power Customer Service Index (CSI) is based on responses from 5624 mass market owners who bought their cars between February 2014 and June 2019, and took their vehicle to an authorised dealership for a service between February 2018 and June 2019.

Despite the small sample size, the CSI is for now the only publicly-available data surrounding service satisfaction.

Five factors play into the results: service quality, service initiation, vehicle pick-up, service advisor, and service facility quality.

JD Power also compiled data from 540 luxury vehicle owners, with Audi placing first. However the small sample size didn't support figures for Lexus, Range Rover or Volvo, instead only returning data for BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

BRAND SCORE (of a possible 1000)
Mazda819
Toyota799
Honda793
Hyundai790
Subaru789
Ford788
Mass Market Average788
Nissan783
Volkswagen781
Suzuki777
Holden770
Jeep769
Kia766
Mitsubishi761
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