That honor belongs to Fiat, the car brand owned by Fiat Chrysler (FCAU), according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, an independent national benchmark of consumer experiences of products and services sold to U.S. consumers. "More defects point to quality issues, and customers perceive the quality isn't up to the standards that they had seen in past years," David VanAmburg, ACSI's director, said. The auto industry recalled nearly 64 million vehicles last year because of safety issues, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier this year. Across the board, consumers rated their satisfaction with their cars at 79 points out of 100, or a decline of 3 percentage points from a year earlier. VanAmburg points out that automakers heavily discounted vehicles or offered incentives in the recession and recovery years, as a way to get consumers through the showroom doors. “Now that the economy is recovering, automakers don’t have to give us so much love on the price as they were doing in past years, and so we’re a little less happy as we reflect back on that past purchase,” VanAmburg said. With a score of 84, Lexus was unchanged from 2014, but Mercedes dropped three percent to 83, putting it in a tie for second with Acura and Lincoln. Only two — Acura (up 8 percent) and BMW (up 3 percent) — gained any ground, with the remaining dozen unchanged. Lexus took the top spot from Mercedes-Benz this year. BMW, Subaru and Toyota were just a point behind at 82. Hyundai (81) Buick, Cadillac, Honda, Mazda and Volkswagen (tied at 80) also scored above average. The domestic car industry hit a five-year low in the new ACSI survey, pulled down by Fiat Chrysler brands.
– Americans' level of satisfaction with their new cars is at its lowest point in more than a decade, and experts are blaming a record number of recalls and rising prices. The results of a national survey of more than 4,000 car buyers released today show an overall satisfaction level of 79 out of 100, NBC News reports. That's a 3.7% decline from 2014 and the lowest score since 2004. Of the 27 auto brands tracked by the survey, 15 showed a decline in customer satisfaction. Only two—Acura and BMW—showed any increase in satisfaction. CBS News reports the worst-rated cars—Fiat, Chrysler, and Jeep—are all owned by Fiat Chrysler, which also owns the low-scoring Dodge. The 64 million autos recalled last year appear to have hurt customer satisfaction. The founder of the survey tells NBC it's "alarming that so many [cars] have quality problems." And the increasing cost of cars—the average price is now more than $33,000—is coming as a surprise to people buying their first automobile in a decade. "We really become unhappy when we find any defect or are told we have to take our car in to have some kind of recall taken care of, even if it doesn't cost us anything," the director of the survey tells NBC. Overall, customers tend to be more satisfied with Asian- and European-made cars than their American-made counterparts.