You Meet The Most Loyal People In A Honda (Showroom)

The 2010 JD Power owner loyalty ratings are out. The no-surprises? Honda, Toyota, Lexus, of course. The happy surprise? Ford is now tied with Honda for the loyalty crown, and the Hyundai/Kia axis now sits firmly in the top half.

On the other hand, if you’re a Saab dealer, Jaguar salesman, or if your daddy was unlucky enough to take the Nissan/Infiniti axis instead of the ToyLexus one…

I’d like to hear your theories about why certain manufacturers placed where they did, and I’m sure you will oblige me, but I can’t help but have a few theories of my own:

• I can’t help but think that VW is sitting in the bottom half of the rankings solely due to their utterly loathsome dealer service. By and large, they now make pretty decent vehicles and their owner body tends to have a cultural/emotional attachment to the brand.
• Why is Scion retention so low? The naysayers will point at the crummy new xB, but perhaps it’s just that the Scionsters are returning to the dealership and leaving with Camrys.
• How is it that OMG FAIL LOLZ BAYLEEN FACE WHAILZ Lincoln is doing a slightly better job of customer retention than whiz-bang supercharged Cadillac, even though Cadillac still has the DTS to pull in the AARP repeaters?
• Shouldn’t Lexus, with its gold-toned customer service and its faux-upscale social image, be doing a better job at this than the local Toyota dealer, home of the sullen serviceman and the denied warranty claim?
• Mercury is beating Buick, even though Buick is the revitalized face of General Motors and Mercury has been officially killed stone dead. And they are both beating Chrysler. Hmm.

As for the Saab four-percent figure, I’d like to think that is all people who crashed their ’78 Saab Turbos, sustained significant head injuries, and wandered out of the local shop with a 9-7x Aero, but I could be wrong…