Toyota's Lexus luxury car division again topped all car lines in a widely watched survey of customer satisfaction - but its lead over rival Japanese automaker Infiniti is shrinking.
Lexus had 175 points in the J.D. Power and Associates 1993 Customer Satisfaction Index released this week, to 170 for Nissan's Infiniti and 156 for General Motors Corps.'s Saturn cars. German carmakers Mercedes-Benz and Audi completed the top five with scores of 149 and 147 respectively.The survey measures customer satisfaction with dealerships and the repair and reliability records of cars and light trucks after one year of ownership. It gives manufacturers bragging rights and an advertising tool - Lexus's recent victory in Power's Initial Quality Survey led to three full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal.
Lexus also topped Infiniti in the 1992 customer satisfaction survey but by a broader margin than this year, scoring 179 to Infiniti's 167. The cars tied for the lead in the 1991 survey.
The latest survey was based on responses from more than 31,000 car and light-truck owners.
The 1993 index also showed Japanese automakers continue to receive higher marks from customers than domestic manufacturers. But the gap between domestic automakers as a group and Japanese automakers continues to drop - from 25 index points in the 1986 study to an average of nine this year.
And as in other studies conducted by J.D. Power, Japan's grip on claims of superior quality in manufacturing and better dealer handling of customers is slipping.
"It's not enough to have a bulletproof car," said George Borst, group vice president and general manager of Lexus. "Your dealerships have to be bulletproof, too."
Saturn's overall rank in the latest survey was the same as last year, but it lost four overall index points in customer handling, which Power said accounts for 40 percent of the competitive differences in car lines.
In all, 16 car lines finished above the industry average of 135 index points and 16 finished below. Six Japanese, five domestic and five European lines were above average. Nine U.S., two European, four Japanese and one Korean car line were below average.
Among light-truck nameplates, Toyota finished first for the third year in a row. Its 165 index points was a 14-point improvement over last year. GM's Oldsmobile, which sells only limited numbers of sport utility trucks and minivans, finished second with 146 points and Chrysler Corp.'s Dodge division finished third with 142 points.
Eight truck lines finished above the 138 index point average and nine finished below.
With the gap in product quality between Japanese and domestic makes all but closed, the battle for the customer's heart and dollar has shifted to how well the dealership does its job, said J.D. Power III, president and founder of the Agoura Hills, Calif., marketing firm, company that bears his name.
"We are now entering a period where the overall consistency and level of dealership customer satisfaction and service are the strategic distribution issues facing each manufacturer," Power said.
In fact, 60 percent of all the differences in relative satisfaction can be traced to vehicle repair and reliability - such as how well the car runs in the first place and how the customer is treated at the dealership when repairs are needed.