• by Karl Greenberg , January 7, 2010

Swerving from its usual route of offering objective product reviews to consumers, Consumer Reports occasionally offers some subjective consumer impressions for marketers.

In its latest Car Brand Perception study, the impressions are good indeed for Toyota, Chevrolet, Ford, and Subaru. Toyota topped the ranking of auto brands based on positive owner perception, and the latter three brands all saw a 30-point increase in their overall owner-perception scores versus the 2009 study.

In the survey-based study -- which looks at owner perception based on things like vehicle safety, quality, value, and performance -- Ford is now in second place, having leapfrogged Honda. Chevrolet has risen from ninth place to fourth place. Consumer Reports says Subaru's 39-point increase was the largest of any brand, and almost double its 2009 score. Subaru is now in ninth place, up from 18th in last year's study.

The top 10 brands are Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chevrolet, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Cadillac, Subaru, and Lexus. The firm says the two brands that got the worst owner-perception scores were Hummer and Saab, which GM will either sell or kill.

Rik Paul, Consumer Reports auto editor, points out that consumer perception is far from objective, is frequently shaped by reliability issues from bygone years, news, and marketing, and often reflects amorphous prejudices of various kinds. But, said Paul in a release, "The brands that can clearly deliver on core purchase factors will make lasting impressions."

Most respondents gave Volvo the nod as the leader in safety. Ford, which still uses Volvo technology and platforms for vehicles, came in second. Subaru was third, followed by Toyota and Honda.

Also not surprisingly, Toyota led for owner perception of vehicle quality. And Honda, not surprisingly, was second. Ford rose five percentage points to third place in perception of quality. The firm says that although its latest Consumer Reports reliability data show that Mercedes-Benz has improved in quality, owner consensus suggests otherwise: The brand moved from third place in last year's study to fifth.

In value, Honda and Toyota are tied for first place, while Ford moved from fifth place last year to third place, and Chevrolet rose past Hyundai and Kia into fourth place. Subaru entered the top ten value brands.

Another consumer-perception no-brainer was that owners consider Toyota, parent of Prius, the most environmentally friendly brand. The automaker has marketed its hybrid vehicles heavily over the past year. But Honda, which reintroduced the Insight hybrid car last year, dropped eight points. Ford -- which introduced Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids -- moved up, as did Subaru. Also high on the list for green was Chevrolet, which has been talking up the Volt plug-in hybrid, and corporate average fuel economy of its portfolio of cars and crossovers.

The study was elaborated from a random nationwide telephone survey of 1,752 adults in households that had at least one car. The firm calculated overall brand perception as an index of the total number of times that the particular make was mentioned as an exemplar across all seven categories, divided by the total unaided mentions, per the firm.