Cars and Drivers

Fiat Chrysler Brands Savaged in Consumer Reports Survey

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: December 28, 2016 8:45 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:22 pm

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) brands usually do poorly in surveys of car quality. In the Consumer Reports’ Annual Owner Satisfaction Survey, all four of the company’s brands did poorly, and two did very poorly.

The survey covered 29 brands. The measure was:

Our brand rankings represent owner sentiment across each brand’s product line. (Model satisfaction is determined by the percentage of owners who responded “definitely yes” to the question of whether they would buy the same vehicle if they had it to do all over again.) To determine brand love—or disdain—we took a straight average of the satisfaction score for each brand’s models.

Fiat ranked 29th, Jeep 25th, Dodge 23rd and Ram 17th. However:

Meanwhile, Ram, a brand that sells just pickup trucks and vans, took a huge tumble from last year’s 5th place ranking to 17th.

Fiat Chrysler cars and light trucks have made similar grades in J.D. Power and American Customer Satisfaction Index studies.

Oddly, Fiat Chrysler executives have barely acknowledged the problem, and they have not set out any road map toward improvements. That should not give owners, dealers or prospective buyers much comfort.