America’s Worst Car Brand

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 22, 9:30AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Car prices are so high that many Americans cannot afford a new one. The average price of a new car recently topped $40,000. And car loans can carry an interest rate well above 5%. For used cars, this can be closer to 10%. These are why people should search for the best-rated cars available. (These 15 cars hold their value the longest.)

American Customer Satisfaction Index Automobile Study 2022-2023 was just released. It is based on a survey of 8,941 customers between July 2022 and June 2023. The study was comprehensive. It looked at braking, steering, performance, dependability, comfort, the quality of the exterior and the interior, and warranties. It also looked at each brand’s app.

Cars were rated on a scale of 0 to 100. The industry average was 79. The results were divided into luxury cars and mass-market cars. The average for luxury cars was 81, and for mass-market cars the figure was 79.

The brand with the lowest rating was Chrysler, at 71. Global auto giant Stellantis owns it. The other two worst-rated brands are made by Stellantis as well. Pickup brand Ram had a grade of 74, as did Jeep.
[nativounit]
Chrysler was once one of America’s largest car brands. For decades, it was part of the Big Three, along with Ford and General Motors. Founded in 1925, Chrysler once owned other large brands like Plymouth.
[wallst_email_signup]
Chrysler has fallen on hard times. It sells only two minivans and one car. The minivans, a type of car Chrysler invented, are the Pacifica and Pacifica Hybrid Plug-In. It also sells the aging Chrysler 300. The brand has so few options it is hard to imagine why people would visit its dealers. The American Customer Satisfaction Index results give people another reason to stay away.
[recirclink id=1213143]
These are America’s worst car brands:

Chrysler (71)
Ram (74)
Jeep (74)
VW (75)
Dodge (75)
Nissan (76)
Kia (77)
Ford (77)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.