The top 10 cars that Americans hate

By Jacqueline Mitchell

updated 12:28 p.m. ET Nov. 2, 2008

Times are so difficult for the auto industry that even Toyota and Honda have now experienced the kinds of double-digit sales dips that have been plaguing American auto giants General Motors and Ford all year. Sales for the entire industry were down 26.6 percent collectively in September as consumers grew skittish about making big-ticket purchases.

In good economic times and bad alike, however, there are some vehicles that American consumers seem to abhor outright. And they're not just the big, gas-guzzling SUVs that are currently out of favor. It turns out, the cars American consumers hate the most come in many different shapes and sizes, and they're disliked for a wide array of reasons.

"Buyers make the same choices and buy the safe brand," says Jessica Caldwell, manager of pricing and industry analysis at Edmunds.com, an automotive consumer information Web site. "They are not thinking outside the box and buying something that may stand out as an odd purchase."

In other words, the cars Americans seem to hate aren't necessarily bad cars. In fact, the industry underdogs are, for the most part, solid quality cars, according to J.D. Power and Associates ratings on quality, design and performance.

There are usually just one or two elements or features that throw consumers off, as is the case with the Dodge Magnum, which is a wagon (American buyers gave up wagons for minivans a long time ago, then gave up minivans for SUVs); the Audi A3, which is a hatchback (consumers never cared much for them in the first place); and the Acura RL, which is just plain, vanilla-looking, says Stephanie Brinley, auto analyst at AutoPacific, Inc., an automotive marketing and product consulting firm.

Car buyers are rightfully picky. From models that have quality issues (real or perceived) to simple design elements that lack aesthetic appeal, in each major vehicle class there's at least one car U.S. consumers tend to steer clear of.

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To generate our list of the cars Americans hate, we looked at sales data for the 10 major vehicle segments defined by market research firm J.D. Power and Associates. The sales data, provided by Automotive News, a trade publication, spans 2006, 2007 and the first nine months of 2008. The vehicles with the lowest sales in their class made the list.

We then looked at J.D. Power's consumer ratings in two studies. The 2008 Initial Quality study reports buyer satisfaction with a vehicle in the first 90 days of ownership in terms of mechanical defects and malfunctions, as well as ease of using a particular feature. The 2008 Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) study measures owner delight with vehicle design, content, layout and performance following the first 90 days of ownership. In both studies, a ring rating is used with five rings as the highest and two rings for the lowest.

Some vehicles that earned five rings made the list, meaning not all high-quality cars are instant hits with consumers. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the subcompact car segment, the Kia Rio earned five rings in both J.D. Power studies, but only 92,087 were sold in the measured period. The Rio even earns better quality ratings than the segment sales-leading Toyota Yaris, which saw sales of 243,602 in the same time frame.

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