Ford Ranked Above Average In 2022 U.S. APEAL Study

July 21, 2022 10:05 am

Ford has ranked fairly well in some more recent studies, including a brief takeover of the top spot in Kelley Blue Book’s Brand Watch Report and a fifth place finish in the 2021 J.D. Power APEAL Study in the mass market segment. Now the 2022 version of the APEAL Study has been released, and Ford has once again ranked above the segment average, but slipped to eighth overall in terms of mass market automakers.

Ford finished with a score of 845 out of 1,000, which ranked it behind a number of its rivals including Dodge (882), Ram (863), GMC (856), Chevy (851), Kia (849), Mini (848), and Hyundai (846), while the automaker tied with Jeep and Nissan and ranked ahead of Buick (843), Mitsubishi (840), Mazda (839), Volkswagen (839), Subaru (833), Toyota (831), Chrysler (829), and Honda (824), as well as the segment average of 841.

J.D. Power’s APEAL Study measures owners’ emotional attachment and their level of excitement with their new vehicle by asking them to consider 37 different attributes ranging from the sense of comfort they feel when climbing into the driver’s seat to the exhilaration they get when they step on the accelerator. Those responses are then used to calculate an overall APEAL Index score measured on a 1,000-point scale. The 2022 U.S. APEAL Study is based on responses from 84,165 owners of new 2022 model-year vehicles who were surveyed after 90 days of ownership. This year, overall satisfaction dropped by one point, its first decline since 2014 and just the fifth in 27 years.

“The most important factor leading to the industry decline this year is owners’ perception of their vehicle’s fuel economy,” said David Amodeo, director of global automotive at J.D. Power. “The study was fielded as fuel prices were experiencing a meteoric rise, and that pinch at the pump is conveyed in lower vehicle satisfaction. Battery-electric vehicles have not been negatively affected by the increase in fuel costs but do have issues related to battery range and charging time.”

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By Brett Foote

Brett's lost track of all the Fords he's owned over the years and how much he's spent modifying them, but his current money pits include an S550 Mustang and 13th gen F-150.