Are you searching for the best phone, laptop, home, vacation, or another essential consumer product in 2021? Then believe me, the more expensive it is, the better and more satisfying it will be. Of course, there can be no guarantees, but the general rule is that the more you pay, the higher the quality of the product you will get. However, this is no longer the case for new cars.
The traditional and leading (but perhaps no longer) manufacturers from Germany and the United Kingdom, the capitals of the world’s premium cars, are not among the top 10 new vehicles to own in 2021. Instead, modest brands like Kia and Skoda, Hyundai, Mazda, Toyota, Vauxhall, Volvo, and SEAT appear.
The top-rated premium German cars for driving pleasure, the Audi Q3 and the Mercedes A-Class, didn’t even make it into the top 20. And although MG, as a company, ranks last in independent brand ratings this week, the MG ZS has a higher or significantly higher rating than 14 Audi, BMW, and Mercedes Premion cars. In other words, a comparatively lower-tier Chinese car outperformed countless luxury German cars.
The pattern changes slightly when attention shifts from the top 10 individual cars to the top 10 brands. Humble Asian players—Kia, Mazda, Toyota, Honda, and Mitsubishi—dominate the top 10 in the manufacturer rankings to an undeniable degree. Porsche, the German specialist in sports cars, incredibly excels in taking the No. 1 spot with consistently high scores. Tesla makes a welcome appearance, while Volvo and Lexus also sneak in. But more importantly, so does Jaguar, which I understand means that the brand and badge are pleasant or beloved, even though, like Tesla, owners report a rather high failure rate in the brand’s cars.
However, people have decided that just as the top three German premium car firms no longer produce models that resonate as well with their owners as one might expect, Mercedes, BMW, and Audi no longer qualify as top-10 car companies. Harsh. But true.
