【分析解答题】

The Top 10Cars thatAmericans Hate

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 withAmerican auto giants General Motors and Ford all year. Sales for the entire industry were down 25.6 percent collectively in September as consumers grew nervous about making big-ticket purchases.
In good economic times and bad alike, however, there are some vehicles thatAmerican consumers seem to hate outright.And they’re not just the big SUVs that are currently out of favor. It turns out, the earsAmerican 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 JessicaCaldwell, manager of pricing and industry analysis atEdmunds. corn, 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 carsAmericans seem to hate aren’t necessarily bad cars. In fact, the industry victims are, for the most part, solid quality cars, according to J.D、Power andAssociates 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 theDodge Magnum, which is a wagon (American buyers gave up wagons for minivans a long time ago, then gave up minivans for SUVs); theAudiA3, which is a hatchback(有可向上开启天窗的汽车背部) ( consumers never cared much for them in the first place); and theAcura RL, which is just plain, says StephanieBrinley, auto analyst atAutoPacific, 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.
To generate our list of the carsAmericans hate, we looked at sales data for the 10 major vehicle segments defined by market research firm J.D、Power andAssociates. The sales data, provided byAutomotive 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 2008Automotive Performance,Execution and LayoutAPEAL) study measures owner delight with vehicle design, content 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 (超小型汽车)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.
Why the snub (冷落) The major reason could be that Hyundai models suffered from quality issues with the engine and transmission in the late 1990s (Kia, a relatively new brand to the U. S., is owned by Hyundai), yet those problems were overcome slowly but surely. Today the company even offers a 10-year/100,000-mile limited power train warranty to back up its improved-quality claim. Nevertheless, some consumers still view a car like the Kia Rio as a risk. The Kia brand as a whole only earned two rings in the J.D、Power 2008 overall study.
In some segments, like the midsize car, the competition is so fierce that very good car