Despite ongoing vehicle affordability concerns, today\u2019s new car buyers are happier with their purchases than ever before. Even more surprising? The satisfaction gap between mainstream vehicles and luxury brands is rapidly evaporating.<\/p>\n
In this episode of The AutoGuide Show, host Colum Wood (AutoGuide’s VP of Content) sits down with Frank Hanley, Senior Director of Automotive Benchmarking at J.D. Power, to break down the key findings from the 2026 U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study.<\/p>\n
In this video, we cover:<\/p>\n
Emotional Appeal vs. Reliability: How the APEAL study measures owner excitement and design satisfaction compared to the Initial Quality Study (IQS).<\/p>\n
The Vanishing Luxury Gap: Why mainstream brands are closing in on premium automakers in overall owner experience.<\/p>\n
Key Ownership Trends: The biggest factors driving overall vehicle satisfaction for 2026 model-year owners.<\/p>\n
Behind the Scenes at J.D. Power: Frank Hanley shares his role in benchmarking industry standards and what upcoming auto research to keep on your radar.<\/p>\n
Please show your support and subscribe! AutoGuide reviews the latest new cars with test drives, car comparisons and shootouts plus coverage of breaking auto industry news, auto shows, rumors, top 10 lists, and spy photos. Help shop for your new car with informative car buying tips and car recall news, and be entertained with feature stories, Top 10s and car review videos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite ongoing vehicle affordability concerns, today\u2019s new car buyers are happier with their purchases than ever before. Even more surprising?\n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/cars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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