As new-vehicle shoppers continue to rise, they perceive Honda’s as the best buy across numerous segments.
At least that is the consensus from Kelley Blue Book’s 2024 Consumer Choice Awards. These awards—formerly known as the Brand Image Awards—are based on annual new-car shopper perception study data. The survey found Honda sweeping all but one of the non-luxury category awards and taking home more wins than any other automaker for 2024.
Award categories are calculated among in-market luxury and non-luxury, including truck and electric vehicle (EV)/hybrid shoppers who plan to purchase within the next 12 months.
Honda’s Wins
Honda was named Best Overall Brand, Most Trusted Brand, Best Value Brand, Best Performance Brand and Best In-Vehicle Experience Brand among all non-luxury automakers. And it took home the Best EV/Hybrid Brand among all automakers, both non-luxury and luxury.
“Honda has a proven track record with quality, innovation, and solid performance. Their quality drives consumers to trust them and to stay loyal to them,” said Vanessa Ton, senior research and market intelligence manager at Cox Automotive.
“In addition, given their world class reliability/durability, people feel they are getting vehicles they can depend on and that justifies their pricing especially given the rising prices of vehicles in general.”
Truck, Luxury Brand Winners
As for the categories that Honda did not rule over, Dodge wrestled away the title in two different divisions. Ram claimed the Best Overall Truck Brand Award for 2024, following five straight years of Toyota winning the honor. And Dodge topped the Best Car Styling Brand among non-luxury automakers for the fifth time in the past six years, reclaiming the award from last year’s winner Ford.
Lexus wins Best Overall Luxury Brand and Most Trusted Luxury Brand, winning the latter for nine years straight and 11 out of the past 12 years. Mercedes-Benz was recognized for two 2024 Consumer Choice Awards: Most Refined Luxury Brand and Best Car Styling Luxury Brand.
Tesla Tumble
Opposite of Honda’s dominance was setbacks of Tesla. Porsche reclaimed the Best Performance Brand Award while Buick was crowned as the Best Value Luxury Brand, an award that Elon Musk’s company had won the previous four years.
Ton offered the setbacks for Tesla is really more about the electric vehicle market slowing down then the company itself.
“Consumers are looking for brands with a selection of powertrains and fresh, new products,” she said.
What New-Vehicle Buyers Want
But the story was about Honda, which took home the Best Overall Brand Award for the eighth time in the past 11 years, achieving the highest average scores across all ratings of non-luxury models. In addition, Honda impressively claims the Best Value Brand Award for the tenth straight year.
Ton said the award’s name was changed to the Consumer Choice Awards for 2024 to better reflect that these wins are voted on and determined by actual in-market shoppers at Kelley Blue Book’s website.
“Consumers are most focused on durability/reliability, then safety, affordability, comfort and performance,” said Tan. “Consumer perception is a crucial factor in new-car purchase decisions, and we wanted to clarify that these awards are directly from the voice of consumers.”
