The 2022 Ford Maverick proved to be a massive hit with a broad array of consumers from the day it launched, including first-time pickup buyers, small business owners, millennials, and Gen Z. The compact pickup continues to be a popular entity among shoppers, but it’s also proven to be quite satisfying with owners as well, even after many experienced a fairly stressful ordeal ordering and taking delivery of one. At least, those are the findings from the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. APEAL Study, which ranked the 2022 Ford Maverick as one of the most satisfying vehicles in its segment – joining the Ford brand, which ranked above the mass market segment average, Lincoln, which landed below the premium segment average, and both the Ford Bronco Sport and Ford Super Duty, each of which topped their individual segments as well.
Interestingly, J.D. Power has lumped the 2022 Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz – both compact pickups – into its mid-size pickup rankings, a pair that’s joined by the actual mid-size Nissan Frontier. Regardless, the Santa Cruz came out on top in this particular study, with the Frontier and Maverick rounding out the top three.
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, which can be attributed to one major factor, according to J.D. Power.
“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.”
Source: Ford Authority
