KBB: Perceptions of New Vehicle Brands with Best Driving Performance

"BMW's top rankings in the Luxury Sedan and Luxury SUV segments demonstrate that it has a lock on performance characteristics in the luxury category according to new-car buyers, an instance where brand image and the consumer brand perception are in perfect alignment," said Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst of Kelley Blue Book and kbb.com.

yup...that pretty much sums it up.

apparently the people who deboosted me don't agree with the thousands who responded to the survey.
bmw = great performance luxury cars.
brand image in line with consumer brand perception.

Yes it makes sense. But what puzzles me is that people perceive Lexus to have better driving performance than Infiniti, Audi, and even Acura. I find that very peculiar.

Whoever de-boosted me. Do you really think Lexus cars are better performance wise than the three I mentioned?? Are you really serious?? In that way I agree with XeroKOOL - "perception is often far from reality".

Do you think these actually represent the true performance characteristics of car brands? i.e. Mercedes topping BMW in sports cars, Toyota topping Honda in minivans and near-lux SUVs... then that's sad. These don't apply to so many deserving vehicles out there!

Yeah Mercedes' performance/handling is nice, but I think overall BMW is better. Only the CLK Black is better than any other BMW-badged M-series cars (the only exception for a BMW-related car is the McLaren F1). Also, could anyone show me a review praising a Lexus SUV for handling characteristics over a Merc? (no bias here) I thought the ML63 AMG was the best performance SUV, after the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S.

actually the BMW X5 is rated higher than the ML, even when then new generation ML came out, it was targeted at the X5 to match its "sedan" driving characteristics.

the new ML63 is a smaller and lighter beast while Porsche is till the best on performance (Turbo S) but its big & heavy.

BMW is losing out on not bringing out a higher end X5 IS like with the old generation.

I don't think they mean the the typical "track" performance of, say the SUVs and Minivans. Maybe they mean other types of "performance?" The FJ Cruiser and Land Cruiser are the most off-road capable SUVs in the non-luxury segment. But I can't explain the Minivans really. I guess people perceive the Toyota Sienna to be a better 'performer' than the Honda Odyssey and the Nissan Quest.

talk for your self,
every car has different performance characteristics which you can notice when driving.

The new X5's handling is amazing! I would put it on top of that list like they did.

But Im wondering why mercedes beats BMW in the convertible/sports car colomn.... Does the SL55 AMG handle better than the M6 convertible?

People perceive it to handle better than the M6.

Keyword: perceive.

and the reason I was de boosted is???