Top-Rated Premium Luxury Car Autobytel & AutoPacific Car Consumer Award

After  75,000 owners of new cars and light trucks in the United States were surveyed in the first quarter of 2012 to determine the winners of the AutoPacific & Autobytel 2012 Vehicle Satisfaction Awards (VSA), the 2012 Mercedes-Benz S-Class is awarded the title of America’s highest-rated Premium Luxury Car. Based solely on owner input and the resulting measure of owner satisfaction demonstrated, the AutoPacific & Autobytel VSA very different from other automotive awards primarily concentrating on reliability, quality, or subjective journalist evaluations to the exclusion of how satisfied actual owners are with their vehicles. 

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class, one of the finest automobiles in the world, stands triumphant in the  category over such models as Porsche's Panamera and Jaguar's XJ. Aside from being the car by which all others in the class are measured, owner' of the S-Class frequently cite performance, comfort, safety and style among the attributes they most admire in the top-rated premium luxury car.

The awarding of the VSA is based specifically upon the experiences of people who actually bought the cars. AutoPacific & Autobytel’s Vehicle Satisfaction Award is a significantly more accurate measurement of how satisfied new car and light truck buyers are with their recently purchased vehicles--because overall vehicle satisfaction is in fact derived from actual ownership experiences.

Top-Rated Premium Luxury Car: 2012 Mercedes-Benz S-Class

Long considered the benchmark for premium luxury sedans, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a tour de force of prestige, performance, technology and luxury. Designed specifically to transport four lucky souls in supreme comfort over extremely long distances at exceptionally high speeds, those attributes also translate to make theAutoPacific & Autobytel Top-Rated Premium Luxury Car excel at the day-to-day mundanities of personal transportation.

With its broad variety of engines and powertrains, one can very easily tailor the best-rated premium luxury car winner precisely to the environment in which it will spend the majority of its time. Further, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class can be specifically configured to optimally serve the personal proclivities of its owner. A broad palette of available features like all-wheel drive, hybrid powertrains, and the extreme performance of the AMG iterations of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class imbue the model with outstanding appeal across a broad spectrum of premium luxury car owners.

Anyone looking for an extremely comfortable personal statement of success can find just as much satisfaction in a Mercedes S-Class as an outright gearhead who appreciates the feel of an extremely powerful and well-handling automobile. This broad range of appeal, among other similarly significant factors led the respondents to the AutoPacific & Autobytel 2012 Vehicle Satisfaction survey to vote the 2012 Mercedes-Benz S-Class America’s highest-rated premium luxury car.

Top-Rated Premium Luxury Car: 2012 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Competitors

While the Mercedes-Benz S-Class took the best-rated premium luxury car title, rounding out the top five (listed in order of ranking) were the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Porsche Panamera, Hyundai Equus, and Jaguar XJ.

All relatively new models, in the case of the Hyundai and the Porsche, they also hail from manufacturers not previously competing in this segment. This result underscores the value of cutting edge technology, innovation and contemporary styling attributes in this rarified segment of the automotive marketplace.

How the Segment Scored