Which vehicles come the most highly recommended by the people that know them best, their owners? The Cars.co.za Ownership Satisfaction Survey, conducted in partnership with Lightstone, reveals the top 10.

Since 2015 Cars.co.za has conducted surveys with car owners measuring the Purchasing Experience, Servicing Experience and Overall Ownership Experience.One output from these surveys is the prestigious Cars.co.za Consumer Awards – Powered by WesBank.Over the past 5 years almost 30000 cars owners have completed the Cars.co.za survey; over 10000 of these in 2019.

The survey also measures and tracks a wide range of issues of importance to the South Africa car owner and much of this information is shared with manufacturers through an online dashboard that is regularly updated.

Which vehicle models are most likely to be recommended by their owners?

For the purposes of this analysis; and for representative results, we only included models where at least 50 owners had answered the "likely to recommend" question.

Vehicle owners were asked to indicate, based on their overall ownership experience, using a 10-point rating scale how likely it is that they would recommend their car to friends and family. With this scale we regard responses of 9 or 10 as very likely to recommend and consider these owners as “promoters”. The owners who scored 6 or lower are considered unlikely to recommend and are considered “detractors”. By deducting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters we derive a Net Promoter Score (NPS).

The Top 10 (passenger vehicles)

The Mazda CX-5 is a two-times (and current) Family Car segment winner in the Cars.co.za Consumer Awards – Powered by WesBank.

If we look at the Double-Cab bakkie market, there is again strong correlation between the results of the CarsAwards, and the "likelihood to recommend" by owners. The bakkie with the highest score is the Volkswagen Amarok (with an industry-leading 93%), followed by the Isuzu D-Max (80,2%) and Toyota Hilux (77,4%).

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Best Family Cars in South Africa – Cars.co.za Consumer Awards – Powered by WesBank, finalists 2019/20