J.D. Power got its start performing reliability research, which is also what TrueDelta has been focusing on.

But some critics mused, “Enough about things gone wrong. What about things gone right? Perhaps some cars are so pleasurable to own and drive that a few extra problems are of little consequence.” And so research firms started conducting a second type of study, on owners’ satisfaction with the design and operation of their vehicles. Strategic Vision might have been first with its Total Quality Index, but if so J.D. Power soon countered with its similarly focused APEAL study. The results of both annual satisfaction studies were released this month.

TrueDelta conducts no such owner satisfaction study, for a few reasons.

First off, satisfaction with design and the driving experience is highly subjective, and the more subjective something is the more critical it is that the sample is random. Random samples are very expensive, which is why the detailed results of both the TQI and APEAL studies are available only to manufacturers at hefty prices.

Second, even with a random sample such studies contain inherent biases. J.D. Power notes that new designs tend to get a boost. Why? Because people tend to be most excited about a car when it’s still “the latest thing.”

Even with a random sample, all ownership-based samples are essentially self-selecting. People who dislike something about a car aren’t likely to buy it. Conversely, those who do buy a car will tend to like it–unless they bought it simply because it was cheap. And sometimes even people who did buy a car because it was cheap won’t want to admit this, so they’ll more positively evaluate other aspects of the car. You know, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Low expectations for a car can actually be an advantage, since, broadly speaking, satisfaction = experience – expectations. I think this explains why widely ridiculed vehicles like the Pontiac Aztek and Suzuki Aerio often do welll in satisfaction studies.

But even if none of the above were issues, there’d still be the largest shortcoming of all. Somethng like reliability cannot be evaluated during a test drive. If you want reliability information, you need research. But to know how satisfying a car is to look at, sit in, and drive, you simply need to go to the dealer and take a thorough test drive.

Sure, it might be of value for manufacturers to know owners’ average opinion of their cars. But, as an individual car buyer, why should you care about an average opinion? There’s one opinion that should matter by far the most to you: your own. If a thousand other people find a car unappealing, but you love looking at it and driving it, then should you not buy the car because of what those other people think? Of course not. Conversely, if a thousand other people find a car appealing, but you dislike how it looks, how the seat feels, or how it drives, then does it doesn’t really matter what all of those other people think, does it?

So this, in the end, is the main reason TrueDelta doesn’t conduct a satisfaction study: for an individual car buyer, a personal test drive is of much more value.

If you want to be satisfied with a car, then buy the one that most satisfies during a thorough test drive. It’s when other factors intrude into the buying process, or when the test drive was not thorough enough, that some owners end up being dissatisfied with their cars. The solution to an overly brief test drive isn’t a TQI or APEAL score. It’s a more thorough test drive. If you are serious, most dealers will let you take a car for a few hours or even overnight. You just need to ask.