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Mystery shoppers love Infiniti, hate Tesla

Infiniti, followed by Lexus tied with Mercedes-Benz took the top two spots for best sales experience according to mystery shoppers from the latest Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, while EV manufacturer Tesla recorded the lowest overall score. Not surprisingly, premium brands dominated the top ranks. Including the three already mentioned, luxury brands occupied seven of the top ten spots and included Audi, BMW, Porsche, and the only American brand to crack the upper echelon, Cadillac. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Nissan rounded out the first ten positions. The news for domestic automakers isn't good. Aside from Caddy, the only other star-spangled automaker to score above the industry average is Chrysler. The rest of FCA, most of GM, and all of Ford fell below the line. But Pied Piper's mystery shoppers handed Tesla the biggest walloping – the company is ten full points below the next lowest brand, Volvo, and its score of 86 is 17 below the average of 103. It's baffling, considering the company's touted direct-sales model. "Tesla leaves me scratching my head," Fred O'Hagan, Pied Piper's president and CEO, told Wards Auto. "They own all of their stores, so you would think each one would be doing the same thing. But they're not. Tesla is consistent in its inconsistencies." O'Hagan added that there's a "huge variation" in Tesla's store-to-store effectiveness, and that in some cases, shoppers found showroom workers that acted more like "museum curators," Wards Auto reports. It might be popular to call Tesla the Apple of the car world, but based on Pied Piper's work, the brand has a long way to go to emulate the uniform shopping experience of an Apple Store. The news might be bad for Tesla, but even for the brands that scored below average, there's cause for celebration. Only Tesla and Mini lost points in this year's rankings, and only Mercedes and Lincoln held steady. Every other brand, including Infiniti, which topped the index for the first time, gained at least one point. The biggest improvements belong to Porsche, Land Rover, and Mitsubishi, which all jumped five points. Pied Piper's annual Prospect Satisfaction Index uses mystery shoppers – over 6,100 this year – from across the country to assess dealers and generate rankings from over 50 individual factors. News Source: Pied Piper via WardsAuto Green Audi BMW Cadillac Chrysler Infiniti Lexus Mercedes-Benz Nissan Tesla Toyota Car Buying Car Dealers study

Mercedes-Maybach SUV concept headed for Beijing reveal in April

Mercedes-Benz has toyed with the idea of a Maybach SUV for at least 11 years. According to Autocar, we'll finally see a concept with production intent at the Beijing Motor Show next month, the luxury SUV slated for market release next year. As has been the rumor for at least six years, the Maybach people carrier will be based on a stretched version of the GLS, which moves to the company's new Modular High Architecture with the 2019 model. Back in 2007 when Maybach was its own brand and selling roughly 300 units per year, Car magazine reported that brand chiefs were interested in convertible versions of the Maybach 57 and 62 sedans, and an SUV. Maybach built a one-off concept based on the GL — the former GLS-Class — in 2009, but never took the idea further. The rumor popped up again in 2014, then in 2015, reaching not-if-but-when status early last year. A decade on, it's finally time to play the hand. Even though the super-luxe SUV would sit on a stretched version of what is already a three-row SUV, it's reasonable to expect the Maybach SUV will only get two rows. That would give designers plenty of extra room for seating luxury and amenities even beyond the S-Class Maybach. On the other hand, if Mercedes sticks to the rough Maybach playbook so far, a triple-row Maybach would be the only such SUV in the mid- to upper-six-figures. The S-Class 560 4Matic starts at $102,990, the S 560 4Matic Maybach starts at $168,600. Applying that spread to the $94,500 GLS 550, you'd land around $160,000 before adding the markup for a new generation. That kind of starter pricing might make a great tweener proposition. Mercedes could focus on a range of buyers who want to go upscale from the $125,300 AMG GLS 63, without needing to worry — yet — about challenging Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Power is said to come from some version of the company's oft-applied 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 that puts out 462 horsepower in the S 560, but the 3.0-liter inline-six hybrid in the S 560e is under consideration. We'll know next month, when the lightly veiled concept takes the stand in China. The full-on production version should get an introduction at this year's L.A. Auto Show. Related Video:

Car subscription services: A slow, expensive start — but the potential is huge

Americans are used to paying for subscriptions — to magazines and cable television, for instance — but experience shows they'll cancel when the price of admission gets too high, or there are more tempting alternatives. Cord cutters ditched nearly 1.5 million pay-TV subscriptions in 2017, according to a survey by Leichtman Research Group. Cable TV started out cheap with basic offerings, and then got expensive. The auto industry's subscription offerings are new, but they're starting out costly, and not price-competitive with traditional leasing. The upside is that they take the hassle out of car ownership for busy people by letting the service take care of maintenance, insurance, licensing and taxes. And they give consumers choice, often allowing relatively painless switches between different cars in the automakers' lineup. Subscription services also point the way toward an ownership-free auto experience, and offer an easy transition to a potential world where ride- and car-sharing will be dominant. Subscriptions are here to stay, but consumers may take a while to "get" them. Lincoln's subscription service for lightly used 2015 to 2017 models, offered through the Ford-owned Canvas beginning this year, got off to a slow start. Many early subscribers canceled. Last month, Cadillac announced it would " temporarily pause" its $1,800-per-month Book subscription service for "adjustments" as of December 1. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Snags with the back-end technology used to support the service made some customer-service functions tedious and time-consuming, adding costs for the company." The challenge for automakers is to come up with a strategy that offers consumers a compelling, affordable option to regular ownership, and one that can also make a profit. I think they'll find that sweet spot, but they're not there yet. Jack Nerad, former executive editorial director at Kelley Blue Book and author of " The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying or Leasing a Car," points out that "A lot of people expected that subscriptions would be very valuable for people who wanted inexpensive transportation, but the reality is quite the opposite. Subscriptions are offering more choices for the wealthy.