Fuel Economy Is No. 1 Factor for Auto Buyers, Survey Shows

Fuel economy is about even with reliability as the top factor that auto buyers consider, according to a nationwide poll taken for Consumer Reports magazine.

The telephone survey, taken Aug. 3-7 as gasoline prices remained about $3 a gallon across the country, showed that 27% of likely vehicle buyers ranked gas mileage as the top factor in an automobile purchase.

Reliability was the top factor for 25%, followed by purchase price, 14%, and safety features, 12%, according to the poll taken by Opinion Research Corp. About 5% said manufacturer and dealer incentives were the top factor in an auto purchase, and 3% said styling.

Consumer Reports funded the poll, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

On the surface, the poll results appear to indicate further trouble for the Big Three domestic automakers, which rely more on sales of pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, which are generally less fuel efficient than other vehicles, than do their foreign-based rivals. Truck sales were down for the first seven months of the year from the same period in 2005, while passenger car sales were up.

But Rebecca Lindland, an auto analyst at Global Insight Inc., said her company’s research showed that customers often say one thing when polled and then do something else when it comes time to buy.

Americans, she said, are loath to give up the storage space and seating of an SUV and switch to a sedan. She said she believed that the shift to car-based crossover vehicles, which offer some of the attributes of SUVs but are more fuel-efficient, would continue.

“When push comes to shove, it’s tough to give up an SUV, especially because there are crossovers now that do get better gas mileage,” Lindland said.

The survey also showed that incentives such as rebates and free gasoline had been used so often by manufacturers that customers look past them to other factors, said Rob Gentile, director of Consumer Reports’ auto information products.

The poll was the magazine’s first of this size dealing with auto purchases, Gentile said. Past research had shown gas mileage as an important factor in buying decisions, but it had not ranked as high, he said.

“I think now what you’re starting to see obviously is it’s becoming more and more significant as gasoline prices have risen,” Gentile said.

Princeton, N.J.-based Opinion Research Corp. randomly called 1,000 people at least 18 years old and surveyed 526 who said they would be considering a vehicle purchase in the next two years.