Cadillac is America’s worst luxury brand, by far

A new, widely followed survey shows that Cadillac is America’s worst luxury car brand. Its sales have been mediocre for years, as they have fallen behind German and Japanese brands. Its parent company, GM (NYSE: GM), wants to revive the brand, but that may be impossible

The American Customer Satisfaction Index tracks dozens of product and service categories. These range from athletic shoes to banks to cell phones. Its most recent study is of cars and is known as the ACSI Automobile Study 2026. Its conclusions are based on 6,699 surveys that were in the field from July 2025 to June 2026.

Its auto research results are broken into two segments. One is mass-market cars, and the other is luxury cars. The luxury brands include Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, Tesla, BMW, Lincoln, Acura, Infiniti, and Cadillac. Mass-market cars include brands like Ford (NYSE: F), Chrysler, and Toyota.

Both segments look at comfort, driving performance, safety, dependability, exterior and interior appearance, the mobile app, website, technology, driving distance, and trade-in value.

The Automobile Study included nine luxury brands that were rated on a scale of 1 to 100. The average score among these is 78. Cadillac’s score is 67. At the top of the list, Mercedes has a score of 81.

Cadillac has a number of problems. First among them is sales volume. Last year, it sold 173,615 units, according to AutoWeek, which put it fourth among luxury cars sold in America. It trailed the top three by a very wide margin. In first place, BMW’s sales were 388,897. Lexus sales were 370,260, and Mercedes sales were 343,300. So Cadillac's annual sales were barely 50% of those of the leaders. Barely trailing Cadillac, Audi has sales of 164,942.

Unlike the market sales leaders, Cadillac has a small selection of models. It has four sedans, the huge Escalade SUV (which also comes in an EV version), four SUVs (which include two EVs), and a performance division with seven models, most of which are existing models with more powerful engines. With the small number of models, it is hard to be competitive with its larger rivals.

Cadillac’s score fell 13 points from 2025 to 2026, which was by far the largest drop among luxury brands. It is a huge setback as it tries to gain on its three much larger rivals.

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