Not only did Jaguar succeed in knocking Lexus off the top spot of the J.D. Power survey for the first time in eleven years, but its XF saloon jumped 15 places in the survey to take the honours in the Executive Luxury Large category beating competition from the Mercedes-Benz E Class and Audi A6 range.

The J.D. Power survey, compiled from the evaluations of nearly 18,000 individuals in the UK after an average of two years' ownership, also rewarded the Honda Jazz in the supermini category making it the ninth year running for the British built car.

Toyota were on the double with the Prius and iQ taking Upper Medium (or large family) and city car honours respectively, while the Lexus IS ensured another trophy would wing its way to Nagoya in Japan by taking Compact Executive class honours from the Jaguar X-Type and Mercedes-Benz C-Class.

Having missed out in both executive categories Mercedes-Benz did go some way to making amends with the B-Class taking the MPV gong while Skoda's Octavia narrowly defeated the Toyota Auris and Audi A3 in Lower Medium (small family) car segment.

The winner by the largest margin was the Kia Sportage, which soundly beat both the Nissan Qashqai and Volkswagen Tiguan to take home the trophy for best SUV.

Paul Healy - 1 Jun 2012