Compare Car Dealership Servicing in New Zealand at Canstar Blue. Suzuki, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Toyota were compared on Overall Satisfaction, Cost of Parts, Customer Service, Effectiveness of Repairs, Time Taken and Value for Money.
See our Ratings Methodology.
Suzuki are the driving force in car dealership servicing, and the winner of Canstar Blue’s inaugural Dealership Servicing Award.
Our review compares new cars on customer satisfaction, so you can find out what other Kiwis think about the compared brands before you go ahead with a purchase. Think of it as like asking hundreds of your closest mates which car brand they think is best!
Canstar Blue surveyed 436 Kiwis who had bought a new car from a dealership in the past three years for their feedback on their purchase.
Respondents rate their satisfaction with their new car brands from zero to ten, where zero is extremely dissatisfied and ten is extremely satisfied. Brand satisfaction was rated by respondents on the following criteria:
The winning brand is the one that receives the highest Overall Satisfaction rating once all the scores from the Overall Satisfaction criteria are combined and averaged.
Brands must have received at least 30 responses to be included, so not all brands available in the market have been compared in this survey. The brands rated in this survey are listed below in order of best overall satisfaction.
Find more information on our Most Satisfied Customer methodology.
Over the past decade, Suzuki has won Canstar’s Blue New Cars award more times that any other vehicle brand: back-to-back wins in 2014-15, 2017-18 and 2024-25.
Therefore, it’s fitting that Suzuki is the winner of our inaugural Dealership Servicing Award. And it takes home the win with a stellar set of ratings from its very happy customers.
Suzuki achieves top 5-Star ratings across all bar one of our award categories, including in the all-important areas of Customer Service and Value for Money.
And for Effectiveness of Repairs, it achieves a great 4-Star rating.
Sitting second on our table, Mazda’s customers award it a sweeping set of great 4-Star ratings across all award categories, including for Overall Satisfaction.
Mazda also has one 5-Star rating, for Effectiveness of Repairs.
Toyota is the nation’s top-selling car brand, comprising 24% of the passenger market last year.
On our award table, based on consumer satisfaction, the Japanese car manufacturer sits in third place, with a set of ratings 3-Star ratings across every category.
While not a top rating, 3 Stars is by no means a measure of dissatisfaction. Rather it shows that Toyota’s customers are happy with the levels of customer satisfaction they received across each of our award ratings categories.
Mitsubishi is the second largest passenger car brand in New Zealand, by market share, after Toyota, and on our awards table it sits behind its Japanese rival, in third place.
Although it achieves the same set of 3-Star ratings across all award categories, it places slightly behind Toyota due to its Overall Satisfaction rating score.
Across all of Canstar Blue’s research, two factors always stand out when we ask Kiwis what’s important to them as consumers: Customer Service and Value for Money.
And when it comes to rating car dealerships, the consumers in our survey cite the same two factors as the biggest drivers of their overall satisfaction levels.
Over a third of respondents (35%) say Customer Service is the most important part of their dealership experience, while just over a quarter (28%) cite Value for Money.
Here’s the full rundown of what Kiwi drivers say are the main things they consider when rating dealership servicing:
Listed above are the top-rated car dealership servicing centres, as ranked by Kiwi consumers, in Canstar Blue’s 2025 Dealership Servicing Award. But here are the top-selling charts for cars, electric cars and utes for 2024. Numbers sold shown in brackets.
| Top Selling Cars 2024 |
| 1 Toyota RAV 4 (10,533) |
| 2 Mitsubishi ASX (3763) |
| 3 Mitsubishi Outlander (3248) |
| 4 Kia Seltos (3140) |
| 5 Suzuki Swift (2704) |
| 6 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (2394) |
| 7 Ford Everest (2341) |
| 8 Toyota Corolla (1854) |
| 9 Toyota Yaris Cross (1841) |
| 10 Kia Sportage (1730) |
| Top Selling EVs 2024 |
| 1 Tesla Model Y (826) |
| 2 Tesla Model 3 (461) |
| 3 Ford Mustang Mach-E (452) |
| 4 BYD Atto 3 (383) |
| 5 Nissan Leaf (308) |
| 6 Volkswagen ID.4 (275) |
| 7 MG4 (256) |
| 8 Volkswagen ID.5 (232) |
| 9 Kia EV9 (197) |
| 10 Polestar 2 (188) |
NB: This list includes total electric vehicles (BEV) only, petrol-electric hybrids (PHEV) are not included.
| Top Selling Utes 2024 |
| 1 Ford Ranger (11,748) |
| 2 Toyota Hilux (7296) |
| 3 Mitsubishi Triton (4231) |
| 4 Nissan Navara (1890) |
| 5 Isuzu D-Max (1296) |
Bruce Pitchers is Canstar NZ’s Content Manager. An experienced finance reporter, he has three decades’ experience as a journalist and has worked for major media companies in Australia, the UK and NZ, including ACP, Are Media, Bauer Media Group, Fairfax, Pacific Magazines, News Corp and TVNZ. As a freelancer, he has worked for The Australian Financial Review, the NZ Financial Markets Authority and major banks and investment companies on both sides of the Tasman. In his role at Canstar, he has been a regular commentator in the NZ media, including on the Driven, Stuff and One Roof websites, the NZ Herald, Radio NZ, and Newstalk ZB. Away from Canstar, Bruce creates puzzles for magazines and newspapers, including Woman’s Day and New Idea. He is also the co-author of the murder-mystery puzzle book 5 Minute Murder.
Key statistics
Believe regular car services save money in the long run: 77%
What drivers check themselves:
Oil: 73%
Tyre pressure: 71%
Water: 70%
Tyre tread: 54%
Windscreen wipers: 46%
Canstar Blue surveyed 5253 New Zealand consumers across a range of categories to measure and track customer satisfaction, via ISO 26362 accredited research panels managed by Qualtrics. The outcomes reported are the results from respondents who had bought a brand new car from a dealership in the last three years. In this case, 436 New Zealanders. Brands must have received at least 30 responses to be included. Results are comparative and it should be noted that brands receiving three stars have still achieved a satisfaction measure of at least six out of 10. Not all brands available in the market have been compared in this survey. The ratings table is first sorted by star ratings and then by mean overall satisfaction. A rated brand may receive a ‘N/A’ (Not Applicable) rating if it does not receive the minimum number of responses for that criterion.
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