America's best-selling SUV just got snubbed by its own owners
You'd think the best-seller would win everything. Not this time. The Honda CR-V topped U.S. crossover sales with room to spare, yet its own owners just left it outside the top three. In the J.D. Power APEAL 2026 study, Toyota RAV4 took first place among compact SUVs, followed by Nissan Rogue and Kia Sportage. Meanwhile, Americans bought 226,046 CR-Vs in the first half of the year — up 6% from a year earlier.
Calling Honda the best-selling vehicle in the country would be a stretch: the overall crown still belongs to the Ford F-Series and Chevrolet Silverado pickup families. CR-V only leads among SUVs — nothing more. And APEAL itself has nothing to do with reliability or repair costs.
So what does it actually measure? J.D. Power surveyed 78,514 owners 90 days after purchase and asked them to rate 37 attributes — from design and comfort to infotainment and driving feel. RAV4's win captures a first impression, not proven long-term superiority.
And the gap is razor-thin. Toyota scored 839 points, Honda 838. The mass-market average sits at 846. Not a single Honda model won its category, while Toyota picked up two wins — RAV4 and Crown Signia. So sales figures don't settle the question either.
There's a reason behind it. Early in the year, Toyota was working through limited supply as production of the new RAV4 ramped up. The sixth generation went hybrid-only, got a new design, updated infotainment, and refreshed driver-assist tech — exactly the kind of changes that shape first impressions the most.
In the end, it's a tie with two different trophies: CR-V won the volume war, RAV4 won new owners' hearts. What happens after five or ten years of ownership is a question APEAL was never built to answer.
Tarantas.news previously reported that EVs posted the biggest year-over-year jump in owner satisfaction in the 2026 J.D. Power study, gaining 22 points.
