SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -

Late Thursday evening, ALG honored the brands that ranked the highest for perception of value in Canada with Mercedes-Benz topping the list. But the annual awards have a different face this year.

ALG has upgraded and re-launched the metric for automakers to compare the perceived quality of its brand and the effect on residual values.

ALG Brand Perceived Quality or BPQ, “helps the industry experts understand how consumers view the quality of their brands and the impact those opinions have on retained value,” ALG explained.

The new system reflect the opinion of recent vehicle buyers who are asked to give their opinion about the quality of all brands, including brands they did not purchase.

“The perception of a brand’s quality is a leading indicator of that brand’s ability to hold its value – much more so than actual build quality,” said Eric Lyman, vice president of editorial for ALG. “Perception is definitely reality when it comes to vehicle quality.”

This year, Mercedes-Benz topped the BPQ list with a score of 65.9.

Breaking it down into market, among mainstream brands, Honda has the highest perception of quality. Toyota and Volkswagen rounded out the top three.

For premium brands, Mercedes-Benz topped the list with BMW and Ferrari in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively.

ALG also offered some stats on what brands the Millennial generation has the most faith in.

Millennial, contrary to the majority opinion, perceive Volkswagen to have the highest quality over Toyota. According to ALG, Generation X also favors VW over Toyota.  

ALG also reported that for mainstream brands, VW rated highly among both owners and non-owners.

On the other hand, Kia and Subaru had “large gaps” in perception between owners and non-owners, with owners thinking highly of both brands.

For premium brands, Audi rates highest among owners.

“Kia and Subaru are great examples of automakers that have momentum in the perception of their brand quality,” said Geoff Helby, ALG’s director of Canada operations. “Owners are delighted by the quality and rate the brand highly. The more people who experience the quality of those brands, the more those brands will see improvement.”

See below for the full Brand Perceived Quality rankings from ALG: