A new quarterly index is being launched to track changes in public perception to car brands.

The Spectrum Car Brand Index looks to show the real impact of the billions the industry invests each year trying to shift and shape perceptions in order to press the right emotional triggers with customers.

The index will track and benchmark changes to online content, conversation and behaviour, as well as how successful marketing campaigns have been at shaping perception.

A spokesman for Spectrum told AM: “In basic terms Spectrum collates huge amounts of content which includes online content (news sources or blogs), publicly available social media content (tweets, Facebook, dialogues on discussion forums) and Google analytics.

“These results are then collated into the final report. To put some numbers behind this - for the 'most talked about' ranking Spectrum captured over 71,000 online conversations about specific car models over a three month period and then calculated brand's relative share of the total conversation.”

The first index reveals what the UK public believes are the top brands for different criteria. A full explanation for each can be found here.

The UK public’s top brands for:

Comfort – Chevrolet
Environment – Toyota
Families – Toyota
Innovation – Ford
Luxury – Mercedes
Performance – Porsche
Prestige – Audi
Safety – Ford
Value for Money – Ford

The report also details the UK’s most and least talked about cars, indicating the level of visibility for each model.

The rejuvenated Honda Civic created huge interest, and represented 3.5% of all online conversation about cars, edging out the Ford Focus into second place with 3.2%.