Hyundai, not long ago maligned for shoddy quality, just bested Honda, Toyota, Jeep and anyone else with a compact sport-utility vehicle in one of the industry's leading measures of customer satisfaction. This comes just after its Santa Fe SUV outmuscled a slightly larger group of contenders in front-crash ratings at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). "The Santa Fe has been a very pleasant surprise," says George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, the firm that rated the SUV best in class in its 2001 vehicle satisfaction scores. The VSS rates vehicles on some 50 product features and is based on surveys of 34,000 owners of 2001 model vehicles. Peterson noted that it's the first time a South Korean model has topped a vehicle segment. In the IIHS tests, vehicles are crashed to gauge how well occupants would fare if the driver's side of the front end slammed into a barrier at 40 mph. The Santa Fe and the Subaru Forester were the only small SUVs rated "good."