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Frugal Shopper: Women Prefer Practical, Frugal Cars, Men Don't

When it comes time to purchase a car, men look for bold design statements, sexy sheetmetal, and scorching performance while women—well, women want something practical, economical, and safe, right?

You’d think times would have changed, but it appears not. The pricing intelligence firm TrueCar recently crunched the data—looking at vehicle registrations rather than the purchaser information, to eliminate the idea of household decision-making, and the survey says that women overwhelmingly prefer practical cars and small cars.

Kia ranked highest for female registrations, with nearly 46 percent of female vehicle registrations. Suzuki and MINI both ranked around 44 percent. TrueCar says that safety and value ranked high for all ten of the ten brands with a female ratio over 42 percent, which included Volvo, Subaru, and Hyundai.

Price and value seemed especially important, judging from those top ten brands. Other than for MINI and Subaru, all of these most popular brands with women had a discount of between five and ten percent off MSRP. In tenth place with women, Mitsubishi vehicles were discounted 10.1 percent from MSRP, on average, while 41.5 percent of them were registered to women.

No single brand has more female buyers than male buyers.

Exotic cars and exclusive ultraluxury brands are almost exclusively registered by men. TrueCar found that zero percent of Bugattis were bought by women, while Ferrari, Lamborghini, Tesla, and Aston Martin followed—all with less than ten percent. Specialty sports-car maker Lotus ranked just after these brands, with only ten percent purchased by women.

On a make-model basis, several truck models from GMC, Dodge, and Hummer also ranked near the top among vehicles that were mostly purchased by men.

Also looking at individual models, a considerable number had female registrations over 50 percent—though there’s no comparison with the manly models. The model with the highest level, the Volkswagen New Beetle, has more than 56 percent female registrations. It’s followed by the Nissan Rogue, Hyundai Tucson, Volkswagen Eos, and Volvo S40. There's definitely more of a story here as three of these models can be convertibles.

Among models popular with women, most were significantly discounted; three models on the top-ten list by model—the Nissan Rogue, the Volvo S40, and the Nissan Sentra—were discounted more than ten percent.

TrueCar’s study figures more than 13 million vehicle registrations over the past two years. Average vehicle discounts were calculated using the firm’s database of millions of vehicle sales transactions.

Why the do we have such gender differences in vehicles, and why does the frugal side appeal more to women? There’s definitely more than the mom factor here, and the answers are deeper than a blog post can adequately cover. Take a look below at the top ten brands registered to women, and let us know what you think.

PHP Code:

Make
    
% of Female Registration
    
% Discount off MSRP

KIA     

45.8%
    
8.3%

SUZUKI     

44.2%
    
9.5%

MINI     

43.9%

3.1%

SUBARU     

43.2%
    
4.0%

NISSAN     

43.1%
    
9.6%

HYUNDAI     

43.0%

8.3%

HONDA     

42.8%

7.8%

VOLVO     

42.4%

8.2%

LEXUS     

42.3%

7.2%

MITSUBISHI     

41.5%

10.1% 


LexFather

Hmmmm, women are buying the Korean cars.......

votru

iTrader: (7)

Somewhat disagree as they're using register sex to count the brand since don't saw a lot of women in my area drive these brands and they may register for their young son or daughter....cheap beginner car.

PhilipMSPT

iTrader: (5)

Women buy frugal functional cars for many reasons. The top two being (1) cost-savings (moms are penny pinchers; women typically make less than men) and (2) no "need" for speed (women are not as competitive and number-driven as men).

Most of those cars are frugal and functional, with good safety records to match.

Lexus is on the list because, compared to its luxury competitors, they do provide a lot of function and value (and reliability and ease of use).

Mbenz528i

I agree completely. When it comes to cars, women shop with their mind/wallet rather than their emotions. (We call it something else when it relates to a man.)

The fact is that vehicles are a means of transportation and to a lesser degree, style, while men, generally prefer to drive something that provides baragging rights of some sort. (of course each individuals finances differ and it is also a product of what one can afford. Men and women.)

RA40

iTrader: (6)

Interesting, Phil and MB summarized as I would for this article. Women tend to view cars differently. I've also noticed that KIA is a very popular car for younger females till about 30'ish.

I8ABMR

interesting bit of info.

whoster

My mom's always asking for more power.

Her cars have always climbed in horsepower with every new car she gets due to her ever-increasing demands for power.

Amenities and technologies she can do without. But she always wants more power.

(Cj)

to men: cars = status symbol

to women: cars = transportation

IS-SV

Other than Suzuki, list is as expected for the most part.

Lets Drive

iTrader: (3)

I'm of the opinion that many women just as well car shop based on emotion, and also see cars as status symbols; not because they are women, but because many consumers are casual buyers, and don't know (or care) enough to really make informed decisions beyond that casual level of interest. I've seen too many consumers get convinced, on the spot, that a particular vehicle is for them, while playing with numbers makes the car affordable.

As someone stated earlier, though, tracking the trends based on who the car is registered to is a bit tricky. Many times, people register a car under a certain member of their household for better finance deals, or insurance, among other things. It doesn't really reflect where or how much bearing the person had in the decision making process.

Wasp

I'm shocked that BMW is not on the list.

Slvr surfr

iTrader: (1)

So should we judge women on what kind of car they drive? They sure do it to men!

Faymester

I don't own any of those

mmarshall

Yes.........it is called common sense.

Men who drive common-sense vehicles have perhaps the best bragging-rights of all.