New study identifies the cars and SUVs
that were bought most by women in 2007

It is good to see that it wasn’t a Chevy Monte Carlo and a RAV 4….

The luxury car with the highest male ownership is the high-performance Audi RS4,

while the car with the highest female ownership is the Volvo S40.

The RS4, with a starting price of US$66,910, can zoom from 0 to 62 miles per hour in 4.8 seconds. S40, which costs about $24,000, aced the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s frontal crash test.

Men are more likely to buy cars with their heart and women with their head. That’s the indication from results of J.D. Power & Associates’ Power Information Network’s (PIN) most recent survey of the cars with the highest percentage of female ownership. There wasn’t a sports car in the top 10 for women. Instead, there were sensible, entry-level cars and small sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) that emphasized safety, quality, reliability, and value.

There are women that enjoy driving fast and might choose a Maserati over a minivan, but they’re considered to be the exception.

The S40 ranked first and the Volvo brand dominated the top 10 with three winners, which also included the V50 wagon at number 7 and the S60 sedan at number 9. Volvo also was the number 1 luxury brand for female ownership overall, at 42.5 percent, vs. a luxury-brand average of 35.8 percent.

Across the industry, including non-luxury brands, women bought 37.3 percent of new vehicles in 2007 through August, based on the PIN sample data. Looking beyond luxury cars to include all price categories, the S40 was the fifth-most-popular model for female buyers. The most popular, according to J.D. Power, with 58.3 percent of all female buyers, was the Volkswagen New Beetle. Including non-luxury brands, Suzuki was the top brand purchased by women this year, according to the survey.

“We’re known for one thing – we ‘own’ safety,” said John Maloney, vice-president for marketing communications at Volvo Cars of North America. “Safety is sort of a foundational value for everyone. But on a relative basis, it is more important to women.”
If Volvo is synonymous with safety, Toyota’s Lexus division is synonymous with quality and reliability. Lexus had fewer Top 10 female-owned models than Volvo, but the Lexus was the number 2 luxury brand overall, in terms of female ownership, at 41.2 percent, according to PIN data. In liking Lexus, women are little different from men, since Lexus has been the top-selling luxury brand in the United States since 2000. The biggest reason for the brand’s high overall female ownership is the Lexus RX model, a car-based SUV typically purchased for family use. The RX is the single biggest-selling Lexus, and ranks sixth on the list of the 10 most popular female-owned luxury vehicles.

Tom Libby, senior director of industry analysis for PIN, noted that most of the models in the most popular luxury list purchased by women are at the entry level for their respective brands, all of which have prices of under $40,000.

PIN’s Top 10 list of most popular luxury vehicles bought by women, in order of preference, includes the Volvo S40; Jaguar X-Type; Lexus IS; Acura TSX; Mercedes-Benz C-Class; Lexus RX 350; Volvo V50; Acura RDX; Volvo S60; and BMW X3.

Colleen O’Dea, a sales manager for Kundert Volvo in New Jersey, says it’s not uncommon for women shopping alone to come in and buy or lease a Volvo. “It’s probably a household decision, but it happens all the time that women are picking the car, picking colors and the equipment,” she said “Maybe 10 or more years ago, women would do that, and then the men would come in and negotiate, but today it’s just the opposite. The woman is definitely the primary decision-maker.” (Business Week)