There’s not a single European car in the lists of preferred cars, trucks, SUVs and brands, and GM and Stellantis don’t make the cut either
November 2, 2024 at 11:20
- A new study has revealed the most-loved vehicles and brands in America.
- The lists are dominated by Japanese brands, with Toyota topping all four categories.
- Ford’s Escape Hybrid is the only American-brand vehicle to feature in the lists, which also contain no European cars.
What are America’s most-loved vehicles and auto brands? If you went back in time 40 or 50 years the answers would have been dominated by Detroit’s Big Three and cars like the Oldsmobile Cutlass and Chevrolet Cavalier. But when the authors of a new study posed the same question in 2024, Ford, GM and what used to be Chrysler barely merited a mention.
Rather than simply ask people what cars and brands they preferred, or come up with figures based on new car sales figures, iSeeCars analyzed data from 929,000 cars built for the 1981 to 2009 model years and sold between January and September of 2024. By identifying which older cars were most likely to be kept by their original owners, the researchers developed a picture of the best-loved cars and brands.
Related: The Top 5 Longest-Lasting Cars Are All Toyotas
The results show that Americans haven’t got much time for traditional US brands and would much rather put their faith and money into Japanese vehicles. Specifically Toyota vehicles. Toyota dominates all four of the list looking at brands, cars, trucks and SUVs.
Let’s look first at the most-loved vehicles category, which iSeeCars compiled by counting the percentage of 15-year-old cars kept by their original owner. Toyota has seven vehicles on that list (eight if you include the Lexus IS) and occupies every one of the first five places. The Highlander Hybrid takes first place with 7 percent of 15 year-old cars being kept by their original owner versus an average of 3.7 percent.
The Camry Hybrid took second spot, followed by the non-hybrid Highlander, the Tacoma and the Prius. Honda’s CR-V and the Ford Escape Hybrid break the run before the RAV4 scores another place for Toyota. The Escape, by the way, is the only Ford vehicle – and the only Big Three product – to feature in any of the tables (it also turns up in the SUV category behind the Highlander and CR-V).
America’s most-loved truck is the Toyota Tacoma (6.4 percent of 15 yo cars kept by their original owner), with the Tundra (5.5 percent), Honda Ridgeline (also 5.5 percent) and Nissan Frontier (5.2 percent) some way behind in the loyalty stakes. As iSeeCars notes, full-size trucks dominate new-truck sales but when it comes to hanging on to vehicles, the mid-size pickups are clear winners.
Switching to the brands table, it’s no surprise given what we’ve learned about the individual categories to see Toyota (5.6 percent) at the top, ahead of Honda (5.3 percent). Lexus takes third spot (4.4 percent) with Mazda (4.3 percent), Hyundai (4.2 percent; the only Korean appearance) and Subaru (4.1 percent) rounding out the top six.