Not a single European car appears on the list of preferred cars, trucks, SUVs and brands, nor do General Motors and Stellantis.
1 hour ago
- A new study reveals the most popular vehicles and brands in America.
- The list is dominated by Japanese brands, with Toyota taking the top spot in all four categories.
- Ford’s Escape Hybrid is the only American brand car to appear on this list, which also excludes European cars.
What are the most popular vehicles and car brands in the United States? If you go back 40 or 50 years ago, the answer would be dominated by the Detroit Three and cars like the Oldsmobile Cutlass and Chevrolet Cavalier. But when the authors of a new study ask the same question in 2024, Ford, General Motors and what was once Chrysler are barely worth mentioning.
Rather than simply asking people what cars and brands they like, or basing their data on new car sales, iSeeCars analyzed data on 929,000 cars produced from 1981 to 2009 and sold between January and September 2024. Older cars are most likely to have been retained by their original owners, and researchers have created a picture of the most popular cars and brands.
RELATED: Top 5 Longest-Lived Cars Are All Toyotas
The results show that Americans don’t have much time to pay attention to traditional American brands, and are more willing to put their confidence and money into Japanese cars. Especially Toyota cars. Looking at brands, cars, trucks and SUVs, Toyota dominates all four lists.
Let’s take a look at the most popular vehicle categories first, iTV cars Compiled by calculating the percentage of 15-year-old cars retained by their original owners. Toyota has seven vehicles on the list (eight if you include the Lexus IS) and occupies every spot in the top five. The Highlander Hybrid ranks first, with 7% of 15-year-old cars retained by their original owners, compared with an average of 3.7%.
The Camry Hybrid came in second, followed by the non-hybrid Highlander, Tacoma and Prius. Honda’s CR-V and Ford Escape hybrids cracked the lead, while the RAV4 earned another spot for Toyota. Incidentally, the Escape is the only Ford to appear in any table, and the only Big Three product (it also appears in the SUV category, behind the Highlander and CR-V).
The most popular truck in the U.S. is the Toyota Tacoma (6.4% of 15-year-old vehicles are retained by the original owner), with the Tundra (5.5%), Honda Ridgeline (also 5.5%) and Nissan Frontier (5.2%) rounding out the rankings Slightly behind. Loyalty stakes. As iSeeCars points out, full-size trucks dominate new car sales, but when it comes to vehicle stability, midsize pickups are the clear winner.
Turning to the brand table, it’s no surprise that Toyota (5.6%) tops the list, ahead of Honda (5.3%), given what we know about each category. Lexus ranks third (4.4%), with Mazda (4.3%), Hyundai (4.2%; the only Korean brand) and Subaru (4.1%) rounding out the top six.
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