Anyone who reads or listens to anything beyond package labels and Kmart shopper alerts knows that the United States is an oxymoron (are an oxymoron?). People in Seattle are different from people in Savannah, and the citizens of Boston are unlike the citizens of Bakersfield. Recent data from our partners at car-shopping website Honk has confirmed this.
Using a sales database of 85,000 vehicles, the analysts at Honk compiled lists of the best-selling cars in four geographic areas of the U.S. These were the Northeast Region, Western Region, Midwest/Central Region, and Southern Region.
Let’s start with what cliche mongers call the low-hanging fruit. Where, asked the professor, does the Toyota Prius sell well? If you answered California, you’d be given an Honor Student bumper sticker and a big helping of self-esteem. The Prius, in fact, occupies the number one slot in the Western Region’s top 25 vehicles.
Why am I not surprised? For one thing, my sources tell me that Leonardo Di Caprio and Rob Reiner each drive a Prius, and if enviro-liberal opinion leaders are going to influence a car purchase in any market, it will be in California. But the Prius phenomenon is not limited to the red-carpet crowd. A sensible Santa Barbara couple I have known for years traded in their Lexus and Jaguar sedans and bought a brace of Priuses. They did it, they said, simply because it lowered their consumption of fossil fuels, a sound enough reason.
Contrast the California Prius success story to the Southern Region, where full-size pickup trucks occupy three of the first five positions and the Chevrolet Camaro is number one. I live in this region and am heartily puzzled at the Camaro’s showing but not at all surprised by the pickups. I say that because I don’t seem to see a great many Camaros, old or new, but pickups are ubiquitous. Maybe all the Camaros are in Atlanta and Nashville, which brings up another point: Any automotive research organization that puts Alabama, Georgia, and Florida in the same region apparently hasn’t been watching enough Southeastern Conference football.
The Camaro actually makes both the Southern and Midwest Region top 25, but not the Northeast, which includes New Jersey. Hybrids, incidentally, scored in only the Western Region, and Cadillac, despite a commendable product renaissance, appears only in the Midwest. Nineteen of the top 25 vehicles in the Midwest Region are domestic (if we include the no-longer-GM-owned Saab 9-3), probably because the three domestic automakers are headquartered there. In the Southern, Western, and Northeast Region, domestics placed nine, five, and six vehicles.
A double handful of full-size SUVs made the Southern Region list. This prevalence of big vehicles probably won’t change much until our regional thought leaders (think Brett Favre and the offensive line of the Saints) join Tom Hanks and Ed Begley at a Hollywood fundraiser for Jay Rockefeller. The surprise to me was the number of upscale sedans, four, that appeared.
So what can we conclude about all this? That it’s hard as all hell to pigeonhole car buyers, despite what so many eager know-it-alls over in the Marketing Department would have you believe.
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