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Recent Study Shows Certain Cars Are Gender Specific
A recent study has investigated how big a role gender plays as far as what type of vehicle a consumer drives.
What analysts found is that certain brands are more likely than others to be dominated by a particular gender, while others are more gender-neutral in their ownership.
For instance, ownership of exotic sports cars was heavily male, while many of the more practical, affordable brands were mostly owned by women.
InsureMe, an insurance referral company, is designed to help drivers find auto insurance through the Web. In finding insurance for its customers, it collects consumer data, which includes information on vehicle ownership, such as gender.
Obviously, that information is kept anonymous, but it can be used to analyze trends in vehicle ownership.
The following are a few examples of trends that InsureMe statistician Peter Deusterman discovered.
In the last 13 months, 86 percent of drivers requesting insurance for Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis were men, suggesting that Italian sports cars are more popular among men.
Meanwhile, 74 percent of consumers asking for insurance quotes for the new Volkswagen Beetle were female.
"It appears that men are more likely to own more expensive, higher performance cars than are women, fueling stereotypes that men like to take more risks than women (a notion that's supported by crash statistics as well) and typically seek cars that offer greater performance," the study indicated.
Moreover, brands like Kia, Saturn and Hyundai, which are often considered more affordable and practical than glamorous or sporty, were much more likely to have female owners than male owners.
According to officials, there were roughly twice as many female owners of Kias and Saturns than male owners.
The study found that more women were owners of Pontiac vehicles than men (12,825 female versus 7,526 male).
However, InsureMe indicated that Mercedes Benz was gender neutral, as roughly the same amount of men and women owned the luxury brand.
"I suppose everyone enjoys a little luxury," Deusterman commented. "Particularly heated seats."
The Hummer brand, which InsureMe called the quintessential "masculine" vehicle, had more male owners, but not overwhelmingly so. The male-to-female ownership ratio on the automaker was three-to-two.
Meanwhile, BMWs and Audis were much more likely to have male owners than Hummers.