Google searches give insight into people’s interests in a wide range of subjects, from who won the Republican debate last night to the latest celebrity wedding. Now, the web site iSeeCars.com, an aggregator of used-car listings, has crunched search data to glean insights about the top used cars men and women want to buy.
And marketers take note: men and women really do have different criteria when shopping, and their top choices reflect that.
Using data from some 500,000 searches by shoppers looking for used cars, iSeeCars.com came up with the top 10 cars searched by women and men. For women, the number one pick was the eminently sensible Hyundai Tucson, which used cost an average $16,722 among the respondents. Tucson is consistently rated one of the most reliable, making it a sensible pick.
Among men, the top pick was the Nissan GT-R, a sexy sports car that sells for an an average price of $80,450.
A close look at the list shows that women tend to be practical shoppers, looking for fuel-efficient, reliable and budget-friendly choices. Men, however, tend to search for luxury cars they likely will only drive in their dreams.
Here’s the men’s top 10 list:
“The difference in pricing seems to speak more to women’s interest in practicality, owning a car for transportation from point A to point B, and men’s view of cars as status symbols,” said Phong Ly, Chief Executive Officer of iSeeCars.com, which gets paid for the leads it provides to dealers and others trying to sell their vehicles.
The top ten cars searched by women had an average price of $14,870, compared to $49,224 for the cars searched by men. (All were used, of various ages.) According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, income for adult males is 18% higher than for adult females.
Here’s the list of women’s top 10 searches:
The Tucson and four Kia models belong to the same South Korean automotive manufacturing group, consisting of Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. Both are known as high-quality cars that represent a good value. Hyundai Tucson is a crossover with an engine that generates 170 horsepower, gets 23 miles per gallon of gasoline and averages less than $17,000 in cost for a late-model used edition. Nissan Motor Corp.’s Nissan GT-R comes with a 500 horsepower engine and gets 18 miles per gallon of fuel.
Hyundai has sold more than 55,000 new Tucsons this year, establishing it as relatively popular model, behind the leaders of its class, Toyota RAV-4 and Honda CR-V.
Nissan has sold barely more than 1,000 GT-Rs – suggesting that most of the men searching for used GT-Rs were daydreaming, not shopping.