• April 7, 2011

Men come from Mars, if Mars sells trucks. A study from TrueCar.com, based on over eight million retail purchases last year "shows that women car buyers are more cost-conscious and purchased fuel-efficient vehicles while male buyers were completely the opposite, purchasing vehicles that were either big and brawny, like a large truck, or chose a high-priced, high-performance vehicle," said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insights at the consumer auto-shopping site.

The brand with the highest percentage of retail sales to females last year was Mini, at 47.9%, followed by Kia, for which 46.8% buyers were women. Third was Honda, for which 46% of buyers were women. Overall according to data from auto shopping Web site TrueCar.com, fifteen brands had a female ratio over 40% in both 2009 and 2010.

The firm found that five brands last year had 10% or fewer women buyers: Ferrari (6.4%), Lotus (7.2%) Lamborghini (7.4%), Maybach (8%), and Rolls Royce (9.3%).

The top ten models that had greater than 50% retail sales to females were Volkswagen New Beetle; Kia Spectra, Nissan Rogue, Volkswagen Eos, Hyundai Entourage, Volvo S40, Jeep Compass, Honda CR-V, Nissan Sentra, and Hyundai Tucson. The top ten models that had greater than 50% retail sales to males (and at least 1,000 annual retail sales in 2010) were Porsche 911, GMC Sierra, Chevrolet Corvette, Chevrolet Silverado, Ford F-Series, BMW M3, Ford Ranger, Toyota Tundra, Dodge Ram and Audi S5.