More Luxury Car Shoppers Consider BMW, Audi, Lexus

Richard Homan 08/26/2021 7:35am

When Americans set out to buy a luxury car, they’re most likely to consider a BMW first. In the second quarter of 2021, BMW held onto the top spot in Kelley Blue Book’s brand watch study for luxury vehicles.

The consumer perception study weaves in consumer shopping behavior to determine how a brand or model stacks up with its segment competitors in a dozen factors key to a consumers’ buying decision. We conduct two rolling studies every quarter – one for the affordable car market (Toyota took home that prize), and one looking at luxury car shoppers.

Four Products Carry the BMW Lineup

BMW has led the listing for 12 consecutive quarters. But the German brand outperformed its usual score last quarter, gaining three percentage points. Twenty-three percent of shoppers considered buying a Bimmer. Audi and Lexus tied for second at 19%.

Like most car companies, BMW has a small number of very successful products that make up most of its sales and a large stable of niche vehicles beyond that. The BMW 5 Series and 3 Series sedans and X5 and X3 SUVs all made the list of 10 vehicles shoppers most often considered.

The top of that list, however, was not a BMW. More Americans looked at the Tesla Model 3 than any other luxury vehicle.

Inventory Struggles Affected the Results

A worldwide shortage of microchips has restricted car manufacturing all year. That impacted the results. The popular Lexus RX, for instance, was the most-shopped luxury SUV and the third most-considered vehicle. Yet Lexus dealers faced limited RX inventory, which pushed some shoppers to examine other alternatives.

Luxury shoppers are more likely to consider an SUV than any other kind of vehicle. Two-thirds of luxury shoppers looked at an SUV, while 55% considered a sedan (the two add up to more than 100 because shoppers tend to research more than one option).

Asked what factors mattered most to them, luxury car shoppers cited reliability, safety, comfort, and performance – an order that hasn’t changed in five years.