With more than 2.2 million cars sold in 2021, the BMW core brand had a record year, managing to reclaim the sales crown after Mercedes’ five-year dominance. The German luxury car brand’s popularity is reflected in a new study conducted by Compare The Market to determine the most searched automaker of the past 12 months. In a year during which new car sales were greatly impacted by the microchip shortage and to a lesser extent by the coronavirus pandemic, Toyota topped the rankings for the second year in a row. Based on Google Trends data collected from 154 countries, nearly a third of searches last year had the word “Toyota” in them as approximately 31% googled the Japanese mainstream car brand.
It was the most searched car manufacturer in 47 of the 154 countries analyzed, but even so, its popularity went down from the 34.8% score achieved back in 2020. Despite its dip, Toyota was still way ahead of BMW, which had to settle for the #2 spot on the podium for the second consecutive year. It’s worth mentioning the Bavarian brand was #1 in 2019 and #2 the year before.
Mercedes once again finished in third place, but it narrowed the gap by becoming more popular in a few countries where Toyota and BMW had been more searched in past years. Even so, Compare The Market points out that on average, during the last four years, BMW holds the title for the most searched car brand in more countries than any other rival. The main reason stems from its 2019 results when it was number one in 118 countries analyzed.
The collected Google Trends data includes Tesla for the first time and shows it was the most searched brand in China, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macao. It was also the second or the third most searched automaker in countries like the United States, Norway, Finland, Austria, and South Korea.
Audi climbed from 6th to 4th position by more than doubling the number of countries where it was the #1 search. Rather surprisingly, Volkswagen and Alfa Romeo did not top the search results in any country last year. You can read the full analysis at the source link below.
[Source: Compare The Market]
