If you look at TrueDelta’s list of the most popular price comparisons, you may notice a few things:

–Hondas dominate, with at least one Honda or Acura in over half of the comparisons

–there’s little interest in the domestics, with two Fords, one Chrysler, and no GM models

I’ve found similar patterns in recruiting people for the panel. Honda owners are easiest to recruit, while GM owners–despite frequent complaining about Consumer Reports–tend to be among the most difficult (with the exception of Saturn). A few more bits of info for the mix: Toyota owners don’t join nearly as readily as Honda owners. VW owners virtually jump at the opportunity, yet Audi and Mercedes-Benz owners may be even more difficult to recruit than GM owners.

How might these observations be explained? I have no hard data, but a few hypotheses.

To begin with, as discussed a few blog entries ago, some people follow a rational process when deciding which car to buy, while others just buy the one that most strongly appeals to them. TrueDelta is often used to research purchases of family haulers, but is rarely used to research purchases of sports cars. Aside from the latter market being smaller, the purchase of a sports car is almost always driven by emotion. Sports car buyers (at least when compared to minivan buyers) just don’t care how the prices compare, or about fuel economy or reliability. They want the one they want.

So why did I recently spend a couple hours adding pricing information for the BMW Z4 and Porsche Boxster / Cayman to the database? I can tell you this much: the reason wasn’t rational.

This factor partly explains the lack of interest among Audi and Mercedes owners–these are people who buy cars for emotional reasons. But there’s also some self-selection going on, in both these cases and in those of domestic cars. People who care about reliability don’t buy these cars because of their reputations. Conversely, the people who do buy these cars don’t have reliability as a top priority. A few years ago I found an Audi S4 Avant at a great price, and considered buying it. I asked about reliability on AudiWorld.com. One person actually responded that, if I cared about reliability, then I should not buy the car. And if I did buy the car, be sure to get an extended warranty.

How to then explain the popularity of the research among Volkswagen owners? Perhaps their purchases tend to be less emotion-driven than those of Audi owners. They may also have less spare cash to spend on repairs. Even if they have the cash, if they weren’t interested in holding on to it they’d likely have bought an Audi.

Another factor with domestic car owners is that they tend to be from demographics, older and less (sub)urban, who are less likely to perform research on the Internet. The same may apply to Toyota owners. I get the sense that while Honda buyers like to perform a ton of research before buying another Honda, Toyota buyers don’t want to bother with performing research. Yet they care at least as much about reliability. So they just buy the brand they’ve always heard is the most dependable.

If you have a hypothesis, please feel free to comment.