These Are The Cars You’re Looking For

Top Speed Google search worldwide results infographic (Credit: Top Speed)

Plenty of people own a car they hate or just simply tolerate, and we call them Camry drivers. Seriously, though, just because an automaker sells a lot of vehicles doesn’t mean that people obsess over them. Dodge poked fun of this fact a few years ago when it pointed out that no kid puts a poster of a Volkswagen Passat on their wall.

Our friends at Top Speed recently did an interesting study of their own using Google search results from 2014. Interestingly enough, while Toyota was the top brand for sales in the world and the United States, it was only the fourth most-searched brand in the country. Volkswagen, which came in second for worldwide sales, didn’t even appear in the top ten. Instead, Ford landed in the top spot, followed by Jeep and Dodge. Apparently those are the brands that get people excited enough to search for more information using Google.

Things get a little more interesting when Top Speed looked at data from April 2014 through March 2015. Toyota actually came out on top for the United States. Canada lived up to its status as “America Junior” by also making Toyota number one. In Mexico, Nissan and Chevrolet shared the top spot, while both brands didn’t even crack the top five in the U.S.

Top Speed Google U.S. search results infographic (Credit: Top Speed)

Top Speed looked even closer at Google search results in the United States, focusing on which brands landed at the top for each individual state. Toyota was number one in only 24 states, sweeping most of the South, plus East and West Coasts. Ford struck Google search gold in most of the Great Lakes, Midwest and a few other states. Even more curious was how the line dividing the Toyota- and Ford-dominated states involved two or three brands taking the top spot. Unsurprisingly, Subaru was popular in the snowy and mountainous states of Colorado and Utah (in addition to a handful of others scattered about), while Nissan was able to share victory in Tennessee.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that in the District of Columbia, Tesla shared the most-researched spot with Toyota, proving that maybe Congress really is more interested in the automaker than one might think.