Americans Becoming More Loyal to their Car Brands

U.S. consumers are increasingly likely to replace their vehicles with another of the same make, according to Polk & Co.'s analysis of first-quarter registrations.

During that period, 51.5% of buyers were loyal to their existing brand when making their next car purchase compared with 48.9% a year earlier.

Owners of Ford vehicles continue to be the most loyal: 65.1% returned for another, up 3.3 percentage points. Ford was followed by Toyota (58.5%), Chevrolet (56.2%), Mercedes-Benz (55.9%), BMW (55.6%) and Lexus (52.3%). All other marques in the survey lost more customers than they retained.

The biggest gains were made by Porsche (+9.5 points to 42.1%), Cadillac (+8.3 points to 47.4%) and Mazda (+7.8 points to 37%). But Mazda remains the marque with the least-loyal customers.