One of my favorite measures in the car world is “buyer loyalty.” The data isn’t based on sentiment or an inference but on a consumer putting their money where their mouth is and purchasing a vehicle. It’s clean and presumably accurate. The results, though, are a bit surprising.
The news is so shocking and unexpected that, for the rest of today’s The Morning Dump, I’m going to take it easy and focus on news that probably won’t cause your bow-tie to comically spin around or your tophat to suddenly pop off your head.
Canada has matched America’s 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs, and we’re now learning there was a big pushback from at least one American EV-maker. I’m guessing you know who it is. I’m also going to assume that you’ll be able to correctly decide whether or not GM’s new battery tie-up with Samsung is going to be accelerated or delayed.
And, finally, it won’t be a big shock to discover where CDK Global thinks it needs to make future investments.
The… Lincoln Nautilus Has America’s Most Loyal Non-Tesla Buyers?
I drove the Lincoln Nautilus earlier this year and found it to be a comfortable, capable vehicle with a captivating screen design. Other than where it’s built, it’s hard to make any argument against the mid-size crossover-y luxury-ish Lincoln Nautilus.
At the same time, I didn’t get a strong feeling that my life would be bereft if there was somehow never a Nautilus in it again. Apparently, that’s how many Nautilus owners feel because it is the most popular non-Tesla vehicle for buyer loyalty according to S&P Global Mobility.
And this is in a market that’s becoming more loyal:
More than half of all brands in the industry saw a year-over-year increase of 1 percentage point or better. This group included both mainstream and luxury brands, which saw increases of 1.9 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively. Growing inventory levels and a strong pipeline of return-to- market households were the primary factors in loyalty gains for the first half of 2024.
“Last year we saw a big jump in the number of households returning to market for a new vehicle, but the inventory was lacking,” said Vince Palomarez, associate director, loyalty product management at S&P Global Mobility. “This year, return-to-market volume remains consistent; however, inventory levels are up more than 40%, so households have more opportunity to remain loyal to their previous brand.”
People often move up or down from models within a brand, so model loyalty tends to be a relatively small number for everything that isn’t a pickup truck. Right now, brand loyalty overall is about 52.5%. The most loyal brand owners, by far, have been Tesla owners (67.8%). This makes sense as prices for its vehicles have dropped and little else has been particularly competitive with Tesla until very recently.
The fastest-growing brands in terms of loyalty this year have been Lincoln, Jaguar, and Land Rover. Land Rover makes a lot of sense to me, Jaguar a little less so, but Lincoln is kind of amazing. Overall, the Lincoln Nautilus has a model loyalty of 46.7%, which is an improvement over last year, when the Nautilus had a 42% return rate. The Corsair, too, has extremely loyal customers.
I think it would be easy to say that all Lincoln owners are old and thus are getting the same thing they’ve always gotten, and there’s probably some truth to that, but it’s not like Lincoln sales are slumping. Overall, brand sales were up 25% year-over-year. The one weakness in the lineup is the Lincoln Navigator, but that’s about to be replaced with a new and improved 2025 Lincoln Navigator.
Ultimately, I think this goes to prove that people will buy Chinese-built cars so long as it isn’t super obvious they are buying Chinese-built cars. My guess is a lot of owners had the Candian-built Nautilus before and are now replacing them with the Chinese-built model. Either they don’t know the Nautilus is built in China now or they don’t care.
Tesla Reportedly Wanted Canada To Backoff On Chinese EV Threat… Because Tesla Sells A Lot Of Chinese EVs In Canada
One of the quirks of Tesla is that two theoretically identical models from the same model year might have an enormous number of differences. Specifically, ongoing iterative changes, different battery cells and chemistries, and global production means that you could have a 2022 Tesla Model Y with one type of battery built in Texas and your buddy could have a 2022 Tesla Model Y with a different battery built in China.
That’s less likely in the United States, where Inflation Reduction Act-related rules disincentivize certain batteries and certain production. But Canada is a little different. The IRA had the unintended side effect of sending more Chinese-built cars to our northern neighbors. Specifically, a bunch of Chinese-built Teslas landed there.
The news that Canada was thinking about joining the USA with a 100% tariff on Chinese-built cars reportedly led Tesla to protest.
The source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation, said Tesla approached Canada before the official announcement. The automaker asked for a rate similar to what it received in the European Union, the source said.
Tesla does not disclose its Chinese exports to Canada. However, vehicle-identification codes showed that the Model 3 compact sedan and Model Y crossover models were being exported from Shanghai to Canada.
It was worth a shot!
GM And Samsung Ink Battery Deal, Immediately Delay It
Last year the industry was still deep into the EV hype train, and GM and South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI announced a plan to build a battery-making plant via a joint venture in New Carlisle, Indiana.
The deal has been finalized and the plan is coming, with the expectation that it’ll create about 1,600 jobs. Oh, and it’s immediately delayed a year according to The Detroit News. That means the plant will now open in 2027 instead of 2026.
Here’s what Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP in charge of all things battery, had to say in a LinkedIn post:
This new $3.5 billion plant will have an initial capacity of 27 GWh, with capability to expand up to 36 GWh, building prismatic cells, which will be added to our battery technology portfolio, helping us to continue to increase performance and lower costs in the future.
The Samsung SDI joint venture paves the way for our next-generation EVs to provide customers with the latest battery technology, improving EV performance, and the ownership experience. Our new venture with SDI supplements our successful Ultium Cells JV with LG Energy Solution.
Unlike Chinese-built Teslas, these batteries are likely to qualify for IRA tax incentives. In the grand scheme of things, a delay of a year probably isn’t a huge deal.
CDK CEO: Uhh… Let’s Make Our Tech Better
CDK Global is the main provider of Dealership Management Software (DMS) in the United States. It’s worked hard over the years to make sure all of its products were deeply integrated into the running of its partner dealerships.
This backfired to some degree when CDK Global found itself the victim of a major ransomware attack that caused operations to slow down or stop at about 15,000 dealers.
CDK Global is boosting its spending on innovation and IT infrastructure in the wake of two cyberattacks in June, CEO Brian MacDonald said.
“To demonstrate CDK’s commitment and CDK’s abilities, we’re actually increasing investment,” MacDonald told Automotive News on the Aug. 28 episode of the “Daily Drive” podcast.
CDK has invested $500 million in those efforts since July 2022, when Brookfield Business Partners took the company private in an $8.7 billion deal that same year.
Ah yes, Private Equity: the solution to and cause of most of life’s problems.
It’s here that I should probably note that The Autopian is updating its tech stack tonight so there might be some weirdness in the migration. I’m aware that a few things haven’t been working perfectly around here lately. We’ve been slow to fix them as we’ve been testing out a new backend (the front end will look roughly the same) to try and make the site faster. I’m hoping that if it’s successful we’ll be able to iterate and make some overdue improvements and maybe a few design tweaks.
If it doesn’t work, I guess it’s a four-day weekend.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
In honor of the Lincoln Nautilus, here’s Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” This is also a light Mark Tucker tribute since I know Mark is a fan. This song was also used as the intro sequence music for an extremely early-aughts ABC primetime comedy. Does anyone remember the show?
The Big Question
Are you brand and/or model loyal?
Love the Simpsons reference
I’ve always been a big Cadillac fan, I’ve even been a fan of their smaller cars as well. That out of the way, I don’t feel any particular loyalty per se, but my fleet does have a high percentage of GM content. Even one of my Jaguars has a Chevy engine.
That’s for the car lineup – for trucks I tend to gravitate towards Ford. I used to have a dirt-cheap ’94 F-150 and currently have an ’99 F-250 with a tommy-gate. It’s been a really solid truck and if it dies I will likely replace it with something similar – they seem cheap and plentiful around these parts.
No brand loyalty for me really. There are classic car brand I prefer over others like Pontiacs but there isn’t a new brand that I would be loyal to over another. I would get what ever has the most bang for the buck and is reliable.
As for the GM battery plant the construction of the plant is still on going so that isn’t getting delayed just when it will begin production of batteries. I work right by where the plant is getting built and lots of talk around work about home many people will jump ship to go work there same with the Amazon data center.
Not brand loyal. When I go to buy a car, I determine what I’m buying it for and then look at the available options from all manufacturers. I weigh the good and bad of each and pick the one I think it best. Brand might be one factor, but there are a lot of other factors that matter more.
Brand loyalty is an interesting beast when it comes to cars.
Old school brand loyalty was give and take. Maybe a nearby factory or dealership helped your family put food on the table. Maybe you just have happy memories attached to the family truckser and an Oedipal need for tradition. Probably not the case for Lincoln anymore.
Then you have those whose identity is tied to a brand for socio-political reasons (this is, big surprise, more common today). Again, not Lincoln.
More often than not in these cases brand loyalty is also dealer loyalty. Cars are A-B for most. If the last experience wasn’t bad, why chance getting messed over? So I’d say this loyalty speaks to the Lincoln buying process. Mid-size SUV is default now so the model matters not here. Plus we already know the cars are no longer built to last.
To that end, true brand loyalists hang onto their cars and cherish them, not just replace them with a new one every 3 years. If you had the same Honda for 20 years, you’re more a loyalist than a guy who’s had two Lincoln’s over 6 years. But I get why companies don’t value those studies as much.
I’m not model loyal, but I’m very much a Honda guy. First car was a Pontiac, but since then I’ve had two Civics, a Fit, and an HR-V. I’ve also almost had a Prelude, Element, Integra, and ILX. If I coulda found one when I was last looking, I woulda got me a TSX Sportwagon.
My parents, not very brand loyal. In recent years, they’ve at least prefered Japanese brands. They’ve had in my lifetime, a Chevy Chevette, Pontiac Sunbird, Dodge Caravan, Toyota Tacoma, Chrysler PT Cruiser, Honda Civic, and Subaru Forester. They’re considering a Ford Maveric to replace the Tacoma but if Toyota, Honda, or particularly Subaru made an equivalent vehicle, they’d rather have that.
I guess it really depends on how you define loyalty.
I bought a second Boxster right after the first Boxster I owned. And right now we are considering trading my wife’s Volvo for a Macan if I can find the right one. So you might say I am a Porsche loyalist.
The reason we are looking to the Macan is we want something to keep for 10 years or so. The Volvo is paid for and only has about 30K miles on it from 2019. It’s starting to develop so many issues and I just don’t trust it.
Porsche has ridiculous maintenance costs but if you keep up with it they also have crazy reliability.
So, I am loyal to Porsche because as long as I maintain them very well, they still feel nearly new, rock solid after many years of ownership. If this were to change for any reason, my loyalty would not survive it.
Does that make me loyal? Maybe only as loyal as Porsche would be to me if I stopped buying them or stopped going to the dealer for service maybe. Although, I don’t buy them new, only CPO so maybe they don’t care much about my loyalty anyway. Does loyalty count in this context if you don’t buy new?
I see two things going on with the loyalty numbers: one is that Lincoln / Land Rover / Jaguar are not mainstream luxury brands, so the customers who buy them had to intentionally drive past all the BMW/ Audi/ Mercedes/ Lexus dealers and also ignore all the cars in their neighbors’ driveways, and maybe even take some flak from their friends for their choices. So they’re probably predisposed to liking the brand in the first place. This has always been true of Tesla, too.
Second thing is just one of the many generic laws of numbers. Lists of “highest rate of this or that” inevitably end up full of the smaller players, because you simply need fewer positive hits on your metric (repeat purchases in this case) to end up at the top of the list. Call it “the law of small denominators.”
Also, as a data guy, I know that you always have to time-constrain your numbers. If your time constraint for loyalty was less than, say, 5 years, you’re going to bias toward cars that are commonly leased. I bet if you look at the winners you’ll find higher lease rates.
This is good analysis. Especially here, given that the Nautilus used to be the MKX – wonder if loyalty from MKX-to-Nautilus stacks up vs Nautilus-to-Nautilus?
I guess I’ve been mostly loyal to GM over the years but it wasn’t really by intent. One Pontiac, five Chevys, and a Lincoln for something different. It’s just was when I was looking for a particular kind of car, the GM vehicle happened to check the boxes and was a reasonable price. There’s also a feeling of being comfortable with how the car is built or the “engineering language” at play when it comes time to repair them.
The last car I bought was the Lincoln and it checked the boxes at the time so I got it. Admittedly, one of the boxes was “not GM” for the simple reason that I wanted to expand my horizon a bit.
I will be loyal to a brand as soon as a brand is loyal to me. So, never.
I’m on my second consecutive Jaguar (XE first F Type second) and funnily enough I met a couple at a car show at the weekend, who were on their third consecutive F Type. Before that I was a BMW loyalist but their more recent design choices have left me cold and somehow (in my own head anyway) a Jaguar is cooler than a BMW.
IMO there is a lot more affection for the Jaguar brand than journalists and even the company itself realizes. I suspect part of the problem is that is translating into sales of used examples not new ones.
I’m an alfista at heart, but model availability and the realities of the North American market mean that in my slightly over 20 years of car ownership, most have been VWs and being a dubber and dabbing in the scene mean I know more about VAG than Alfa. My first new car (and current) is a mk7.5 GTI and I don’t see anything VW is currently offering that tickles my fancy anymore. Volkswagen has lost itself and is losing tons of equity from its dwindling enthusiast base.
Pre OBD2 Nissan/Datsun? I’ve owned like 9 and still own 4. Pre European influence Dodge? I own a couple of those too. I currently also own 2 International Harvesters. I guess thats most of the fleet. And pseudo Saabs. I had a 97x, and we bought another to follow it up. I had a 92x, we bought another to follow it up. 92x turbo is DD since mid pandemic.
It’s sometimes hard to discern between actual loyalty and apathy. I knew an older fella that bought 5 Mercury Grand Marquis in a row. Spanning two generations of the car.
It wasn’t because it was the best car, or even because he cared all that much. He actually cared so little that he just wanted to keep things the same. He didn’t want to put forth the effort to adapt to anything different.
He would show up as a “loyal” customer in Mercury’s stats. In actuality he was 100% just apathetic. More adverse to change then anything. I think that’s the case for certain customers and maybe why the segments they frequent show up with “loyal” customers. I think “loyalty” is probably a misnomer in that aspect, maybe they should just call it “repeat customers”.
not brand loyal. I’ll get whatever fits my needs and price at the time. The only brands which my family has owned multiple versions of is Subaru (Outback, Crosstrek, Legacy, Impreza), Acura (Integra, RDX), Volvo (240, C40).
Brand loyalty? Oh I dunno, I’ve only pretty much arranged my entire life around all things Fiat…
I used to be very GM loyal. It’s all my parents really had growing up, and it’s all I bought, other than 1 Ford, until about 3 years ago. I bought a RAM truck during the pandemic because they weren’t missing any chips. I picked up a BMW 330e because GM stopped making the Volt or any PHEV’s. I suppose I could have grabbed Sky or Solstice as a fun car, but I went with an NC Miata for a few reasons. GM just stopped offering much that interests me. There’s not much sporty or car based in their lineup anymore, except Caddy or a Vette. I still have 2 GM vehicles, but I have 4 that are not.
For cars: I’m less brand-loyal than I am brand-averse.
Would I buy a VW again? Sure, last one was grand.
Would I buy a Nissan again? No. No no no no.
Would I buy another Ducati? It’d have to be really pretty to endure the pain.
But as me about AMD vs Intel: the answer is always AMD.
Ditto. I would think twice or three times about buying lots of brands. I would never buy anything from Stellantis. I’d shop Honda before any other brand.
I love the arguments with PC’s AMD vs Intel or AMD/(ATI when that was a thing) vs Nvidia. To me it is just what is the best value for your dollars. I have flipped flopped between Intel and AMD for CPU’s and Nvidia and AMD GPU’s over the years. If I don’t feel like my money is going to be valued on a product I will look elsewhere be it performance or reliability related especially with cars and electronics.
For GPUs: I’m less invested in the AMD/nVidia debate and will pick on value. I’ve had both over the years.
For CPUs: my AMD-bend has carried with me from an update from the early years of the K6 (after an ill-fated Intel P75, and a Cyrix 5×86). I feel my loyalty has been rewarded with continued stable performance, without failure or complaint.
I pulled a 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird from a pile of old parts a while back tidying up; it brought back memories of how blisteringly fast it was back then – and the joys of early OCing.
I buy whatever is cheap when I need it. Only car I bought from the dealer was a GTI, and I didn’t even think about returning to VW once it died
I’ve been loyal to VW, but I wouldn’t buy a new one today. Every car I’ve owned has been a VW, the first being my 72 Super Beetle, which I still have. I had a 2009 GTI, then a 2012 CC after that. I’ve got a 2014 Sportwagen TDI now. The 2010s VWs hit a sweet spot for me, with minimal tech in the cabin but with some nice touches to make it not feel like a full blown economy car. The MKV platform under the GTI and my wagon is one of my personal favorites, and I’ve driven a lot of cars. It also helped that VW offered all of those cars in a stick. When you want a manual wagon, there’s just not a lot of options. But again, I wouldn’t own anything they sell today. Too much tech and irritating interfaces in the new GTI, the Jetta looks bloated, the ID.4 looks like a used bar of soap, and I can’t tell the SUVs apart from a distance. The Bus is cool I guess but I still have no interest in owning one.
I am only BEV loyal, not brand. My wife and I are in the demographic that doesn’t want to go back to ICE. By the time my Model 3 needs to be replaced, I hope to get a good deal on a lightly used ID.Buzz. I could also be talked into an electric truck if my use case supports it.
Answering the Question:
Wife didn’t want to sway from Toyota/Lexus, so we went from an Avalon to a ct200h, about doubling the mpg and a smaller car to boot. That was about 8 years ago.
Me? I’m more of a “car loyalty” guy. Had the same one for over 20 years. And yeah, I replaced the transmission and suspension, which cost more than it’s worth, but cost A LOT less than buying another car, so saved money.
Ten years with my 2015 Fit, and, like you, I have no desire for anything else (well, that I can afford).
The eye watering number on the sticker certainly encourages me to stick with what I got these days.
That too, and for something that doesn’t interest me.
re: personal loyalty, I bought a BMW bike because I felt like I had at least some idea what kind of bullshit they’d pull. Which, when I put it that way, sounds more like vendor lock or straight-up Stockholm syndrome.
I am brand disloyal, if that makes sense. Outside of those brands, I’m not beholden to anyone particular.
Good luck and goodbye Autopian.com, we’ll see you on the flip, if we see you at all. 😛
1st, I have a decade’s worth of software testing under my belt, though I have moved to team leadership. If you want UAT work, hit me up.
Big Question: Probably Nissan. I always end up back at Nissan.
ayyy, this could be kind of fun! I gotta go open Discord, maybe we can organize in there
I have to get on Discord. I have just been putting it off, but would love to contribute. I will go do it now.
I’ll be the first to wave hello.