I have a very distinct memory of being 11 and riding in the car with my recently licensed big brother, who of course knew everything there is to know about cars and girls. We pulled up next to an old VW bug being driven by an attractive woman, and after he slugged me in the arm he sagely stated, “Man, there’s nothing as cool as a girl who drives a Volkswagen.” And maybe he was right, because 23 years later the VW Beetle is the car with the highest rate of female ownership.

According to a study by TrueCar.com, 56% of New Beetles are owned by females, more than any other single model. Close on its heels are Nissan Rogues (53.5% female ownership) and the Hyundai Tucson and VW Eos both with 53%.

Among the nine models with 50% or more female ownership, VW and Nissan each had two vehicles, with the Nissan Sentra barely making the list at 50.1%.

Also on that list were the Volvo S40 (51.9%), Honda CR-V (51.3%), Kia Sportage (50.5%) and Toyota RAV4 (50.4%).

Meanwhile, Volkswagen was nowhere near the top of the list when it came to which auto brands had the highest rate of female ownership.

That honor went to Kia with 45.8% female ownership. In fact, VW was all the way down at #13 on the list of brands, with 40.2%.

As you scroll down the list, the brands becoming either sportier (Jaguar @ 30.2%; Porsche @ 18.4%) or truck-ier (Dodge @ 27%; GMC @ 21.8%).

TrueCar notes that a handful of brands had less than 10% female ownership. And with the exception of electric sportser Tesla, all of them are super-pricey imports: Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Lotus, Ferrari and Buggati, which had a 0% rate of female ownership.

Does any of this surprise you? Do you think these results just verify or give any credence to existing assumptions about gender and car-buying. Please tell us what you think.

TrueCar.com Examines Gender Differences in Vehicle Registrations [TrueCar.com]

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