Toyota Tops Tesla In Customer Loyalty According to New Study

A new look at which brands have the most loyal customers puts Toyota on top. Tesla does well but finishes behind many other brands. Here is what the study reveals about brand and model loyalty.

A new study conducted by used car retail giant CarMax points to Toyota as having the most loyal customers. Toyota ranks first as the brand with the most loyal customers overall, and the Prius is the vehicle to which owners are most loyal.

The CarMax study was done once before in 2018, and has just been updated using data from CarMax purchases with trade-ins from January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. The study examined owner behavior with an eye towards gauging how many shoppers return to the same brand, and also examined how many return to the same vehicle model. 

Toyota is the new brand leader, with 28.5% of those buying a Toyota also trading in an older Toyota. Mercedes-Benz ranks second, and Lexus is third. This is the first year that Tesla has been included in the study’s results, and the all-electric brand had a solid fifth-place ranking. That is quite an accomplishment. Consider that in the 2017 study, Toyota was ranked fifth. It will be very interesting to see how Tesla ranks in future versions of this study. We suspect that Tesla could move up, and possibly rank highest. 

The model with the most loyal owners is the Toyota Prius. An amazing 38% of CarMax shoppers who own a Prius buy another. The Toyota RAV4 Hybrid is also among the standouts in loyalty with 32.9% buying another one. CarMax pointed to these two models as examples saying, “...the popularity of these two vehicles among CarMax customers indicates a broader trend toward alternative fuel vehicles.”

When it comes to vehicle type, SUV shoppers are far and away the most loyal. Four-door SUV owners buy another one 71% of the time! Truck owners are the second most loyal vehicle type to buy another at 45%. By contrast, less than one in five sedan owners buys another. 

Torque News trusts that CarMax is faithfully reporting this information, but we turned to Consumer Reports to see how its data jived with this new report. Indeed, CR reports that the Prius has an exemplary owner satisfaction score, and 80% of owners report that they would purchase another Prius. The Tesla Model 3 is close to that with 72% of owners reporting they would buy another. 

You can view the 2024 study in its entirety here. If you’d like to read the earlier study, it is available here. 
 

Image of 2024 Toyota Prius by John Goreham

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.