What women want: Her favorite vehicles

The SUVs with highest percentage of female primary drivers include convenience features that affect seating for children and occupant safety, which O’Kane says are top priorities for most women.

When looking only at luxury vehicles, it’s clear that even wealthy women focus on price more than do affluent men. Many of the luxury vehicles with the highest percentage of female primary drivers are among the most affordable premium models on the market.

Among the most affordable models on our second list, which is limited to luxury or premium models, are the second-place $25,930 Audi A3, with 54.85 percent female primary drivers, and the third-ranked $24,365 Volvo S40 with 53.69 percent.

By contrast, the luxury vehicles with the highest percentage of male drivers are among the priciest, fastest and flashiest around. Marketers predict that in coming years, male Baby Boomers will snap up ultra-luxury vehicles and sports cars in record numbers.

But their female counterparts won’t, necessarily. Even though female Boomers, like the men in their generation, seek ways to invest in themselves “to put an exclamation point on their life,” says ReachWomen’s Johnson, that doesn’t always mean spending a lot on a lavish or attention-getting vehicle.

Women aren’t immune to the idea of regarding their vehicle as a status symbol, sources say. They just typically aren’t as overt as men about expressing their status when it comes to the vehicle they drive.

“When you’re purchasing a car, you’re often purchasing an identity … so sometimes there are women who want the attention, but it’s more subtle,” O’Kane says. “Women want the experience in the vehicle” more than they want its projected image, while for men it’s often the opposite, she says.

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Despite being more value-oriented than men, the amount of money women spend on new cars has risen at twice the national average this decade, says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, the source for the data used in our rankings. “More women in two- and three-car households are driving a luxury brand.”

The BMW Z4 is the only model to make both of our lists of vehicles with the highest percentage of female primary drivers. With 60.31 percent driven primarily by women, BMW’s sleek Z4 two-seater sports car tops our luxury-only list and ranks sixth on the all-encompassing list.

It has the kind of styling women gravitate toward, says Imre Molnar, dean of Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, home to one of the country’s top automotive design programs. The BMW Z4 has a “complex and sophisticated compound form that’s very feminine,” he says, adding that some women are attracted to so-called "masculine" designs, but most gravitate toward vehicles with softer curves.

Cars from Asian automakers tend to have styling that’s “much gentler, less aggressive,” Molnar says. Eight of the 10 models on our all-encompassing list of vehicles driven primarily by women are from Asian manufacturers.

Our lists include the top 10 vehicles with the highest percentage of female primary drivers based on CNW Marketing Research survey data. The lists do not account for yearly vehicle sales volumes. Rather, they measure which vehicles have the highest percentage of female drivers based on the number of survey respondents who said they were the primary driver of a particular model. The surveys were conducted in 2007. We excluded models that have been discontinued for 2008.

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