BMW was the luxury brand consumers considered most during the tail end of 2022, and it was the elderly, soon-to-be-replaced X5 and 5-Series that buyers found most tempting, a new study reveals.
The Kelley Blue Book Brand Watch report discovered that BMW was the most considered luxury brand in Q4, 2022, helping the Bavarian brand retain its top spot for the fourth consecutive quarter. A sizeable 22 percent of luxury buyers considered a BMW for their new car in Q4, which matched the number for Q3.
Second place went to Lexus, whose cars were on the shortlist of 19 percent of luxury buyers, in part down to the desirability of the new RX and RX hybrid. The most-shopped luxury SUV wasn’t a BMW X5 or Lexus RX, though, but a Buick Enclave, which returns to the number one position after seven years, and also became the most shopped-for vehicle of any body shape.
Buick knocked the Cadillac Escalade from the top step of the podium, a place it had made home over the previous three quarters. Other SUVs in the list of top 5 off-roaders were, from third to fifth spot, the Acura MDX, Lexus RX and BMW X5, while the most-shopped luxury car was the BMW 3-Series, followed by the Cadillac CT5 and BMW 5-Series.
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One major upset highlighted by the study was the fall in interest in Tesla’s products. Although sales figures show that Tesla was only narrowly beaten by BMW in the race to sell more luxury cars, Kelley Blue Book’s data says only 9 percent of luxury vehicle shoppers considered a Tesla in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared with 12 percent in Q3.
Alarmingly, the number of buyers considering purchasing a Model 3 sedan plummeted by 30 percent in the final three months of 2022. But that doesn’t appear to have unduly hurt Tesla’s sales performance, and Cox Automotive figures shows interest in Tesla surged in the second half of December when the company announced a raft of discounts.