The List

This list includes the top 10 luxury vehicles with the highest percentage of female primary drivers based on CNW Marketing Research survey data.

The Bandon, Ore.-based firm conducted more than 15,000 phone surveys during 2006 on a range of topics about car buying and ownership. The list does not account for yearly vehicle sales volumes. Rather, it measures which vehicles have the highest percentage of female drivers based on the number of respondents who said they were the primary driver of a particular model. We excluded vehicles below $30,000 that weren't part of a luxury brand, as well as models that have been discontinued for 2007.

The percentage of primary male drivers for our list of the 10 vehicles most driven by men averaged 90.8 percent, versus an average of 51.9 percent for women. That’s a big difference and, while it clearly can’t account for all buyers of high-end cars, the discrepancy between the percentages of male versus female primary drivers does imply that men are buying more high-end cars than women.

Barletta was surprised to see the women’s numbers so much lower than the men's but says that this will change. Female baby boomers have just started spending and they are about to ramp it up. “The baby-boom generation is moving into the post-family stage — 50-70 years old — and now that they’ve taken care of everyone else, they're ready to spend on themselves,” she says.

“You’ll see women buying more luxury cars and sports cars,” Barletta says. "The cars atop this list, and car manufacturers that didn’t make it, will all have to pay more attention to women drivers in the near future. The companies who make the mistake of not doing so will find themselves way behind.”