Luxury Brands Lead Facebook Fan List

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 4:57PM EST · Published Nov 20, 6:34AM EST

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A study of which car brands have the most Facebook fans in America shows that most are brands that the majority of Americans cannot afford. The car brand fan process on Facebook is aspirational and therefore not very useful to manufacturers.

A new study by Auto Insurance Center shows that among the 10 car brands with the most fans, eight are luxury or ultra-luxury brands. At the highest end, Lamborghini ranks fifth in fans, with 11.7 million. Lamborghini sells cars in the $300,000-plus range. Ferrari is third on the list with 16.2 million fans.

More mainstream luxury models take six spots. These include first place Mercedes with 19.4 million fans, second place BMW with 18.9 million, sixth place Porsche with 10.1 million, seventh place Land Rover with 9.1 million fans, eighth place Audi with 9.0 million and ninth place Jaguar with 6.8 million.

Two more commonplace brands round out the top 10 list: Nissan in fourth place with 13.5 million fans and in tenth place Jeep with 4.7 million.

In the first 10 months of the year, Jaguar has sold 12,204 cars, Ferrari has sold 1,903 and Maserati 9,544. Among the other brands, some sell substantially more cars, but none has close to mainstream numbers.

ALSO READ: America’s Most (and Least) Expensive Cars

Experts at the Auto Insurance Center admit:

Perhaps this is simply a case of Facebook users dreaming of buying high-end luxury cars (and clicking “like”) while pragmatically purchasing more budget-friendly models. However, it is worth noting that in the U.S., high-end luxury vehicles sales are the fastest-growing segment.

Another explanation for the disparities simply lies in the strength of various companies’ social media strategies. Mercedes is known for its groundbreaking social media campaigns, as are BMW and Ferrari. In an age where 84% of car buyers are on Facebook, these companies clearly grasp the importance of social media.

So many people fans of so many car brands they never will be able to afford.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.