Car buyers search for space before speed, according to BuyaCar

The average car buyer is most interested in a car’s dimensions and boot space when searching for a new vehicle, according to analysis from BuyaCar.co.uk.

The online car supermarket set out to understand what drivers are most interested to learn when they search for the site's 10 most popular cars - and found that size-related queries outnumber every other aspect of the vehicle.

Topping the list of search modifiers for big-selling cars like the Ford Focus, Audi A3 and Vauxhall Corsa were 'dimensions' or 'size', followed by 'boot space'.

Performance ranked in eighth place as an aspect of the best-selling cars most likely to be researched online, but it appears to be less significant to buyers than 'weight', 'sunroof', 'boot capacity' and even 'fuel tank capacity'.

Fuel economy did not reach the top 10, while 'comfort', which might be expected to be an important aspect of the car ownership experience, sat in 10th place.

BuyaCar suggests that some of these findings, which reveal the qualities people are apparently most curious about, could be useful to dealers when describing cars that are on sale.

Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk, said: "Car sales professionals often assume that they know exactly what consumers want, but our analysis reveals a counter-intuitive lack of interest in many of the qualities they use every day to entice car buyers.

"Economy and performance are two stark examples which are surprisingly rarely seen  in our analysis of search queries. While those two qualities are often listed as extremely important to buyers when they are invited to rank their priorities in a survey, when given a free choice it seems that they are much less relevant to drivers than perhaps ensuring they will have room in the garage for their chosen car.

"The revelation that boot space is the second most important quality when people make a search for aspects of a particular model is perhaps the most surprising. Perhaps many dealers are missing a trick if they don't sing the virtues of a roomy load space, in favour of waxing lyrical about the economy of the car.”

Most searched qualities of the 10 best selling cars on BuyaCar.co.uk:

1              Dimensions (inc height or width)

2              Boot space

3              Weight

4              Sunroof

5              BHP (brake horsepower)

6              Trim levels

7              Fuel tank capacity

8              Performance

9              Interior dimensions

10           Comfort