#Polk

Average cars are driven for 11.4 years according to data released today by R.L. Polk.

According to data from Polk, U.S. buyers registered 67,385 BMW vehicles through March this year, topping Mercedes-Benz which saw 62,366 registrations.

Porsche and Cadillac saw the biggest jumps in brand loyalty in the first quarter of 2013 while Ford retained its crown as the overall brand loyalty leader.

The results for the most successful cars of 2011 so far are in. Automotive data and marketing solutions company Polk has calculated the results from the first six months of 2011 new vehicle registrations and have come up with the top picks for non-premium and premium models.

The all important metric of “conquest sales”, vehicles which steal owners away from another brand, has a new king, the Hyundai Sonata. The Korean automaker’s mid-size sedan has been a smash hit, and evidently done its part to steal consumers aware from other manufacturers.

Do people still buy minivans? That’s what Polk Research wants to find out.

It’s interesting to see a demographic breakdown of what people are buying and a new study shows that Toyota was the top automotive brand for African-Americans in 2010.

In the recent study conducted by Polk, the total new vehicle registrations among this demographic reached 641,090, an increase of 11.5 percent over 2009 (7.4 percent of all new vehicle registrations in 2010).  It also goes on to say that the African-American market volume increase was 68.6 percent greater than the non-ethnic market increase of 6.8 percent.

“With the U.S. population growing faster in the African-American segment than others, there’s a significant opportunity for automotive manufacturers and dealers to begin to align marketing initiatives toward this specific audience,” said Marc Bland, product strategist at Polk. “Those companies that are ahead of the curve, like Toyota, are already reaping the rewards.”

Making the top five after Toyota include Ford, Chevrolet, Honda and Nissan – these five brands account for 60 percent of the African-American market. In terms of growth from 2009, Buick, Hyundai, Kia, Cadillac, GMC and Infiniti are doing well with the African-American market.

You can see the breakdown of the numbers after the jump.

[Source: Polk]