Which Car Brand Is the Most-Searched Online by New Yorkers?

According to social media research done by NYCasinos.com, Audi is the favorite car brand in the state of New York.

The Empire State joins Colorado, Connecticut and Massachusetts as states in which Audi is ranked No. 1. 

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We used CarLogos.org’s’s list of the Top 50 most popular car brands in the United States as a starting point for the research project. We then utilized Google Trends to search each car brand to see the highest level of interest of each state for the brand.

After completing the trends over the past 12 months (from July 25, 2022, to July 25, 2023), we were able to average out the results to get the top car brand for each state.

Most-Searched Car Brands by State

Here is a list of most-searched car brands per state from NYCasinos.com, your source for NY online casino apps.

Honda (7 states): Alaska, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina

Dodge (5 states): Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico

Ford (4 states): Michigan, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming

Audi (4 states): Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, NEW YORK

Mercedes-Benz (3 states): Florida, Georgia, Virginia

Chevy (3 states): Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma

Mazda (3 states): Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington

Volkswagen (3 states): New Hampshire, Oregon, Utah

Buick (3 states): Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin

Hyundai (3 states): Alabama, Arizona, Illinois

States with 1: California (Tesla), Hawaii (Toyota), Maine (Volvo), Nebraska (Lincoln), Nevada (BMW), New Jersey (Land Rover), Ohio (Kia), Rhode Island (Alfa Romeo), Tennessee (Nissan), Texas (Lamborghini), Vermont (Subaru), West Virginia (Jeep)

Why Audi for New Yorkers?

Why Audi? Maybe it’s the reliability. According to Consumer Reports, over the past decade, Audi automobiles have outperformed the industry average, with the A5 and Q3 being top models.

Maybe it’s because Audis are less common in the U.S. and New Yorkers like to be different. Depending on whose data you believe, there are between 18 and 23 Audi dealers in the state, around 7% of the little more than 300 Audi dealerships nationwide. Unsurprisingly, California has the most Audi dealers, followed by Florida. In the contiguous 48 states, only Wyoming and Washington, D.C., are without an Audi dealership.

Audi sold around 178,000 cars in the United States in 2022, down nearly 9% from 2021. So far in 2023, U.S. sales have been up every month from 2022. The most popular Audi models in the U.S., based on 2022 sales, are the Q5 and Q3 SUVs and the A5 and A4 automobiles.

As with many car companies, the history of Audi is a long and winding road. The company was founded in 1909 by August Horch. It became part of the German Auto Union in 1932 (Audi’s four rings symbolize the four car companies that formed the Auto Union), but in 1939 Audis stopped being produced. The Auto Union became part of Daimler-Benz, which sold “Audi” to Volkswagen in the 1960s. Curiously, Audi is not German for auto, as many believe, but is Latin for “listen,” which is what Horch means in German. The name was necessitated by lawsuits against Horch for using his own name.

As happened to German car companies during World War II, they were converted to manufacturing for the war effort and thus became targets of Allied bombing. More turmoil came when the Soviet Army overran the factories at the end of the war. The original Audi plant was now part of East Germany and that wasn’t good for car sales, so what was left of the company was moved to West Germany, where is it now headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

Audi became a real car brand again in 1969. It now manufactures cars in seven plants around the world, but none are made in the U.S. The closest plant to New York is in San José Chiapa, Mexico. In 2005, Nissan sued Audi over its use of the letter “Q.” The companies settled in 2006.

Ironically, the original “Q,” who made tricked-out cars for James Bond, sued neither of them. In 2015, Audi was implicated in the Volkswagen emissions scandal. In 2018, the company said it would invest $16 billion in self-driving cars, but the only self-driving car I’d ever trust would have to be produced by James Bond’s “Q.”

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