The world's most popular sports cars according to Google
Monday, 5 July 2021
A dive into Google’s search data has revealed which sports cars are the most popular in each country of the world.
The research, done by fundandfindmycar.com, took the top 34 sports cars listed on Wikipedia and ran their names through Google search. Using analytical software, the website figured out which cars are the most searched for in every country. Here are the top five models.
Coming in at number one is, probably unsurprisingly, the Ford Mustang. Not much needs to be said about the Mustang, other than it appeared top in 29 countries on our list with over 979k searches, including a lot of Europe and Greenland. Not America though, which seems to prefer Googling the Dodge Challenger.
Next up is the BMW i8, which was discontinued in 2020 but still garners a lot of attention. In fact, it was searched for in more countries than the Mustang, 34 versus 29.
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Unfortunately for BMW, the high price for the sort of performance offered meant the i8 didn’t do as well as its maker might have hoped. Though, to be fair, it was the best-selling plug-in hybrid sports car as of March 2020, so it can’t have been all bad.
Number three is the Audi R8, which was first introduced in 2006 as a V8. Fifteen years, two extra cylinders and a rear-wheel drive option later, the R8 has sold more than 38,000 units globally and was searched for nearly 900,000 times. According to the research, a lot of those searches come from Argentina, Mexico and Sweden.
America's favourite, the Dodge Challenger, came in fourth place. The muscle car has been around in some shape or form since 1969 (although hardcore enthusiasts probably don’t want to talk about the Mitsubishi Galant-based second generation).
The third – and current – generation has been around since 2008, boasting style cues from the 1970 Challenger R/T and large-capacity V8 engines. It spawned the epic Challenger Hellcat and Demon variants, and is popular enough for 827k searches globally.
Finally, the fifth most popular sports car according to Google’s search is the Toyota Supra. A good chunk of this will be people looking for the 1993 Supra, the one with the twin-turbo 2JZ engine that can be easily tuned to produce huge power figures. It’s also the one from the original The Fast and the Furious.
Despite the latest A90 generation being an extremely capable sports car, its BMW internals have drawn a decent amount of criticism (usually from keyboard warriors that haven’t actually driven the car). It drew 797k searches.
As for New Zealand, the research found that the most popular sports car to Google here is the Kia Stinger… which isn’t exactly a sports car, but that’s okay. Neither is the Audi S3 or Porsche Panamera, which were the most searched for cars in Finland and Kazakhstan, respectively. Perhaps “performance cars” would have been a more accurate search…
But then, the coolest car to be included is the little Honda Beat, a two-seater convertible kei car that is the most searched for car in Belarus and the Philippines. And while it is cool, and a topless two-door sports car, its tiny little 660cc engine means it is not exactly a performance car…