Sometimes it just doesn’t matter how much hateful rhetoric you spew, how many crimes you commit, what sort of father you are or how much money you give to Donald Trump, people are still going to buy what you’re selling. That seems to be exactly what happened with Elon Musk and his automaker, Tesla, in 2024. It apparently had the highest overall loyalty of any individual car company despite… everything.
Of course, it remains to be seen how Musk’s 2025 antics will impact Tesla’s loyalty, but we can’t see the future, so we must talk about what has already happened. 2024 is the second year in a row Tesla took home the “Overall loyalty to make” award from S&P Global Mobility, and it was also named the winner when it comes to “Highest conquest percentage.” This is some truly mind-boggling stuff. Maybe I’d understand it more if the cars were better than the competition, but they really aren’t anymore. These people are buying what Elon is selling.
General Motors won the “Overall loyalty to manufacturer” award among its plethora of brands, marking its tenth consecutive win in this category. Other winners were the Lincoln Corsair for “Overall loyalty to model,” Land Rover for “Most improved make loyalty” and Subaru for “Overall loyalty to dealer.”
Loyalty in the automotive industry
S&P Global Mobility says it got its data by analyzing over 13.1 million new vehicle retail registrations in the U.S. during the 2024 calendar year.
“The awards highlight the importance of brand loyalty, determined when a household that owns a new vehicle returns to the market to acquire another vehicle of the same make, model, or manufacturer,” S&P said in a release.
For whatever reason, overall industry loyalty rates saw a slight year-over-year improvement for the third year in a row. People are apparently getting more dug into their choices and sticking with them. Brand loyalty clocked in at 51.6 percent in 2024, representing a 0.6 percent increase compared to 2023’s 51 percent.
As I mentioned earlier, this data cannot take into account what Tesla and Musk have been up to since January 1 of this year. If I had to guess, I’d say that we’ll probably see Tesla losing this crown in 2025 as more and more of its customers are turned off by the actions of the guy who is supposedly running it.