10 New Cars Most Often Given Up Within A Year Of Ownership

Buying a new car can be an exciting experience. Once that initial excitement wears off, however, buyer’s remorse can sometimes hit hard. A fresh iSeeCars study seeks to chronicle that heartbreak through a report that reveals the new cars most often sold, dropped, or otherwise bailed out of within the first 12 months of ownership.

The study looked at over 46 million new car and SUV sales to come up with the data for this list, but interpreting the information is a bit tricky. The numbers don’t differentiate between purchases and lease vehicles, so it’s possible some of the data could include short-term leases of one year wrapping up. There’s also the possibility of data reflecting early termination of two-year lease deals. The researchers at iSeeCars took a closer look at the figures for us and found the percentages were fairly even between 4 and 12 months, suggesting one-year lease deals or early termination of two-year leases have little consequence on the data. Still, it's important to keep that in mind for this list.

What other factors push people to give up their new cars so quickly? Reliability can be an issue – the study points out that eight of the vehicles on the list come from luxury brands, some of which have below-average reliability ratings from Consumer Reports. In some cases, the vehicles themselves might simply be terrifically disappointing.

Only 3.4 percent of all new car buyers bail out of their purchase in the first year, so this isn’t a big trend by any means. Still, it’s interesting to see how individual models fare through that initial period. Our slide show above counts down the top ten, with the percentage representing how many cars were given up compared to how many were sold. You will notice some clear trends this time around.

Source: iSeeCars.com

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