Darren Rowse of Problogger.net fame launches his latest group writing project this week and as usual there are a multitude of fellow bloggers eagerly pecking at their keyboards in the hope of being the lucky one drawn out of the hat for this weeks mega prize, $1001.00 cash, kindly donated by Chitika eMinimalls.

With this type of incentive how many of his regular 20,000+ readers are going to storm his inbox, or should I say 20,000+1 after I get this puppy sent out. Anyway for my participation I’m going to give an insight to the brand of vehicle that Southern Californians gravitate towards.

To try and give a somewhat true perspective I have jotted down on a pad the brands that are regularly seen on my daily 48 mile commute from Huntington Beach to Burbank. I’ve decided to allow two round trips to give a fairly comprehensive result, considering I’m marking each brand of vehicle that passes me against the name on the pad. As you can imagine a certain amount of dexterity is involved therefore I’ve kept my driving to the number two and three lane so as not to “upset” too many of my fellow commuters.

Southern California being the cosmopolitan area that it is reflects many trends before they become nationwide so let’s see how the results turned out.

• Toyota Motor Corp.

  With vehicles like the Camry, Prius, Tundra, Corolla and Yaris just to name a few plus the luxury division Lexus, they managed to pick up 24.5% of the total vehicles that I was able to poll. These vehicles were of all different ages ranging from new to old but a significant proportion of them were newer Camry and Prius models.

• Honda Motor Corp.

  Following their Japanese rivals Honda together with their luxury division Acura pulled in 19% of the votes with vehicles such as the Accord, Civic, Element and CR-V. As you can imagine the majority of these vehicles were Accord and Civics but amongst the numbers was a large amount of MDX and TL from the Acura luxury brand.

• General Motors Corp.

  General Motors having more brands and vehicles to chose from then any other manufacture came in a distant third place with 15.7% of the vote and I can only attribute this to the current price in gasoline. A significant amount of the vehicles polled were larger SUV’s such as the Tahoe, Surburban, Escalade, Silverado Pick-Up and Sierra models. The only car presence in any numbers were the Impala and Cadillac luxury brand models.

• Ford Motor Co.

  Fourth place Ford had a fifty-fifty mix of cars and trucks with the F150, Escape and Expedition being the most prominent of the trucks. The cars were led by the Mustang, Focus and Crown Victoria but with a total percentage of 13.5% was just above the half way mark of the leaders Toyota and like GM probably a victim of high gasoline prices and internal strife.

• DaimlerChrysler AG

  This was a tough one to figure out, would I incorporate the Mercedes side of the deal or just stick with the Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep numbers. I decided to keep the American half of the equation as it looks as though the future will bring an end to this marriage so it is important to see where the market lies at this point.

  With 8.2% of the vehicles polled the most prominent vehicle was the Jeep brand, from Wrangler to Grand Cherokee, Ram trucks were next and for the cars a mixture of Neons, Chargers, Sebrings and Chrysler Minivans.

In doing this small exercise it is quite apparent that the Big 2.5 are very much reliant on the SUV as their main source of income whereas the number one and number two in this poll are essentially purely car manufacturers who have just entered the truck business. With gasoline prices at an all time high in the States more emphasis is being paid to fuel efficient, eye pleasing vehicles, as also, are vehicles that also have hybrid technology.

The top five manufactures accounted for 80.9% of the total vehicles polled leaving just 19.1% for all other manufactures, so there you have it, 6 hours of driving and a top 5 list to boot!!!