While looking at Boston.com the other day it was impossible not to notice the main headlines — gold has reached record highs, the dollar continues to fall against foreign currencies, the market is down big-time and of course, gas prices continue to climb to record levels with some analyst speculating $4/gallon by this summer. Every day we read different articles about how to save at the pump. From fuel saving due to what some call “hypermiling,” meaning to drive your vehicle in such a way to achieve as much as 100 miles/gallon or more, to becoming more thrifty at the supermarket in order to retain more money for the growing gas prices, one can’t help but be affected.

This got me thinking… With all the focus on fuel savings and more and more car companies launching hybrid models, the top tier luxury/supercar brands must be taking a bath. Well in fact, the opposite is true. Lamborghini, Bentley and Rolls-Royce have not only shown significant increases in online activity but also achieved record sales last year. Bentley sales were just over 10 thousand units, up 7% year-over-year. Lamborghini was up 15% year-over-year with slightly more than 2,400 units sold. And Rolls-Royce showed the most improvement year-over-year, up 25% with 1,010 units sold.

Apparently the demand for these vehicles is only increasing. In the U.S., Lamborghini’s largest market, they have more than doubled their number of dealerships in less than two years from 14 to 30. At the same time Rolls-Royce and Bentley continue to break into new markets with great success. 2007 marked Bentley’s first year in the Korean market selling 100 cars.

So while most of us are worried about the possibility of a recession or even depression and constantly complaining while experiencing the much overused phrase “Pain at the Pump,” there is obviously a select group willing to shell out large sums of money for one of these high end, gas guzzling automobiles. With sales at record highs and website traffic increasing dramatically monthly and annually it’s nice to see at least some of us get to drive a supercar!

Toyota is closing on Chevrolet as the top brand in the US automotive market. Can Toyota’s web site be contributing to their success? Based on Compete’s Website Engagement Study, the answer is yes.

A look at traffic shows that Toyota was consistently ahead of Chevrolet in the number of people visiting their site until the October Malibu launch. The heavy marketing push for Malibu drove traffic increases of 30% and more and Chevrolet.com exceeded 2 million unique visitors for three months in a row, until January, when Toyota reversed a downtrend and again surpassed Chevy.

What does this mean?
People visiting the Chevrolet site are 37% less likely to visit one of the four key online shopping tools than the Toyota site visitors.

Why is that important?
Compete data shows that those who purchased a vehicle were twice as likely to use a shopping tool on an OEM site.

What is causing the difference?
In a complex industry like automobiles there are a myriad of forces at work that contribute to the online behavior of consumers researching and shopping for cars. Some of the suspects are: the source of traffic, overall marketing efforts, website construction and navigation, consumer targeting, and of course the brand and product preferences of consumers.

A Malibu is faster than a Lamborghini. Bet the house. Or in today’s environment, bet your house from 2006. The Lamborghini Gallardo goes from 0-60 in 3.95 seconds. The Chevrolet Malibu does it in 6.5 seconds. Still, the Malibu is faster. But I am not talking about mph. I am talking about shopping activity and Chevrolet has seen the Malibu go from 67,921 new vehicle prospects in October to 236,011 in December. That is an increase of 247%. Becoming the number 1 shopped mid-size car three months in a row, including January. This is the first time a domestic mid-size has held the number 1 spot for three consecutive months – ever.

Last month my colleague – Powder Puff Ninny – shared that the Malibu may just be the chosen one in breaking through to import buyers of the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Well, before we get too far down the road let’s take a look at the quality of new vehicle prospects that Malibu is attracting. In other words, how serious are they about actually purchasing a Malibu and how does it compare to the Asian juggernauts?

Compete tracks monthly new vehicle prospects and since the Malibu launch the results have been a proverbial hockey stick.

But, what types of new vehicle prospects are we talking about?

Since its launch, Malibu has attracted more browsers. Accord attracted browsers early in its launch and over time, by year-end, they have become more engaged. Overall, Accord has attracted more engaged new vehicle prospects than Malibu.

Is this bad? No. It does suggest, however, that the folks at GM have figured out how to entice consumers to consider the Malibu. The next step, and one that has proven difficult in the past, is to convince consumers to buy the Malibu. Only time will tell as we track this over the upcoming months. The one thing we do know for certain is you can tell all your friends that a Malibu is faster than a Lamborghini – and own a new house.

Ladies and gentlemen….start your engines. These famous words of racing will kick off the Nascar Sprint Cup Series at the 50th running of the Daytona 500 this Sunday at 2pm EST. 168,000 screaming spectators will emerge from Nascar hibernation, which commenced at the Homestead-Miami Speedway last November, to fill the stands of the 2.5 mile tri-oval race track. With Nascar’s growing popularity, Compete used its panel of 2 million people to gauge fan excitement, and answer some burning questions before the 2008 season begins.

We first rev up the engine with the typical unique visitor increase in January; excitement sets in as February nears. The number of unique visitors to Nascar.com increased 25% month-over-month to 2.2 million visitors. However, what’s more surprising is that visitation was down 14% year-over-year. This means Nascar.com needs to floor it to reach last February’s calendar year high of 5.3 million visitors.

Going into Daytona, we next wanted to determine which driver would sit on the pole position based on the number of visitors viewing driver-specific information on Nascar.com. “Boogity Boogity Boogity…let’s go racing”

• As we work our way around the track, we find 7 cars swappin’ paint in 5.5 to 7 thousand visitor turn. Rubbin’ is racing ya’ll, but keep it clean
• Beginning to pull away from the pack at 8 thousand visitors, Kyle Busch is holding steady in the M&M sponsored Toyota
• Just ahead of Busch, the Chevrolets of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin (sorry Aric, Mark has seniority) are running strong between the 10 to 16 thousand visitor mark
• Behind our leader, we find Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne working together to track down Tony Stewart’s Home Depot car who is taking the high line in the 27 thousand visitor turn
• And nearly lapping all of the competitors is our leader and pole position winner is Dale Earnhardt, Jr. with a whopping 64,000 visitors

While Jr. is certainly enjoying his lead how are Nascar sponsors performing before spending $550,000 on a 30-second spot for this Sunday’s race? Let’s take a look at which sponsor websites are naturally attracting more Nascar Enthusiasts today.

Using Compete’s Behavior Match, an online media planning tool, we created a custom segment of Nascar Enthusiasts and gathered all the websites they visited in January 2008. We then scored this segment against the total internet browsing population to determine the top-10 major car sponsor sites (think big stickers) that Nascar Enthusiasts visit more often than the average internet browser. As of January, Kasey Kahne’s Dodge Budweiser sits atop the sponsor leader board – read as Nascar Enthusiasts are 7 times more likely to visit Budweiser.com.

We’ve dropped the green and we know which drivers and sponsors are getting initial traction. But Nascar is a long season and anything can happen - we’ll have to keep an eye out to see who takes the checkered…

Boston, MA. February 1, 2008 – Compete’s automotive service experts help OEMs better understand how consumers interact with their websites. In the latest edition of the Compete Automotive Website Engagement Study, a monthly study that analyzes what percent of OEM website visitors use shopping tools, the team assessed the change in visitor use of three shopping tools following BMW’s mid December website redesign.

Build Your Own Vehicle

• The site now features two links to build your own vehicle
• BMW kept the traditional start/stop button in the bottom left of the screen, and added a new link in the top left corner, an area that commonly attracts visitor attention
• 26.9% of the visitors to BMW’s website used the build your own vehicle tool in December
• This represented a 5.1 ppts increase from November

Offers

• The addition of a prominently displayed link to the offers page increased visitor traffic from 5.7% of total site traffic to 9.3%
• The new link is displayed as part of a sliding menu bar in the bottom right hand corner of the homepage

Locate Dealer

• Redesigning the locate dealer tool from a simple zip code entry text box at the bottom right of the home page to the site menu bar led to a 4.3ppts decline in visitor usage
• 7% of visitors used the tool in December compared to 11.3% in November

In October, Chevrolet launched a newly redesigned Malibu into the entry sedan segment hoping that this could finally be the car that breaks the strangle hold the imports have held in the segment since the Ford Taurus lost its footing back in early 2000.

Compete tracks monthly lower funnel shopping activity on 3rd party automotive web sites, and since its media launch in October the Chevy Malibu has increased its shoppers by over 300% to take the lead in the import vehicle dominated segment.

To be successful in this segment, Chevrolet knows it needs to get on the list of Honda Accord and Toyota Camry shoppers which had eluded previous versions of the Malibu. In December, Honda Accord shoppers cross shopped the Malibu 12% of the time, up from only 2.3% in September. Likewise, Toyota Camry shoppers considered the Malibu 10.5% of the time – up from 3.2% in September.

Chevrolet’s “car that can’t be ignored” has also driven Chevrolet.com traffic to a period high, putting it ahead of Toyota.com for the first time since October 2006 when the redesigned Chevy Silverado launched.

Chevrolet has good reason to believe they may be re-establishing a domestic automotive company as contender in the entry sedan segment.