Q3 2026 Automotive Buyer Trends | C-4 Analytics QCIS

Q3 2026 QCIS: Inside the Pragmatic Car Buyer

Purchase intent is up. Brand loyalty is down. And half of in-market shoppers will not cross a $35,000 out-the-door price for any vehicle, no matter how right it is.

The Q3 2026 Quarterly Consumer Intent Survey from C-4 Analytics surveyed 1,001 in-market car shoppers, trended against 1,014 respondents in Q2, with two supplemental studies on affordability and trade-in. The buyer it found is shopping by choice, holding a firm budget, open to almost any brand, and quick to walk when the process breaks trust.

What's Inside

• Why the fastest-growing reason to buy this quarter has nothing to do with a vehicle breaking down, and what that changes about how you sell
• The largest brand-preference answer in the survey was "no preference at all," and it is still growing. What that opens up for conquest
• The biggest single movement in the entire dataset was a segment shift that should change how you stock and merchandise within weeks, not at the next model year
• Hybrid consideration now leads pure EV interest by nearly 3 to 1, and it holds steady across every age band we measured
• The exact price and payment ceilings half of shoppers refuse to cross, and what they do instead when the vehicle they want lands above it
• The one trade-in mistake that ends more negotiations than anything else, plus what 65% of shoppers require before they will discuss price at all

About the QCIS

The Quarterly Consumer Intent Survey is proprietary research from C-4 Analytics, now in its sixth year. Each quarter we survey more than a thousand in-market car shoppers nationwide on purchase intent, vehicle and brand preference, dealership selection, and the forces shaping buyer behavior. The questions stay consistent quarter over quarter, so the movement we report is real movement and not survey noise.

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