Update: The original version of this story had the percentages between total Subaru and Wilderness models flipped. The story has been updated.
Do we have your attention? Good. If you read our recent Subaru Outback Wilderness review—which we highly recommend—you may have noticed that we concluded by noting that 3 percent of Subaru Outback owners have chickens and use their cars to transport them.
This fact was presented to us by Subaru during a slideshow about the latest Wilderness model. While we obviously remembered something as weird as that, it left us wondering: What other animals do Subaru drivers like to lug around?
Now, keeping tabs on who your owners are isn’t a particularly novel thing. Every car company has pretty good data on the age, gender, and, uh, interests of most of its buyers. In fact, we’d wager that this isn’t even the most ridiculous personal detail a car company has on file.
That said, most of the really in-depth stuff typically stays inside the building. So, when we reached out to Subaru to see if they knew anything about their drivers' specific pet-carrying habits beyond what was already detailed, we were thrilled that this specific bit of info made it out of the forbidden file cabinet.
To our surprise, the data is pretty detailed. Some of these animals you probably expect—dogs, cats, etc—but others are a bit more… out there. The percentages are maybe the funniest part, with some animals accounting for just two or three percent of haulage (?), making the list.
The animals are as follows, with percentage rates representative of how many buyers have what:
- Dogs — 48%
- Cats — 30%
- Fish — 4%
- Chickens — 3%
- Birds — 2%
Some of these numbers may come as a shock; we thought chickens and birds would be lumped into the same bulletpoint, but we get why they’re not. Otherwise, the rest of the details mostly check out.
Dogs are, statistically, the most popular pet in America, so it makes sense that over half of Subaru owners have them. On the flip side, we don’t know who is carrying fish around in their Outback, but we respect the hustle.
Don’t worry, though, there’s more where that came from.
See, Subaru not only knows what animals its mainstream buyers have, but the company also gathers specific data on the animal-owning habits of its Wilderness buyers—that is, the brand's off-road trim. The numbers are more or less the same, but with some fascinating variations:
- Dogs — 58%
- Cats — 34%
- Fish — 6%
- Chickens — 3%
- Birds — 2%
What we found interesting is that dog ownership for Wilderness buyers rose by 10 percent compared to regular Subaru models. We assume that an active lifestyle means more willingness to pick up poop, but we can’t say for sure. As for other percentage increases, both cats and fish saw a marginal increase of a few points, with chickens and birds holding strong at three percent and two percent, respectively.
What should you do with this information? Well, for one, it’s some great useless trivia. But more importantly, it makes for a great opportunity to put these numbers to the test.
So, next time you see a Crosstrek or an Ascent, look to see what sort of animal is sitting in the passenger seat (let’s be honest, Subaru owners don’t put their dogs in the back). See if it matches up with the numbers here; you might be surprised.
