CARY, N.C. -

The days of sports cars and luxury sedans dominating the lease market might be over.

That’s according to car lease marketplace, Swapalease.com. In its first quarter 2019 Auto Lease Trends Report, Swapalease.com is asking the question, “Is the luxury sports sedan lease dead?”

Swapalease.com executive vice president Scot Hall says luxury sports sedans are at least “really trending downward.” It’s a decline for a segment that Hall says has been a staple not just for Swapalease but for leasing in general for many years.

“They have been kind of the sought-after cars, if you will,” he said in a phone interview with Auto Remarketing.

He is seeing that people who used to want those luxury sports sedans are moving to SUVs of the same make. And over the last decade or so, luxury manufacturers have offered high-end SUVs. Leading the charge there is the BMW X5, Hall said, along with the Porsche Cayenne, and “more modern entries as well,” such as the Maserati Levante.

The Swapalease.com report shows various trends, including Web searches by vehicle brand in the first quarter of 2019 compared to the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2018. When looking at both of those charts, most readers will probably notice the big spike upward for the Dodge Ram. Searches for that brand went up by 25% compared to the fourth quarter of 2018 and by a whopping 93% over the first quarter of 2018.

Why? Hall said it was probably because the Ram came out recently with a complete redesign.

“I think that really spurred the sales of that particular vehicle, and they have been doing quite a bit more advertising as well,” Hall said. “But they’re really giving Chevrolet, for instance, and its GMC cousin a run for their money in terms of truck sales.”

He mentioned the news that Ram moved into second place ahead of the Chevrolet Silverado in truck sales for first quarter 2019, “which is essentially unheard of when it comes to the Big 3 trucks,” Hall said. “It’s very interesting to see that they are not only becoming a factor, but…just to break into that top two is very impressive [compared to] where they were just a couple short years ago.”

The 93% number for the Ram stood out, but the report shows gains in Web searches for the other vehicle brands, as well. Buick searches were up 41% compared to the previous year, Ford gained 15%, Chrysler was up 14% and Cadillac 10%.

Swapalease.com describes itself as “the world’s largest automotive lease marketplace and the pioneer in facilitating lease transfers online.” The company matches individuals who want to get out of their lease with people who are looking for short-term lease agreements, and one of the survey questions covered that aspect of leasing.

The survey asked for reasons people exercise their option to transfer out of their lease early and get into their next vehicle. In the first quarter of 2019, 13% of respondents said they did that because of a change in family size. That is compared to 8.1% from a year ago. Also, 38.3% experienced a change in income, and that was an increase from 34.8% a year earlier. Swapalease said in a news release that the increase might be “another sign that the economy continues to churn along at a healthy clip.”

Swapalease released additional tidbits of information in the report, which came out of a survey of more than 2,500 drivers across the United States:

— Luxury car leases were 65% from males and 35% from women. Women leased more small cars by a margin of 59% to 41%. But the results were more even in the area of hybrid vehicles, with 52% of the leases done by men and 48% by women.

— The type of lease people are currently driving supports the SUV trend mentioned earlier. The survey showed 24.6% of leases were SUVs in the first quarter, compared to 26.6% in fourth quarter 2018. Mid-size cars were second at 14.8%, followed by full-size cars at 11.1%.

—Asked the type of vehicle they would like to lease, 68% said import while 32% answered domestic.

—15% of respondents are driving an average of 7,500 miles a year on their vehicle lease. That is up from only 10.4% from a year earlier.

“This is a possible indication that more people are utilizing ride sharing and food delivery services, and driving less for work, recreation and everyday household tasks,” Swapalease said.

— The survey even showed “economy and lease confidence indexes,” with 54% of respondents expressing overall confidence in the economy compared to 53% in the fourth quarter of 2018. Forty-two percent had confidence in the economy looking ahead, compared to 37% from fourth quarter 2018, and 56% had confidence in leasing a vehicle today, compared to 50% in the fourth quarter of 2018.

“This is a possible indication that more people are utilizing ride sharing and food delivery services, and driving less for work, recreation and everyday household tasks,” Swapalease said.

Asked about used vehicle trends, Hall mentioned an area that he said “kind of went against the industry predictions,” and that is that the fallout in used-vehicle prices and values that was forecast a couple of years ago, especially as lease penetration decreased, has not materialized.

“I don’t think the gloom and doom that people thought was coming has actually come,” Hall said. “I think used car prices are down a fraction of a percent or so, but going back a couple years when leasing was absolutely at its peak, right at the 30 to 31% level of lease penetration, there were a lot of ‘doom and gloomers’ out there saying, ‘Oh man, when those cars come back off lease, the used-car market is going to be a mess.’ But that hasn’t come to fruition.”