When shoppers get sick of their old vehicles, will they stay loyal to a tried and true ride, or will it be time to give another brand a shot?

A new Experian automotive study highlighted in a recent blog post focused on just that: the loyalty behavior of shoppers who got rid of their previous vehicle to purchase a new one.

According to the study, brand customer retention is strongest among Ford owners, with 60.8 percent purchasing another Ford vehicle the second time around.

Next up was Toyota, with 59.1 percent of consumers sticking with the brand.

Rounding out the top five brands for customer loyalty were Subaru (57.7 percent), Kia (57.2 percent) and Lexus (55.9 percent).

 “Vehicle loyalty is an important industry metric because it tells automakers how successful their vehicles are with the general public,” said Brad Smith, director of automotive market statistics for Experian Automotive. “When analyzing loyalty, Experian Automotive uses disposal methodology, meaning we track when a consumer replaces a vehicle that he or she originally purchased new with another new vehicle.

“This approach creates a more direct correlation between a purchased and owned vehicle to provide automakers and dealers with insights that can become actionable with regard to production volumes, design changes or sales incentives,” he continued.

The study also took a look at shoppers who remained loyal to a particular model within a variety of popular vehicle segments, such as full-sized pickups and small economy cars.

Not surprisingly, loyal Ford shoppers stuck with the Ford F-150 a large percentage of the time for their next vehicle purchase (45 percent).

Honda CR-V owners were also apparently happy with their experience with the model the first time around; 41.6 percent of the time, buyers stuck with the model when choosing a new vehicle.

Another model that inspires loyalty is from the No. 2 brand for the study. Toyota Corolla customers were loyal to the model 30.4 percent of the time.

On the other hand, the lowest model loyalty of the segments and popular vehicles studied was seen in the small economy car segment.

For the Ford Focus, customers only considered the vehicle for their next car purchase 21.6 percent of the time.