If you find yourself without a date this Valentine’s Day, maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s your car.

According to a new survey by Insure.com, women say that attractive men tend to drive black Ford pickup trucks. Men report that attractive women drive red BMW sports cars.

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The survey of 2,000 men and women asked what type, brand and color of vehicle are driven by the most fetching members of the opposite sex.

Women ranked these styles as cars that attractive men drive:

  • Pickup trucks: 32%
  • Sports cars: 27%
  • SUVs: 16%
  • Sedans: 11%
  • Hybrid or electric: 9%
  • UPS truck: 4%
  • Minivans: 2%
  • Mail truck: 1%

The top brands of car for attractive men, as ranked by women, were Ford (16%), Chevrolet (13%) and Porsche (11%).  Women overwhelmingly point to black (53%) as the color of cars driven by good-looking men, followed by silver (16%) and red (13%).

Here’s how men ranked car types for attractive women:

  • Sports cars: 39%
  • Sedans: 22%
  • SUVs: 20%
  • Pickup trucks: 10%
  • Hybrid or electric vehicle: 6%
  • Minivans: 4%

Men envision desirable gals in BMWs (16%), Mercedes-Benzes (14%) and Porsches (10%). The top car colors for attractive women were red (40%), black (23%) and silver (14%).

So true

What cars do attractive people drive?To test the merits of the survey’s findings, we turned to experts at some of the leading automotive websites and automakers.

“The findings strike me as very accurate,” says Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor of Chicago-based Cars.com. “Among the general public, a black pickup truck is a reflection of a masculine owner. A woman walks up to a black pickup truck and says to herself, ‘Here’s a guy who can help me move, bring me large gifts from Crate & Barrel and do repairs around my condo.'”

In addition, black vehicles in general are the most difficult to keep clean, Wiesenfelder adds. “If it’s a clean black pickup, she might subconsciously be thinking to herself, ‘This is a guy who can wash my car as well,'” he says.

As a reviewer of new vehicles, Wiesenfelder often slides behind the wheel of pickup trucks, so he’s in a good position to judge the response. “That’s when I find I have a lot more friends, and a lot more dates than I realized,” he observes.

Wiesenfelder thinks there a several factors at play in the choice of red BMW sports car for women. First, the BMW is a luxury car, so it suggests the owner has a disposable income. “As a single man, that’s attractive to me,” he says. “I don’t want to carry the entire relationship.”

BMWs are also known for performance, he observes. They feature quick and very responsive handling. That indicates a woman accustomed to hairpin turns, who would not accuse him of driving like a maniac should he take the wheel of her BMW and test it on a long winding highway.

“There’s nothing worse than a woman with motion sickness,” he says.

The expert view

At Santa Monica, Calif.-based Edmunds.com, automotive editor Mike Magrath and senior analyst Jessica Caldwell also view the survey results as plausible, if not scientifically accurate.

Magrath observes that “there’s just something about a truck, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Santa Monica or San Antonio. It’s rugged, but it’s still a guy who’s put together enough resources to buy one and keep it on the road.”

“It makes sense,” says Caldwell. “It brings forth the image of the rugged tough guy.” But Caldwell also drops a hint about her own personal preferences. “Some women like a lot more cosmopolitan guy, driving a Range Rover or Tesla Model S.”

Magrath has a quibble with the red BMW sports car’s top ranking, but mostly because of the color. “The red BMW is a little high maintenance for me,” he observes. “A black or white BMW I can get behind. It’s sporty, elegant, and it requires the investment of enough time and money to suggest the owner is someone successful.”

Caldwell offers one more way to up the ante: When she drove a manual transmission, “that would be the first thing guys would comment upon, once they got in my car,” she says.