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With the recent news that both General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. will soon be exiting the sedan market in the U.S., to focus on high margin trucks and SUVs, I got to wondering just how badly things have deteriorated for the U.S. car makers. The answer is: very badly. 1
The Ford Fusion, it turns out, is the bright spot in the company’s array of sedans. More typical was the Ford Focus, which saw sales drop from 235,000 in 2013 to an estimated 115,000 in 2018.
At General Motors, the picture is just as ugly. The Chevrolet Cruze — that’s the car made in the Ohio factory the company is shutting down, to the great annoyance of President Donald Trump — saw sales drop from a peak of 273,000 in 2014 to a likely 145,000 in 2018. The Chevy Impala topped 300,000 in sales in 2007. The number was under 76,000 last year. And so on.
Much of the analysis about Ford and GM’s exit from the sedan market stressed that sedan sales have lost ground in recent years “as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles,” as the New York Times put it.
And that is certainly true. Of the top 20 best-selling vehicles in the U.S. so far in 2018, 14 are either trucks or SUVs. According to the Wall Street Journal, sedans made up 50 percent of the U.S. market as recently as five years ago; today that number is down to a third.
But it’s not like nobody’s buying sedans. The Toyota Camry and Corolla sold a combined 700,000 cars in 2017. Ditto the Honda Civic and Accord. And the Nissan Altima and Sentra came in at around 475,000 last year. If you look at the historical sales figures of the top Japanese sedans, you’ll see a small decline in recent years, but nothing like the big drop-off in sales that have hammered the American companies.
So in addition to the overall decline in sedan sales, there is a second, largely overlooked, dynamic taking place: Americans have only stopped buying American sedans, not Japanese sedans. This is so even though cars like the Ford Fusion are as good as any Japanese sedan. But why?
Sedans Aren’t Dead. American Sedans Are.
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