Reply With Quote
Sedans Aren’t Dead. American Sedans Are.
The supremacy of Japanese cars has been 40-plus years in the making.
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.
Today, American sedans are vastly improved.
It doesn’t matter. Most car reviewers still rate Japanese cars like the Accord and the Camry a bit higher than American sedans.
The Big Three have never been able to convince
the reviewers — or, more importantly,
the car-buying public — that their sedans were as good as their Japanese compe ion.
To put it another way,
the American car companies have never been able to shed the reputation they gained in the 1970s for making lousy sedans.
What’s more, most sedans are bought in big cities where trucks make no sense. City dwellers by and large are globalization’s winners.
The tug of nationalism is nonexistent.
I couldn’t help noticing that while the top three selling vehicles in the U.S. are, indeed,
American-made trucks,
No. 4 on the list is Nissan’s top SUV, the Rogue, the sales of which have gone from 18,000 in 2007 to 403,000 last year.
No. 5 is a Toyota SUV, the Rav4 (407,000 in 2017).
No. 6 is the Honda CR-V (378,000).
And the leading American SUV?
It’s the Chevy Equinox.
Last year, Chevrolet sold 290,000 of them —
100,000 fewer than the Toyota Camry.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...n?srnd=premium
