Mid-to-large unibody crossovers are a large segment covering a wide variety of prices and capabilities, but the competition is tight as can be. Ford’s Edge joins its Escape sibling in bringing the second 2010 YTD crossover sales award back to Dearborn… but only barely. And not if you count the Enclave and Acadia to GM’s Traverse numbers (Lincoln MKX sold only 10,289 YTD, MKT moved 3906, keeping them both off this chart). Once again, we have more proof that the Ford brand is plenty strong, but that Lincoln is still badly enough wounded to keep Ford from hanging with The General. Meanwhile, Hyundai, Kia and Subaru are charging into this segment with guns blazing, and the Toyota Highlander seems to be taking much of the hit from the new competition.
Lincoln can wait to be fixed. I still say Ford made the right decision fixing their bread-and-butter brand *first*, unlike GM that spread its winners around too thinly between its core brands, leaving Chevy too weak.
Chevy “weak”? They’re selling neck-and-neck with Ford, but bolstered by solid upmarket sales via Buick, Caddy, & GMC. GM has a clearly superior balance sheet to FoMoCo.
The Venza probably really hurts the Highlander sales. Strong RAV4 sales can’t help, either.
and the Highlander is now very ugly… :)
On the east coast, I see very few Edge and Traverse. We are flooded with Highlander, Pilot, Sante Fe, and Sorento. Makes we wonder where all the Edge and Traverse vehicles are? Not here.
I am looking for a new car. I see gigantic discounts on Edge and Traverse. Rebates + discounts reach well north of 5K from sticker. But, when I tried to get such a discount from Highlander or Pilot, no luck. A 2K discount on a lower end Highlander or Pilot is impossible to achieve.
So, I am waiting for a good Highlander or Pilot discount. Hoping a few 10s are left on the lot in a few months.
The Edge looks OK, and is so much cheaper, but there are so few in the east, it looks a little funny on the road.
Yup, I was surprised to see the Edge so high, I don’t see many at all in my area north of Boston, though it’s certainly a decent looking car.
Plenty of Pilots and silver Highlanders though.
I have seen a few Crosstours, they are downright nasty with that fat ass and Lego-style wheels.
I am not surprised to see the Edge lower on the list. As far as crossovers/SUVs go it is a fairly impractical and worthless setup, especially compared to GM’s Lambdas. The Edge only seats five in a pinch and has less cargo space. The Lambdas cost about the same and are much more versatile. If you bought an Edge you might as well have bought a normal sedan and enjoyed higher fuel mileage. Not to mention the Edge is incredibly ugly.
You don’t see the Traverse or Edge in the Seattle area. The only time I see one, they’re rental vehicles parked at tourist hotels. Then again, American car sales are weak across the board in this area.
The Ford CUV lineup doesn’t match 1:1 with GMs. The Escape is the smallest of all of them, with the Equinox being slightly larger, then the Edge coming in a little bigger than the Equinox. The Lambdas are quite a bit larger than the Edge, and as for pricing, they average about $2000 to $3000 more when equipped the same.
The Flex is priced the same, and has the seating for seven and the cargo space, plus a lot more room for people than the Lambdas, but the styling turns off too many women, who in turn won’t let their husbands buy it. The 2011 Explorer will be the first Ford CUV to really go toe to toe with the lambdas.
I’d like to know where the EDGE vehicles are too? Sure don’t see them in Atlanta.
Yeah if Ford’s CVU lines up with anyone, Toyota is the closest match.
Lots of “cute ute” in SoCal – Traverse, Edge, Venza, etc.
SVX pearlieJuly 7th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Lots of “cute ute” in SoCal – Traverse, Edge, Venza, etc.
SVX, if SoCal means Southern California, I am a regular in LA, OC, and SD. That is my sales region. I support a Boston high tech company. I don’t see many of the vehicles you mention above. In fact, a Traverse or Edge is a rare event in Southern California. What I see is Toyota, Lexus, BMW, Honda, and Hyundai own the CUV market. Is it possible your SoCal means South Carolina?
Galpin Ford, the nations #1 selling Ford dealership, is in Los Angeles, so plenty of people in SoCal buy Edges and other Fords as well.
There are also plenty of Edges in South Florida, fwiw.
There are tons of Traverses, and even more Edges, here in Virginia.
I am only surprised by the large number of Traverses because they are the ugliest of it’s platform mates. Although I have found in dark colors it’s not too bad but in white it looks like a giant elephant, or someone’s freezer grew tail-lights.
I agree, the Traverse is ugly.
They should have kept the Saturn Outlook and put an Chevrolet badge on it.
I agree that the Traverse is easily the homeliest of the 3. The Acadia can’t be that much more money, and for my money is the handsomest of the bunch, closely followed by the Enclave.
But it’s not surprising that the Traverse is the best seller, as it is the Chevy and that’s how it should be.
The Traverse is the cleanest, most tasteful design of all the Lambdas.
I’m one of the few I guess who actually likes fender vents and sweep-spears on Buicks.
GM has sold a whopping 113,842 Lambda crossovers in 2010. They’d be in a bad way without it. I wonder if they’re really prepping a Cadillac version…
I’m sure they are. Caddy “needs” a 3-row hauler between the SRX and the Escalade.
I don’t get the Edge sales. It’s one of those dreaded big on the outside, small on the inside vehicles. For less money you could have an Escape which has almost the same cargo volume, better MPG even with the V6 and smaller exterior dimensions.
If you drove an Escape and an Edge back to back you would understand. The Escape is nice, but a bit noisy. The Edge is much quieter and feels much heavier behind the wheel, which a lot of people like.
The Edge also has a lot of room inside given the exterior dimensions. It’s one of the few vehicles where my feet don’t feel cramped by the footwell. Overall it is airy and comfortable inside, and 6’+ people can ride in the back seat without being cramped.
Ford has sold nearly twice as many Flexes as Hyundai has sold Genesis\'(both variants). Surprising given the TTAC conventional wisdom of Flex=Fail, Genesis=Success
Something to think about…
Conventional wisdom is that nothing good comes from Detroit…
Conventional wisdom is that the RWD E segment import sedan category is much smaller sales-wise than the mid/large crossover category.
In 2009, the Genesis sedan was the 3rd best selling import E segment sedan (after the E Class and 5 Series and well ahead of the GS, M and A6); the Flex, otoh, doesn’t even come close to the top sellers in its class.
Rationalizations aside, the Genesis was, much like the Honda Ridgeline, heavily hyped by its creator and the Automotive media only to fail in the market. What is even more interesting is that both the coupe and sedan have tanked, and Hyundai will not divulge which is selling worse. I have seen so few of either model, that its hard to say which is the bigger flop.
Sure the Flex is not selling 100k, but come on, a niche vehicle should not be outselling a much hyped near luxury sedan.
And what is Hyundai thinking with the upcoming Equus? Can you say massive fail in the making?
Kia has done well w/ the new Sorento (I wonder if sales of the Sorento will pass the Edge and Pilot once the SX trim hits the dealer lots?).
And GM is doing well w/ the Lambda trio (nearly 22K in combined sales); of the 3, the Acadia is the best looking – the Buick is a bit too busy looking and the Traverse at certain angles just looks plain weird.
It really hurts not to have an available 3rd row in this segment (many buyers want a 3rd row, even if a bit cramped for carpooling purposes – the cramped space doesn’t matter so much since the carpooling is usually for younger kids).
This chart makes it clear that GM got the big SUV…err…CUVs right and Ford produced yet another failure.
The Traverse has handily outsold the Flex. In fact, since it went on sale, the Flex has only moved 72,997 units…IN 24 MONTHS!
Remember that lie Ford told when they said the Flex would sell 100K units a year? Oops.
The Flex needs to go away (along with the hideous, overpriced, under-delivering Lincoln rebadge) when the Explorer comes out…but that would be a wise, sound business decision…and we all know that Ford is incapable of making one of those.
Good to see GM doing so well…it shows that you can move products if you try…and then you don’t have to resort to fleet sales (Edge, Escape) to make the numbers look good.
Neither the Edge nor Flex sell in fleet numbers any more than any GM products, and I’d wager they actually sell quite a bit less. I do have some evidence on the Flex side, I have a customer who wants to rent a Flex for a long roadtrip to make sure he likes it before he buys (he always rents the car for a week or so before he buys one) but the local Enterprise has very few available, and those they have are already booked for a while.
The selling 100K thing a year wasn’t a lie, it was just an overly hopeful sales projection, no one knows for sure how well a model will sell, after all, GM learned that pretty well with the Aztec. Currently none of the Ford CUVs are a failure, the Edge and Escape sell at the top of their classes, and Ford hasn’t resulted to steep discounts or incentives to move Flexes, so it can’t be doing that badly.
As far as sound business decisions go, you pretty much lose any right to speak about business practices when your example of a company that does things right had to take billions of dollars of tax payer money to stay afloat, and then went bankrupt anyway.
One thing I will give you though is that GM has marketed the Traverse well. The Howie Long commercials showing it next to competitors and showing why it is better than the Honda or Toyota stick in peoples’ minds and give them a reason to buy. Ford has flirted with this technique in the short ‘drive one’ spots, but I’d like to see full length commercials showing it next to the competitors and showing why it is better. Don’t sell the image, sell the car.
The Honda Element has a shorter wheelbase and overall length than the CR-V…why isn’t it with the compacts?
I wonder why the new Honda Crosstour is off to such a slow start? Oh that’s right… it’s ugly enough to blind a horse. Never mind.
I think the Flex, aside from the styling, has the some problem the Chrysler Pacifica had–too many models are made in blinged-out Limited form, and in the middle of a recession to boot.
There are plenty of mid-level and base trim Flexes available. The only problem the Flex has is styling. Mays said he wasn’t afraid of a polarizing design, and there have been plenty of people who say they like it, but you can’t have a polarizing design in a family car. For a sports car polarizing is fine, as mainly single people buy those cars. For a 7 seater, where it is mainly families who are the market, you have to please both the husband and the wife. Men overall seem to like it, women overall seem to hate it, and that’s a problem.
Scion xB sales took off after the redesign to make it less boxy, and the next Flex will go the same route – less boxy, less controversial styling, and superior sales numbers. Until then, the new 2011 Explorer will pick up the slack.
How did MKX sales keep it off the charts when its YTD 10,289 is higher than Crosstour and Element?