For the past decade, midsize sedans have been the most popular segment in America. But data from Polk and IHS Automotive suggests that might be changing.
Category: Sales
Yesterday’s chart didn’t include premium C-segment entrants, but commenter Vega beat me to the punch in mentioning them.
Today’s chart of the day comes courtesy of JATO Dynamics and Automotive News Europe, showing last year’s C segment car sales in Europe (click to enlarge).

Long after the first SUV gold rush in the United States, the Detroit Three are gearing up for a second gold rush, this time in China.
Our article on a prospective Toyota Motor Sales move to Texas now has some support from the Wall Street Journal.
Read More >

As the vortices of winter give way to the tornadoes of spring, two automotive weather forecasters predict April 2014 sales to rise 9 percent as consumers head for the showroom floor amid the warming air.
Several hundred Chrysler minivans are stuck indefinitely on a piece of prime Detroit real estate, unable to be transported across America. The reason? The fossil fuel boom in Canada and the United States is hogging much of the available rail capacity needed to transport the vans.

Autoblog reports the first several thousand kits meant for repairing a handful of General Motors vehicles affected by the February 2014 ignition switch recall have been shipped off to dealers. In addition, 1.4 million recall letters have been mailed out to affected consumers of 2003 – 2007 vehicles; 2008 – 2011 affected owners will receive their letters in the coming weeks. The letters inform consumers to schedule the repair with their dealer, which GM claims will take 90 minutes to complete. Until the repair occurs, the automaker instructs all consumers to have nothing more than the key itself prior to insertion, and to be sure their transmissions and switches are set in place before removing the key.

Currently, around 2.13 million cars will come off-lease by the end of 2014, up from 1.7 million last year. By 2016 and beyond, however, over 3 million vehicles annually will turn up on many a CPO and used car lot, replacing a long drought with an El Niño-esque flooding of the U.S. used car market.

Though Tesla is now just delivering new vehicles to China, CEO Elon Musk predicts his company will build luxury electric vehicles in the burgeoning market within the next three to four years.

Reuters reports a lawsuit related to the 2014 General Motors recall crisis filed in federal court in California has placed airbag supplier Continental Automotive Systems U.S. at-fault for its role in the recall. Attorney Adam Levitt of Grant & Eisenhoffer proclaimed the supplier knew about the out-of-spec ignition switch at the heart of the recall as early as 2005, yet “did nothing to redesign its airbags” to deploy even when electrical power was cut, “nor did it warn NHTSA or the public.” Continental joins Delphi Automotive as the second supplier to face a lawsuit linked to the ongoing recall crisis.

In its pursuit of establishing an online store where shoppers can do (almost) everything related to the car-buying experience, AutoNation Inc. announced last week it would no longer use third-party lead providers, focusing instead on its own online plans.

Eight years after the Nissan Almera left Europe, the automaker is planning a return to the C-segment hatch market in October, with the overall goal of 5 percent overall European market share by the end of FY 2016 in mind.

March 2014’s Canadian auto sales results displayed a further willingness on the part of buyers to gradually forsake cars and turn to smaller crossovers.






Recent Comments