Burying its loathed “shield”-style grille in the deepest depths of history’s dustbin is a big part of Acura’s plan to reverse falling sales, but product seems to be at least as big a problem as design.
The automaker, which has seen its U.S. sales fall 10.5 percent so far this year, is in the midst of a design pivot, though many feel that the brand needs a bigger shake-up then just a “diamond pentagon” grille. Read More >
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Windsor, Ontario, minivan factory will reportedly suspend Dodge Grand Caravan production in mid 2019.
Seats delivered from Magna International’s Integram Seating facility to the minivan assembly plant will no longer be delivered as of July 2019, according to a letter sent from Magna to Unifor. Automotive News Canada suggests that the Grand Caravan will be replaced by a crossover.
Budget priced, the Dodge Grand Caravan is currently America’s best-selling minivan. Together, the Grand Caravan and its Chrysler siblings own 45 percent of the U.S. minivan market. On its own, the Grand Caravan generates 56 percent of all Canadian minivan sales. Read More >
Remember the I Love Lucy sketch when Lucy gets a job at a factory where she has to wrap chocolates? She’s feeling pretty smug over how well she is performing until they accelerate the line and candies begin spilling out onto the floor and she scrambles around trying to save them all.
Well Subaru is suffering from a similar, less hysterical, problem right now with its own quality control.
The journey Volkswagen’s uber-American midsize crossover took between CrossBlue concept and Atlas production model was a long one, but it isn’t over.
Though production begins next month in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the model created in the hopes of tapping America’s utility vehicle addiction leaves many questions about its future unanswered. Read More >
The post-recession era was an interesting one. As automakers struggled to cram every last piece of fuel-saving technology into their vehicles, gas prices shot up and grimly stayed put. Engine displacements small enough to inspire locker room bullying were suddenly the mainstream.
Naturally, both corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) and sales-weighted fuel economy shot up like U.S. jobs numbers.
America’s rapidly growing lust for light trucks, crossovers and SUVs has been well documented, but until now, the trend has only served to flatline the average gas mileage of the country’s new vehicles. Well, the trend could only go so far before reaching a tipping point. Read More >
Land Rover sells the company’s flagship luxury SUV with three different powertrains in the United States. In two states of tune, with 340 horsepower or 380 and at $85,945 and $92,945, there’s the 3.0-liter supercharged V6. Priced in between, the $87,945 Range Rover is a 3.0-liter diesel V6.
At the top of the heap sits the supercharged 5.0-liter V8-powered Range Rover, which stretches from $104,190 onward and upward.
You can likely guess which one is most popular. Read More >
Is it still a cult following if only six, undeniably mainstream utility vehicles are more popular?
Honda, Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Chevrolet, Ford…
Subaru? While the U.S. auto industry dropped 6 percent in October 2016, losing nearly 90,000 sales compared with October 2015, the Subaru Outback soared to new heights.
If the Subaru Outback is the leader of a cult, as Dan Neil wrote in the Wall Street Journal earlier this fall, the cult is now big enough that we ought to call it a mainstream religion. Read More >
The skyrocketing popularity of utility vehicles in the U.S. marketplace has left Honda scrambling to catch up with the rapid change in consumer demand.
Production doesn’t turn on a dime just because more Americans want to option of transporting four kids, their stuff, and their sister’s dog. So, as it trims its sales forecast due to a car-heavy product mix, Honda has rolled out a plan to give buyers more of what they want.
It’s also prepared to use boats, if necessary. Read More >
Ford’s smallest utility vehicle is bound for North America, giving hope to Blue Oval fans who find an Escape too unwieldy.
The EcoSport, offered in overseas markets since 2004, will soon be pressed into service to round out the bottom of the Ford’s domestic utility lineup. Read More >
Lackluster demand for several General Motors models has forced the automaker to announce shift cuts at two assembly plants, leading more than 2,000 lost jobs.
It’s unpleasant news for autoworkers in America’s manufacturing heartland, but the General hints that four-wheeled saviors are on the way. Read More >
It’s an all-new version of a car that generally finds 140,000 U.S. buyers per year. But the Toyota Prius is quickly fading from the American mainstream.
There’s no doubt that hybrids, in a general sense, are struggling. Combined sales of hybrids and plug-in hybrids are down 6 percent in the United States this year, according to HybridCars.com.
But the Toyota Prius — the all-new, fourth-generation version of the sector’s progenitor — is fading at double speed. Despite its newness and its vast objective improvements, Prius sales are down 12 percent this year.
And October was way, way, way worse than that. Much worse. Read More >
Bound for its North American production reveal at the Los Angeles Auto Show next week, production of the Toyota C-HR began today in Sakarya, Turkey.
The C-HR becomes the eighth vehicle built by Toyota in Europe and the third model built by Toyota Motor Manufacturing Turkey. The C-HR also joins a booming subcompact crossover segment that’s grown nearly 30 percent in the United States this year.
It’s a segment that now produces 3 percent of the U.S. auto industry’s volume, triple its share from just two years ago. Read More >
America’s auto industry has now reported year-over-year sales declines in three consecutive months. The size of the market was 3.5 percent smaller in the August-October period of 2016 than during the same stretch in 2015.
Yet during the same period, U.S. sales of General Motors’ six full-size SUVs jumped 39 percent, a rate of success that throws pie in the face of an industry that’s now fading.
In October, however, the market’s fade became much more apparent. Industry-wide sales slid 6 percent, year-over-year, the worst monthly downturn since the recession. Yet at the same time, General Motors reported a 59-percent surge in full-size SUV volume worth nearly 12,000 additional sales. Read More >
This is the fifth overall edition of TTAC’s Midsize Sedan Deathwatch. The midsize sedan as we know it — “midsizedus sedanicus” in the original latin — isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but the ongoing sales contraction will result in a reduction of mainstream intermediate sedans in the U.S. market.
How do we know? It already has.
U.S. sales of midsize cars plunged by 20 percent in October 2016, a year-over-year loss of nearly 39,000 sales for a segment that was already down by nearly 195,000 through the first three-quarters of 2016.
American consumers, businesses, government agencies, and daily rental fleets are still on pace to purchase and lease more than two million midsize cars in calendar year 2016. Of course, Americans had already purchased and leased more than two million midsize cars at this point in 2015, when the midsize sedan decline was already underway.
Regardless of what came before, October’s results were a punch in the midsize sector’s gut, as total sales fell by a fifth because of declines reported by every player in the category.
Save for the Subaru Legacy. Read More >
Updated with additional October incentive numbers.
In theory, 2016 should have been the Chevrolet Camaro’s year. Although it’s not over, we already know it won’t be the Camaro’s year.
But the Chevrolet Camaro is making headway as 2016 comes to a close. October was the second consecutive month in which the Camaro outsold the Mustang.
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