There are two ways of understanding why it was Mazda USA decided to extinguish the Mazda 5 from their lineup beginning with the 2015 model year. First, we could look at the root causes. Then we could check out the symptoms.

The root causes are numerous, but it’s worth keeping in mind that for thousands of buyers, the reasons many would point to as cause for ignoring the 5 been overmatched by reasons to purchase a 5.

Compared with conventional minivans, it’s obviously small, but that’s exactly why many people have turned to the Mazda: it’s not a maxi-van. Fortunately, it doesn’t drive like one either, and it’s even available with a manual transmission. Yet it is far closer to being underpowered than it is to being overpowered. Compared with discounted Grand Caravans, it’s not necessarily more affordable for a growing family who simply needs more seating capacity. Speaking of which, it only seats six in North America, not seven or eight. (Read More…)

In July 2014, for the first time in twelve months, Lexus outsold all other premium brands in the United States. Back in August 2013, Lexus sold 29,792 vehicles, 5269 more new vehicle sales than BMW managed; 5031 more than Mercedes-Benz, excluding Sprinter vans.

Last month, Lexus’ margin of victory over the two brands which now routinely outsell the Toyota premium division was much smaller. Mercedes-Benz reported the sale of 27,192 new vehicles; Lexus another 141 units.

The annual U.S. race to be tops among premium brands was last won by Lexus in calendar year 2010. Yet as Mercedes-Benz and BMW blossomed with expanding utility vehicle lineups, Lexus’s 3-Series-fighting IS aged and the brand continued to rely very heavily on the RX. (Read More…)

For the most part, their bigger and more expensive brethren sell more often. But this group of small luxury crossovers is gaining a smaller subset as we speak, one which will see the declining BMW X1 move over to its own category.

Meanwhile, the remaining contestants will be joined by the Lexus NX, a smaller, four-cylinder-only alternative to the Lexus RX. The RX is, by far and away, America’s top-selling premium brand utility vehicle. 9658 RXs were sold during the month of July 2014, or more than the Mercedes-Benz GLK, Audi Q5, BMW X3, and BMW X1 combined. (Read More…)

The more some things stay the same, the more other things change. Or so the saying doesn’t go.

Mazda’s U.S. market share hasn’t been much more than level since a pre-recession surge, if you can call it that, to 1.99% in 2008. A brand known as something of the poor man’s BMW should be selling a large volume of cars in America, but BMW, with its expansive model range, sells nearly as many vehicles.

Subaru, on the other hand, has risen from niche status to a mainstream status in the span of a few short years. The WRX/STi and BRZ do contribute – 7.1% of the brand’s 2014 volume through the end of July – but Subaru has developed a real knack for knowing what U.S. buyers want. Consider the XV Crosstrek, an Impreza-based tall rider which, as it happens, easily outsells the Mazda 6.

We knew the Chevrolet Impala was going to suffer, volume-wise, with the introduction of the tenth-generation model.

No matter how positive its review was in Consumer Reports, no matter how attractive its front end, GM insisted they weren’t going to chase fleet sales. Moreover, the car’s more upmarket positioning and the slow death of its category weren’t going to produce improved sales.

Perhaps what some didn’t realize, however, was that the Impala’s decline was long since underway. (Read More…)

Honda sales are decreasing in a market that’s increasing, a fact to which Honda drew attention when the company’s U.S. sales boss called out the industry for short-term tactics that artificially expand the size of the market.

U.S. new vehicle sales are up 5% through the first seven months of 2014, yet sales at the Honda brand are down 1.3% and sales at Acura are down 1.8%. (Read More…)

The raw, wonderfully American, V10-engined Viper is now in its fourth generation and will likely find more buyers in 2014 than at any time in the last six years.

U.S. sales results have been extremely disappointing, however, as this revamped model has failed to attract a meaningful number of buyers in comparison with the relatively recent past.

And in comparison with just about all other vehicles, sports cars or not. (Read More…)

BMW USA reported their first X4 sales in July 2014, 262 in all.

Former and even current BMW fans are apt to be disgusted by the notion of a less practical, more costly X3, particularly if those fans are in the large group of onlookers who also believe the X4 is the less stylish option, as well.

Yet while the X6 hasn’t become a high-volume product for BMW, it hasn’t had a negative impact on its X5 donor vehicle. Likewise, it’s unlikely that the X4 will eat into the X3’s volume, at least not to the extent that lost X3 sales won’t be made up by the additional X4s.

Of the 26,409 BMWs sold in the United States in July 2014, 23% were X models (not including xDrive variants of BMW passenger cars.) (Read More…)

The Toyota Sienna was America’s best-selling minivan during the month of July 2014, although Chrysler’s minivan duo combined to own a far greater portion of the market.

44.8% of all July minivan sales went Chrysler and Dodge’s way, up from 38.1% a year ago. The Grand Caravan/Town & Country twins rank first and second in the minivan category through the first seven months of 2014 and have jointly increased their market share to 49% from 43.6% during the same period last year.

(Read More…)

Having reached a four-year peak in 2012, the year in which the FR-S first arrived, sales at Toyota USA’s Scion division slid 7.1% in 2013.

Through the first seven months of 2014, every Scion model except the tC is selling less often than they did one year ago. The iQ’s 47% drop equals 1244 fewer sales through seven months. The FR-S’s 24% decrease translates to 2802 fewer sales.

Scion sold 173,000 new vehicles in 2006, the brand’s best year on record. With likely no more than 65,000 sales in 2014, Scion will have declined 62% from that point. (It was, not surprisingly, worse between 2009 and 2011.)

Scion’s Toyota parent company, however, sells a rather large number of vehicles in America. With just 2.6% of U.S. Toyota volume coming from Scion – 12% from Lexus – it’s not as though this has to be a long-term headache. Twelve different nameplates, on their own, outsell the Scion brand as a whole.

Unless the beautiful details that have been gradually released over the last few months add up to less than the sum of our parts, it appears as though the second-generation Volvo XC90 will be an impressive machine on which to lay eyes.

As mentioned on TTAC earlier today, the new XC90 will be unveiled on August 25. Its screen orientation will be flipped in Tesla-like portrait fashion. It will be fast. The XC90’s shifter is made by Orrefors Crystal. It will possess a host of one-step-farther safety features. It will, for at least a moment or a day or a week, be a headline-grabbing car.

And surely there will be more American SUV buyers opting for the new XC90 than there have been American SUV buyers opting for the old XC90 over the last few years. (Read More…)

After 15 consecutive months in which U.S. sales of the Fiat 500 increased on a year-over-year basis, U.S. sales of the Fiat 500 have declined in each of the last 14 months.

Not surprisingly, the more recent streak began the exact same month in which Fiat’s large, less popular 500L arrived.

During the former 15-month span, Fiat USA averaged 3746 500 sales per month. Over the last 14 months, that average has fallen 26% to 2773 units per month. (Read More…)

This much we know: the Volkswagen brand sold more new vehicles in America in 2012 than in any year since 1973. The company predicted moderate growth for the Volkswagen brand in 2013, but sales fell 7%. Still, by topping 400,000 units, Volkswagen sales were 35% higher than they were a decade prior. Through the first seven months of 2014, Volkswagen brand sales are down 14% in the United States, or 13% if we exclude the transitioning Golf lineup.

We also know that the company’s bigger SUV, the Touareg, is tasked with taking the fight to premium utility vehicles. The smaller Tiguan, mostly unchanged since 2008, has 36% less cargo capacity behind the rear seats than Honda’s CR-V does. (Read More…)

On a percentage scale, through the first seven months of 2014, the only auto brand improving its year-over-year U.S. sales tally more proficiently than Jeep is Maserati. In other words, Jeep is the fastest-growing volume auto brand in America in 2014.

Based on pure volume gains, no auto brand, certainly not Maserati, has improved on its seven-month 2013 sales total as successfully as Jeep has, with 120,708 extra sales over the last seven months. (Read More…)

It’s difficult to possess anything other than low U.S. sales expectations for GM’s new pickup trucks, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, even before you know the exact prices, or the prices people actually pay for new Silverados.

Toyota Tacoma volume, prior to this year, was perking up, but not nearly to the level it was at in 2006. Similar statements can be made regarding the Nissan Frontier and Honda Ridgeline. Numerous other pickup trucks have disappeared, and remaining competitors haven’t been able to take advantage of those disappearances.