America Can’t Stop Buying The Old-As-Hell Dodge Durango

Give credit to Dodge. The slings and arrows of the modern car industry have fallen on the brand, robbing it of time, attention, engines, and platforms. It’s been given the castoffs of its various parents and told to make do. Dodge is making do in a big way thanks to the Dakota.

Limitations can sometimes be your greatest strength, and The Morning Dump is no exception. Every morning I’m constrained by the limits of time, the concept of picking just four stories to summarize the vibes, and the lack of energy that comes from a cat jumping on my chest at 2 am and demanding scritchy-scratchies.

The market itself has been constrained by geopolitics, including high fuel prices and high tariffs. The early data from April show that this hasn’t turned the market as negative as you’d have guessed. Toyota is probably the poster child for making the best-of-it, although the company’s March was rough. On the other side of Mount Fuji, a capital-restrained Nissan didn’t actually lose money.

Durango Has Its Best Q1 In Five Years

Technically, the platform that underpins the Durango goes back 20 years to 2006, when Mercedes started work on the W166 ML and, with modifications, various SUVs for DaimlerChrysler and FCA. This current generation debuted in 2011, with a heavy refresh in 2013. This makes the Dodge Durango you can buy today either 20, 15, or 12 years old, depending on how charitable you want to be.

You know who doesn’t seem to care? Consumers. Dodge sold 48% more Durangos (Durangoes?) in Q1 of 2026 than they did last year, and the most since 2021, when they were one of the few vehicles not in short supply post-pandemic. Typically, the Durango lags what GM and Ford produce in the full-size, three-row non luxury space.

Not so far this year. In Q1, the much newer Tahoe was down about 10% to 27k units, Yukon was down 12% to just over 20k units, while Expedition was up 30.2% (the Expedition debuted a new model last year) to 17,544 units. Dodge? The 20,300 Durangos sold put it within striking distance of the Yukon, ahead of the Expedition, and closer to the Tahoe than usual.

What can explain this? Here’s Automotive News with some timely interviews:

“Durango continues to do extremely well for us, as we have positioned that properly in the marketplace, really focused in on the V-8s and offering consumers something they can’t get from any other vehicle in that segment,” Dodge CEO Matt McAlear told Automotive News at the New York auto show this month.

[…]

Dealers were excited to hear at the NADA Show in February that the 6.4-liter Hemi was back in the Durango, said Stellantis National Dealer Council Chairman Sean Hogan.

“We didn’t even talk about the redesign, we just literally talked about a single motor going back into a vehicle,” Hogan said after the company’s make meeting. “Let’s face it, this thing’s long in the tooth. [But if] you stick enough power in there and you price it right, we’re going to sell it.”

Dodge dealers are just like Dodge customers: They need that Hemi V8. As Brian wrote, you can now get that V8 a lot cheaper:

What’s even crazier is that the new R/T 392 is actually … affordable? Sure, $51,990 isn’t objectively affordable for the vast majority of Americans, but you have to admit, for the amount of car you’re getting here, it’s a damn good value.

Think of the new R/T 392 as a middle child between the base 5.7-liter V8-powered Durango, which makes 360 horsepower, and the full-fat, 710-horsepower, supercharged V8-powered Durango Hellcat. While it doesn’t carry the SRT badge, this is effectively a spiritual successor to the Durango SRT 392, which went out of production after the 2024 model year.

It’s a niche! The most powerful Yukon gets the 6.2-liter V8, but it’s 55 horsepower short. Ford doesn’t even offer a V8 anymore. If gas prices stay high for a while, that may not have its appeal, but that doesn’t seem to be tanking the market for these things yet.

April Car Sales Probably Weren’t So Bad

Because everything is wacky all the time, a year ago there was a burst of sales due to people reasonably worried that costs were about to explode because of tariffs. It didn’t quite end up that way, but sales now need to be compared to that sugar rush of sales.

High gas prices. War in Iran. Uncertainty about everything. The A’s are on top of the American League West and the Astros are on the bottom. It’s wild. Still, sales in April, as forecast by Cox Automotive, don’t look that bad. Overall, sales are likely to be down about 5.4% year-over-year to 1.4 million vehicles, or a SAAR of about 16.1 million vehicles.

It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. It’s fine. And fine shows a strong amount of resiliency in the car market:

April is expected to mark the third straight month of annual sales declines, as vehicle demand continues to be shaped by competing headwinds and tailwinds. While fuel prices have risen significantly and signs of inflation have returned, strong tax refunds have added needed stimulus to the economy and the U.S. stock market has also returned to record levels.

Cox Automotive Senior Economist Charlie Chesbrough: “April sales appear to be holding up against a lot of uncertainty in the economy. Surging gas prices and historically low consumer confidence haven’t crashed the vehicle market. Sales in April, as in March, were expected to decline from last year’s temporarily high levels, but they haven’t fallen as much as initially expected, thanks in part to strong tax refunds and healthy equity markets.”

There were a ton of EV sales in the second half of the year that are unlikely to be repeated, meaning that year-over-year sales will probably look awful in October.

Toyota Hits Global Sales Record Even As It Sputters In March

It’s the end of the Japanese automaker fiscal year, and if you take all of the companies that make up Toyota (including Hino trucks and Daihatsu), the company hit a record 11.28 million sales. It is, by far, the largest automaker in the world. The company sells a ton of hybrids around the world, small cars in other places, and even electric cars in China.

March, though, was rough, as the automaker faced the same challenges as every other global automaker, as Bloomberg reports:

Global sales in March — including those of subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd. — fell 5.8% from a year earlier to 983,126 units, the company said Monday. So far, the company has been able to keep churning out cars, with worldwide production climbing 3.9% to 1.02 million units.

The numbers show how the world’s biggest carmaker has been able to remain on track despite turmoil in the Middle East, which has raised the price of aluminum and other raw materials and the underlying costs for automobile parts. Production may be due for further declines, with Japanese carmakers depending on the region for roughly 70% of their aluminum.

Toyota is still in a great position relative to other automakers.

Nissan Made About As Much As It Thought It Would Lose

Hand it to the new guy, Nissan originally forecast that it would lose more than $300 million for the fiscal year that ended last month. Instead, Nissan, under a new CEO, made about $314 million. That’s a little like setting up a three-foot putt, telling everyone you’re going to miss it, and then sinking it cleanly.

It’s not nothing!

There’s a bit of a caveat here, as Nikkei Asia points out:

Nissan’s President and CEO Ivan Espinosa has been involved in the company’s restructuring effort since he took the helm in April last year. Under his Re:Nissan restructuring plan, the company decided to cut seven of its 17 factories, reduce its global workforce by 20,000, or about 15% of total staff, and abandon a number of planned investments.

This does sound a bit like cutting your way to a profit, but Nissan’s past leadership acted with a worrying disregard for how much production capacity it had compared to the reality of demand. This was necessary. Cutting is easy, thriving is harder, so we’ll see if a reinvigorated Nissan can keep the numbers positive.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Weehawken’s own Kate Pierson, of the B-52s, turns 78 today. There are so many good songs to choose, but let’s go this weirdly Mondrian version of “Private Idaho.” Happy Birthday, Kate!

The Big Question

Why not Durango?

Top photo: Dodge