If you want to know where any industry built on long product cycles is going in the near future, just look at what people can’t get enough of right now. Think silverware drawers in dishwashers, water dispensers in refrigerators, and yes, even certain forms of vehicle. The number-crunchers at S&P Global Mobility just published a study of registration data breaking down the most popular vehicle segments in America, and although it’s anecdotally clear that crossovers and full-size trucks have a King Kong grip on the landscape, now it’s analytically clear just how much these things are winning and sedans are losing.
The concept of a sedanocalypse is nothing new. It’s been years since Chrysler killed the 200 and the Dodge Dart, since Ford announced it was winding down several passenger car lines in North America, and since GM mulled over its portfolio and thought it didn’t need that many sedans. However, there’s no medium quite like cold, hard numbers to illustrate that the dominant cars of today aren’t traditional passenger cars.
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Let’s start off with the biggest segment in America, compact utilities. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a reasonably sized tall vehicle with five seats and a hatch is what most Americans need to move people and stuff on everything from the commute to the road trip. Think of it like carcinization, except instead of non-crab crustaceans evolving into crabs, the normal perception of a car is evolving largely into crossovers. These are your Honda CR-Vs, Toyota RAV4s, and Chevrolet Equinoxes, but also smaller two-row body-on-frame SUVs like the Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler. Combined, they make up a whopping 21 percent of new registrations through May, which makes sense. They do a lot of stuff exceptionally well for most drivers.
Next up, it’s what’s next up the ladder in the crossover chain. What happens when you have too many kids to fit in a RAV4? You go up in size and look at larger crossovers, probably ones with three rows of seats. S&P Global Mobility calls this class Upper Midsize Utilities, with models like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Ford Explorer, Honda Pilot, and Hyundai Santa Fe falling into this bracket that makes up 12.3 percent of all registered new vehicles over the first five months of the year.
I hope you’re ready for more crossovers, because the general public sure is. Where there’s room to go bigger, there’s room to go smaller, and that’s exactly what’s happening with the next-most popular segment of vehicle, which S&P Global Mobility confusingly named “Sub-compact plus utilities.” Wait, what the heck is the plus? Well, it’s basically the standard sort of subcompact crossover on sale in America because almost nothing as small as a Mazda CX-3 exists anymore. Models like the Chevrolet Trax, Subaru Crosstrek, and Honda HR-V make up the bulk of this segment that’s earned 12.2 percent market share, although the inclusion of the Ford Bronco Sport is a puzzling one considering it’s more closely aligned with the larger compact segment.
Rounding out the big four is an American cultural icon, the full-size half-ton pickup truck. Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500, Ford F-150, Ram 1500, Toyota Tundra, all rise. Actually, Nissan Titan and Lordstown Endurance, rise from the dead, because S&P Global Mobility has found that Americans had registered 1,502 new Nissan Titans and two Lordstown Endurances through May. Weird. Anyway, this segment makes up 8.2 percent of all new vehicle sales, rounding off the big four.
Yes, this means that sedans, hatchbacks, minivans, and especially wagons are now but a small slice of new vehicles sold in America. The subcompact car is hanging by a boutique thread, sports car options are dwindling, but even the sort of attainable midsize sedan that used to be the default family car has seen its market share cleaved into by crossover dominance. If you want to know where the industry’s going, it’s going to chase the most customers, so expect an even more crossover-heavy mix as the decade drags on.
Top graphic image: Honda
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I would rather have a nice sedan or wagon any day.The problem is if no one buys them then no one is going to sell them.It’s a herd mentality and if 5 mommies are dropping off junior at daycare in a shiny new Tucson or Forester guess what mommy #6 wants.
A Forester XT STI?
My partner and I are very much small car fans. He’s got a Mazda3 hatch, I’ve got a Jetta Sportwagen. And an air cooled Beetle. When he’s paid off the Mazda in a few years, he said he might want to go Miata or another two door sports car. And why not? No kids, no plans for them either. We’ve got the wagon for space, no reason for him to have a practical car if he wants something small and fun.
But we are in the minority of people who don’t like high seating positions. I know very few people who are of the same persuasion though. And I get it, especially for someone like my mom who is exactly five feet tall and has always had trouble seeing out of cars. She’s got a Porsche Macan, and my dad has a Macan GTS. They both picked them for the same reason: smallish, elevated ride height, and drives more like a car than an SUV. I’ve hustled the GTS around some corners and I’m fairly confident it’s witchcraft.
While I do own more interesting vehicles, a pair of Lexi and a Blackwing, my 2015 Acura RDX makes for a really nice beater. I like that it does not have any off-road styling cues as that’s just silly. If there were more wagons on the market, I’m sure I would have bought one instead.
I bought my 2019 Crosstrek because I needed something to be able to carry large costume bins (Husky 50gal size) and other props, or my 66# dog comfortably. I think in 2019 I paid like $22k or something which seemed reasonable.
I bought this mainly because the 2004 Scion xB I bought as the utility vehicle wasn’t in as good of shape as I thought, or I’d likely still be driving a boxy little car.
As an aside, I drive past a dealership every day that’s Porsche, Audi, and I forget what else. As a kid that would have intrigued me. Now all I see are rows of boring SUVs. Blech.
I’ve never owned any of these, and haven’t owned a car with more than two doors in the last 15 years. Hooray for being single with no friends!
Guilty with an EV6. No car alternative, unfortunately.
We bought a Kia Niro in 2023, I consider this a slightly lifted hatch back. Its infinitely more practical than the Veloster I traded in, tho I miss that car (6speed) often!
My parents have one too, and I look at it as a wagon. It’s barely taller than their Honda Accord when you see them parked side by side. Nobody would see a crossover when looking at the Niro if not for the cladding.
1 of each here. CRV and F150. The truck replaced a minivan to tow the camper.
Currently, no car at all, but when I did, none of these choices were included in the mix. Nor will they ever be. Small trucks, coupes, sports cars, old Jeeps (pre-1990), one or two sedans, wagons, and motorcycles, are all welcome. Gas, hybrid, or electric is fine. I don’t hate (except for myself) the popular vehicles of today, I just don’t want one and I do mildly resent that they have driven wider choice in the vehicle marketplace into extinction. That’s business, though.
Yeah, you got me. I have a 3 row crossover and a 1/2 ton truck (for towing our camper), but we also have (3) 2 seat convertibles and (2) sedans to balance things out. So at least as a family we are bringing down the average.
Also interesting to me, none of the 7 are front wheel drive. 4 are RWD, and 3 are AWD or 4×4. 2 are manuals, one is a PHEV.
Hope you are getting the fleet discount! We once had 7 vehicles. Best of all one always had gas! We had 2 240Zs, 2 66 Mustangs, 2 RX7s and a Toyota Extra Cab pickup. Ah..those were the days…
3 young drivers (18,21,and 22) so there’s no discounts. But 2 are insured with Hagerty, so those aren’t bad. It’s nice to have a spare car when something breaks.
Roger that! Hoping to build my fleet back up now that I have some extra $$. If you hear of an Avanti or AMX for sale let me know! Lol
These numbers add up to about 54%. Does that mean 46% are sedans, hatchbacks, convertibles, wagons, and sports cars?
I posted same before I read yours.
I noticed this right away, too. Missing data? There just has to be more buried in the report sourced for this story.
I do not, nor will I ever, own one of these neither fish nor fowl abominations. Jacked up enough to ruin their on-road composure, yet with zero off-road capability. Nope.
Two VERY proper station wagons, two convertibles, and a body-on-frame, low range equipped, extremely capable off-road SUV.
Not sure what your bof SUV is, but if you look at data, they lump most of those into these catagories
A Land Rover Discovery I. I have no problem with SUVs with actual abilities that a car does not. A CUV is just a station wagon or hatch ruined.
I was just pointing out that a lot of real SUV (Wrangler bronco 4 runner) are mixed in with cuv crowd in the study, they probably would dump the discovery in that category. Honestly the stats a little misleading. My opinion is cuv are closer to hatchbacks and minivans that some of the vehicles they lumped them in with
Most people think their CUVs are SUVs, so it doesn’t really matter. And then most SUV buyers use them as CUVs anyway. How many Jeeps and 4Runners and whatnot have EVER gone offroad? Especially with their first owners. No more apt term than “Mallcrawlers”.
My CRV doesn’t need to go off road it just needs to hold lots of stuff and handle the backcountry camping roads/ontario winter -something it does better than the previous station wagon and hatchback.
Also, they handle great on the road-were not on the autobahn or ripping around the ring.
Glad you have the money to have multiple vehicles for each application, not everyone is as lucky, which is why these sell so well.
I have driven lots of them, evidently we have different definitions of “great handling”. If it suits your needs, great, but it sucks that companies can justify bullshit like BMW having the X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, and X6 but can’t manage to import the perfectly lovely proper station wagon they also make.
A Maine winter is indistinguishable from an Ontario one, and likely worse. I never had the slightest trouble getting around with my RWD BMW and Volvo wagons with the proper tires on them. Of course, I know how to drive…
That “bullshit” is sales. Wagons don’t sell so they don’t get imported. It is simply business not personal.
(From someone that have been driving wagons for 35 years and currently has an Acura TSX Wagon)
What you don’t import won’t sell. And especially, what you don’t spend a single marketing dollar on won’t sell. The F31 3-series wagon wildly outsold the “coupe” SAVs that BMW is currently offering. Chicken, meet egg.
Your Acura is an excellent example of how to NOT sell wagons in the US. Zero effort made at marketing it, and then importing them only in four-cylinder automatic form when wagon enthusiasts would have gone for the V6 and/or stick offered in the corresponding sedan. Same crap BMW loved to pull with wagons. And in the opposite direction, Volvo only offering the non-Outbacked V60 as a naff Polestar Edition for $70K+ and having the balls to say “wagons don’t sell”. Though at least they now have the tariff excuse for finally killing it off.
How many people even knew your car existed when it was sold here? People are constantly surprised that BMW ever built a wagon when they see mine, but everybody and their cousin knew about the X3 and X5. And you cannot for a split second make me believe that there is more market for THREE barely distinguishable “coupe” SAVs (on top of the non Coupe versions) than for the 3 and 5 series wagons that BMW already makes and sells elsewhere.
Acura only sold about 10,000 TSX wagons in 4 years. Yes, they only offered it in the most popular configuration – 4 cylinder / automatic. They could have offered a V6 and manual and had 4 versions to homologate – and they might have sold a few thousand more – at likely at a loss. Instead when the TSX was replaced the wagon version was dropped
When VW dropped the wagons and regular Golf the sales were dismal despite offering off kinds of variety. The Golf, GTI, R, Sportwagon, Alltrack, and eGolf only sold 37,000 COMBINED in 2019. That was despite them offering the wagon in::FWD with a 1.4T manual or 8 speed auto. AWD with a 1.8T manual or DSG or lifted for the Alltrack Then VW killed them off and swapped the assembly line to making the Taos (I had a 2014 Sportwagen TDI before the Acura)
Wagons do not sell in the USA, Manuals do not sell in the USA, regular cab trucks do not sell in the USA. People that like these things don’t want to believe the numbers but these decisions are made based on dollars and cents.
I’ve personally been working on a model when we decided to cut the manual option and it was cut because offering the option would cost the company money for a couple of percentage of increased sales.
And how much money did VW spend marketing any of those cars? Oh yeah – nothing. Literally. Just like Acura spent on the wagon that literally nobody knew existed and imported in tiny numbers. You can’t sell what isn’t there. My local VW dealer had no interest in stocking regular Golfs. They never had more than one.
Again, chicken, meet egg. And self-fulfilling prophesy.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter anymore to me. There is so much stupid baked into current cars that VW could bring out a MK8 GTI wagon with a stick and I still wouldn’t buy one. It’s been all downhill since my MKVII GTI Sport. The all-screen stupidity of the current 3-series would keep me from buying another one of those too. The lack of my preferred form factor is just one of many nails in the coffin of my desire to ever buy another new car. It was fun while it lasted.
Many Volvo wagons came with a locker.
Indeed, I had several.
More useful than the typical “slip and grip” AWD systems of today, especially when the braindead owners think that AWD is a substitute for proper tires.
Friend has an S6 Audi wagon.
Fastest wagon I’ve been in.
Fastest cornering I’ve experienced in the heart of San Francisco too
IMHO, if you have so much horsepower you need AWD to keep from dying, you have waaaay too much horsepower in the first place. My RWD stickshift BMW e91 is actually fun at less than “go directly to jail” speeds. It also cost about 1/3rd as much new.
450 HP and more torque.
All the rally active gear Audi had left over from Gruppe B in a sedate wagon with enough aerodynamics to go 175 mph.
I thought he might have the specs wrong, so I looked it up.
He was a bit miffed he couldn’t get the R version here!
He had a less powerful lighter Lotus for fun.
I know a guy with an E type, who drives a VW so he can flog it all the time.
I’ve had one seriously quick car, and I very quickly found it boring. I would rather flog my Spitfire around. It is definitely more fun to drive a slow car spiritedly than a fast car slowly. And at this point, fast cars are so stupid fast that the average punter can’t even use them to their full extent on a track, never mind on the road. Pointless.
Yes, I was expecting that when I got a faster car.
Top speed never reached, even on a track.
Helped that I expected that restraint.
Everyone says stay on a track, but local track wouldn’t allow me on without extra safety measures, even though car had been on many courses before.
Funny thing is BMW people seemed to hate it on sight.
Chevy people were okay with it for some reason.
Nice cruising in a fighter jet for once though.
I am pleading the fifth!
No prob, I’ll just continue to import silly 25 year old Italian hatchbacks. I see a Panda in my future…
Surprisingly I don’t own any of these either.
My truck is a 1 ton, not a 1/2, and my other vehicles are a sedan (one of GM’s last), a coupe/hatchback, and a minivan.
I suppose the case could be made that my project Blazers are compact utilities if Wranglers are, but I wouldn’t consider them so, and in any case they don’t run.
You cannot buy sedans if no sedans are made.
Mazda Mazda6
Mazda MX-5 NC2 (aka Miata)
I have none of them!* Two sedans, a compact hatchback, and a fullsize BOF SUV. I’ll still continue to pick a compact hatchback over a CUV as long as I can.
*Ignore my wife’s Mazda CX-9.
Compact sporty sedan (Kia Forte GT) and ’95 Miata here. I prefer my vehicles not to have rollover risk warnings on the visor.
If I am going to have a vehicle that handles so poorly on the road that it needs a warning label, I prefer that it simply not need a road at all. And thus I own an example of the “Best 4×4 by far”, even if it is the still extremely capable Mommy Jeans version.
This sucks. My only hope is for Canada to accept Euro safety standards as fallout from the trade war, to allow entry of cool Euro subcompact hatches.
This has to happen. If Transport Canada doesn’t act soon, we’re going to start seeing fewer and fewer cars offered here. No one’s going to make a US-compliant car just for the Canadian market.
It’s frustrating that it hasn’t even been discussed yet.
I’m pretty sure I read that it is being lobbied by both dealers and parts suppliers in Canada.
Nope!
1 Sedan (Cruze)
1 Hatchback (Volt)
2 Coupes (Camaro 1, Cobalt)
1 Convertible (Camaro 2)
A die hard Chevy fan.
You poor bastard.
I’ve also owned a third Camaro and a Cavalier
Here I am, with a crossover-derived pickup truck (Maverick) in the driveway. And a CRV. I make up for this with my 1994 Miata.
A compelling product is a compelling product.
There’s gotta be some chicken-and-egg here. I would love to have bought a compact 2-row station wagon – such as the Toyota Corolla Touring Sports sold in the UK. But almost nothing like that exists in the US, so I drive a 2-row compact crossover.
Absolutely. And the few wagons that are on the market are always expensive, see Volvo and Toyota Crown Signia
I technically own 4 cars at the moment,
I was doing so well at representing the unusual too.
VW Cabriolet circa 1986
Honda Del Sol circa 1994
2019 Hyundai ionic Hybrid
Lexus RX300 circa 1999
Honda trial 90. Circa 1970 (in the shed)
Sold the 94 Saab
2 2019 Specialized pedal assist EV’s
Dang close. But no cigar. Does it count that the Lexus is old and used to camp? Grrr thought not.
This makes me sad. A good sedan > a stupid crossover every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
How so? Not trying to stir the pot, just curious what makes you think a sedan is superior. I like sedans but I’d still pick a hatchback over one.
I’ve always found a sedan to have better driving dynamics. I don’t need all the extra empty space in a crossover. Compact car? Hatchback all day long. I used to have a Golf R. Crossovers are just bloated station wagons with a higher roof. But I wouldn’t mind a Golf Alltrack either, just don’t try to get me in a Pilot/Rogue/CR-V/Blazer/Acadia/ or whatever else. I really didn’t even like any of my parents Explorers either, not even the Eddie Bauer edition they had.
Can’t disagree, I prefer the driving dynamics of a car over a CUV too. I guess if you’re going midsize there aren’t any hatchback/wagon options anymore, because I’d still prefer those over a sedan. I had a Mazda 6 hatchback back in the day and it was great.
Very much agree.
Every time I drive my wife’s CR-V, it quickly reminds me how numb and lazy everything about the dynamics are compared to my Civic.
This user marked safe from owning a crossover.