Quote:
Originally Posted by Martinjlm
The industry is in the middle of a shakeout. Three “shakeouts” actually. Remember the early ‘90s thru the early ‘00s? Minivans? Every family seemed to have one. Every brand had at least one minivan. Most brands had two (fwd for people hauling / rwd for cargo). Chevy had Lumina and Astro. Ford had Windstar and Aerostar. Then consumers discovered SUVs. Minivan volumes dropped off the cliff. Ford, GM, and others got completely out of the minivan market and dove headlong into SUV. Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda stayed in the minivan market and pretty much divided what was left of the market into pretty decent business. They had larger slices of a much smaller pie.
Same thing is going on with sedans now that consumers have discovered CUV. If everybody stays in the sedan market, there will be smaller slices of a smaller pie for everybody to divide. Chevrolet used to have 4 sedans (Impala, Malibu, Cruze, Sonic). For a short time there were 5 (Chevy SS). Now there’s one. And it’ll stick around for a while. Ford was in the same boat (Taurus, Fusion, Focus, Fiesta). Now they have none. Asian automakers will continue to develop sedans because they are actually popular in their home markets, even with the advent of CUV. So it makes sense for them to also provide them here. They can afford to provide them at lower volumes since they can combine the volume with their home market volumes. So they will in the long run be like Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan we’re during the minivan wind down. With GM, Ford, and Stellantis pretty much out of the sedan market, the size of the market is shrinking rapidly and Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai-Kia are splitting what’s left. In the meantime, GM, Ford, Stellantis all have at least 4 crossovers for each of their multiple brands, plus 2-3 SUVs per brand, and the all-important pickup. None of which they would trade for better position in sedans. Those are the bets they’ve placed.
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Ford made a huge gamble a few years ago by declaring that they would only sell their passenger trucks in North America. They had a point, because up until very recently the F150 was the best selling vehicle in the United States. Ford, however, could not get out of the car market entirely. Mustang was the company's "halo" product, for without it Ford may have suffered damage to its image despite the trucks. Right now I am not sure if Ford made a wise choice by eliminating their sedan car lines. It is the similar sentiment that they gave away market share to their competitors by not competing in this segment.
Interesting point about the minivans, especially during the 90's. I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but we had a huge array of entries during the 90's, and out of that foray only a few survivors remained: Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. GM's minivan entries were, to be blunt, a nightmare. The Lumina line was innovative at the time but suffered from poor quality. The other GM brands had similar results. Ford I believe did better with their models, most notably the Windstar. But the surviving brands beat out their amarican rivals with good quality, great utility, affordability and (to some) fair looks.
Now the sedans. There were inherent problems in the GM sedan entries even before their sales windled down. GM started to correct their quality problems right around the time that the regular Impala was introduced. To be fair, the Impala had respectable sales. It just could not outsell Camry and Accord (Impala was a larger size, however). Malibu has been around a good while, but IMO due to its handling it wasn't really looked at seriously against its direct competitors. The situation improved greatly by its landmark re-design (7th gen.). The quality improved greatly as well, with only minimal problems in fit and finish. The 8th generation was a greater improvement over the 7th, but by then the market started its downturn.
One of the factors that made things bad for GM was its past history of poor quality and bland looks. It may be unfair, but it takes a great while to change one's product image. It was starting to happen for GM as they also were facing other market challenges. GM will need to stay in the game (despite its problems) in order to expect and to see a gain and a re-establishment of trust in their products.