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Originally Posted by DGthe3

If you don't see a decline in Camry & Accord sales, then you simply haven't been looking at any data. Your opinion was that the car market is thriving. The fact is, its in decline & shows no sign of bouncing back in the near future. Of course the segment isn't going away, I don't think anybody said that or even implied it.

And for clarity, when I say its in decline I mean in terms of relative sales numbers. Not the quality of the product. From every automaker their cars are better than at any prior point in history and that will continue for quite a while. But positive sales growth needs more than good product, it also requires customer demand. Right now, there are fewer people who want cars than a year ago. And last year, a smaller portion of people bought cars than the year before while the opposite held true for crossovers. Its a trend, and automakers like GM would be idiotic to ignore that.

That doesn't mean that not a single person wants cars & every automaker needs to stop building sedans right this instant. It means that when planning future product, some resources will need to shift from cars to crossovers. Not 100%, but maybe more like 20%. Drop a sedan or two from the brand and introduce crossovers in their place. Thats all that needs to happen. For GM, that means retooling maybe a couple factories. Not a big deal.

Toyota and Honda aren't talking about killing the Camry & Accord because those two have a lot farther to fall before being un-viable than the ATS or Impala. They're still doing 25 to 30 thousand sales per month, on pace for ~350k units sold this year (for reference, GM has sold 31k Impalas over the first 6 months of the year while Cadillac has sold a total of about 25k cars between ATS, CTS, CT6 and XTS in the same time). But just because the total is still high for Camry and Accord doesn't mean they aren't going down from the first half of last year.

Anyway, through the 1st half of 2017 compared to last year US car sales are down 11.4 percent (compacts are down 14.2, midsize is down 9.8, and luxury down 6.3). Meanwhile crossovers are up 8.6%.

If you want some specific models for the first 6 months of 2016:
Civic down 7.4
Accord down 5.5
Camry down 11.4
Corolla/Matrix down 9.1
Altima down 15.3
Sentra down 8.5
Fusion down 27

I didn't cherry pick, those are the ALL the sedans in the top 20 selling list. Each one of them is down. Meanwhile, the crossovers in that list look like this:

Rogue up 31.4
Rav4 up 11.4
Equinox up 10
CR-V up 17.7
Escape up 1

All are up. Some barely, some by a lot.



If you want to look at my data sources, here you go:

Sales chart for the top 20 best sellers in the US
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/pag...tml#autosalesC

Sales for each OEM, with data on cars vs light trucks (plus other info)
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/pag...tml#autosalesD

GM sales as of July 3 2017:
http://media.gm.com/content/dam/Medi...-June-2017.pdf

Very good reply with good facts and back up. I'll check them out.

My response: So what? Accord and Camry aren't new players. These two have been around at least two decades. These models have survived because, like I said earlier, they have successfully adapted to change. Show me a GM model (and not Impala, as its only been here roughly 18 years, and not too progressively changed either) that has been around longer and has adapted this well to change. That's my point: There are none that I can think of. Sure, one can say Buick Regal, but Regal has changed chassis during this time, as with the Impala.

Malibu may be the oldest player in the GM sedan round up, but even Malibu hasn't had an easy time of it. I give Chevrolet some credit with Malibu because they have worked with it. All or most of the other models have been axed or replaced. Its a good reason why we are not seeing a single GM model that has survived many years under the same chassis and is popular and selling. GM is impatient and had a history of not successfully changing or updating their models. When a model sags, GM cuts. The problem is that GM has also lost market share in the process.

I do not give a lot of weight in the popularity of cross overs because we have seen the upwaves with them during the past decade. Much of the same could be said about the full sized SUV market. When the economy and gas prices are good, SUVs thrive. However, when the economy is bad, gloom looms everywhere, with swelling lots filled with SUVs and trucks. The automobile market is, mildly stated, an unpredictable market. One model can be a jewel one year, and then yesterday's news the next. Its just interesting to observe that Camry and Accord are some of the oldest running models out there that are still relevant, and are still pulling in profit for Toyota and Honda.