Pickup trucks, pickup trucks, and more SUVs pretty much says it all about calendar year 2017 auto sales in the United States. Trucks and SUVs now account for about 67 percent of the U.S. market, says Jack Hollis, Toyota division’s group vice president and general manager.
And yet, Hollis’ Toyota Camry still managed to outsell all of Mercedes-Benz USA, including vans and Smart cars, last year. Meanwhile, Toyota Motor Sales’ luxury division, Lexus, narrowly lost second place among luxury/premium brands to BMW, while Mercedes took first place honors in that segment for the second straight row.
While those brands all make good money with deep profit margins, sales of luxury brands continue to falter, even compared with commodity brands, most of which have peaked. One possible explanation is that more and more Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus owners are trading in their cars for well-equipped Toyota, Honda, Ford, or Chevrolet sport/utilities, or even big crew cab pickup trucks.
Total sales of cars and light trucks in the U.S., both commodity and premium/luxury, fell about 1.8 percent in 2017, to about 17.25 million, Automotive News reports. While that ends a seven-year streak of year-over-year increases, it also follows two record 17.5-plus-million years in a row, with 2016 having slightly edged out 2015. Car, and especially truck/SUV sales remain strong.
Tesla, which does not regularly report U.S. sales on a monthly or annual basis, probably should. Last year, Tesla fell just 300 units short of catching Porsche sales in the U.S., says the Automotive News Data Center. If Model 3 production was anywhere close to CEO Elon Musk’s projections from early in ’17, it would have easily made that up.
Audi continued its streak of year-over-year increases, and Subaru gained enough to pass Kia for eighth place among automakers selling in the U.S. Cadillac snuck ahead of Acura on the strength of the XT5 compact sport/utility and the continued success of its Escalade/ESV, though Caddy, Acura, and Infiniti all finished 2017 within a few thousand units of each other.
