So, are people really not buying minivans? Clearly, they must be out of their minds if they'll choose something other than the most efficient and best-driving (of vehicles most optimized to haul people and things) vehicles on the market. Let's see if they aren't; here are the sales number as of October. Note that things are highly unlikely to change by year end.
That's pretty bad. As a somewhat random comparison, the Acura MDX, which shares much of its DNA with the Honda Odyssey, outsold
all minivans combined. It occupies the #88 slot on the YTD (as of October) total sales. That's awful. Not only that, but MDX sales are
down by over 17% compared to last year.
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| Photo: Kia |
Americans have truly chosen form over function and this truly saddens the REVolution. The end is nigh. Do you have your Prepper stock ready?
Demographics, man.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean?
DeleteThe boomers that drove the minivan craze are done with kids and have moved on to the official car of the empty nester: Toyota RAV4. The subsequent generation isn't having (or can't afford) kids, so the market is drying up. If you filter out immigrants, our demographics match Europe.
ReplyDeleteHuh? Other than the trendy popularity of crossovers...
Delete[img]http://i.imgur.com/D1pfNIa.jpg?1[/img]
There are more people in the world than ever before, roughly 1.5 billion more than just fifteen years ago. And that number isn't going down; the worlds' population has more than doubled in the past 50 years. They all need transportation, they all need automated sliding doors and they all need enough cupholders to explode even the biggest bladder. Well, maybe not those last items...
Most of the western industrialized nations are now under replacement in fertility rates. Japan is at 1.42, Germany is at 1.43. The U.S. is at 1.87. If you filter out recent immigrants it is even lower.
DeleteMercedes is not stupid and they're brand new to the segment. If they didn't see an opportunity, they wouldn't have brought their minivan here so it must exist. It will be interesting to see how much business they steal from the Japanese. The Benz full-size van was a relative success.
ReplyDeleteMinivans are the Porsche of the segment; low volume with high profits and loyal customers who don't have a lot of options to chose from. That's a win-win for the manufacturers and dealers. Just try walking into a dealership and attempt to buy a basic, no-option minivan. It can't be done unless you special order the thing and who'd want that? For a couple of bucks more, you get all sorts of gadgets and whistles at a very reasonable cost.
ReplyDeleteRight now, any manufacturer that doesn't offer a minivan is walking away from an amazing amount of money selling products that don't need significant upgrading on a regular basis, unlike other cars. There's about as much profit in a minivan as a luxury vehicle but the manufacturers have absorbed the development costs long ago.
Just because people are too vain to buy what they really need doesn't mean the vehicle is bad or there's no profit to be had in it. It's just a sign of the current fad. The Buying Public has never made much sense and is unlikely to change that behavior. Your ranting about the high long-term ownership costs of German cars relative to other options is an excellent example of that phenomenon. And yet, they continue to buy those cars and throw away their money. The fascinating part is that it made the segment even more profitable.
Manufacturers are once again getting creative with how they handle it by disguising the shape any way they can. Will the Aztec return? No. But it's hard to ignore the fact that your favorite, the Ford Transit Connect, is on track to continue the trend of rising sales, which its done every year since it was first put on sale. Not all of them are passenger configurations but that's true of every minivan because, once again, they're the most utilitarian vehicles that drive like cars on the planet. That's always been true and will continue to be.
Minivan sales may be down, incorrectly indicating death of the segment. But the fact remains that they continue to be a highly profitable - more so than ever before. Minivans aren't going away anytime soon and based on history, will return to popularity again at some point in the future. My prediction is that the next step is hybrid powertrains and the trend of a utilitarian look will continue.
Unlike the image of full-sized SUVs, the efficiency and practicality of the minivan can never be proven wrong and it won't go away, ever.
I hadn't even thought of that angle. You're right, of course. Thanks for pointing that out!
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