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| Connect the dots or circle the wagons. |
Yesterday's article that took a look at the 2016 vehicles that Edmunds considers to be station wagons generated some truly interesting comments and email. One conversation offline brought up the excellent question that though there are station wagons on the market, in what sort of numbers do they sell? Well, you won't be surprised by the fact that they don't add up to a whole lot. But you find the actual numbers to be of note; which company continues to sell wagons in very small numbers but seem just fine with that and which companies are actually selling them in real numbers (and are also quite happy with that, of course). Also, who is the current king of station wagon sales? The numbers tell the whole story. Here's how many of these vehicles were sold in 2015 in the States.
Audi allroad - 2818
BMW 3 Series - Not available
FIAT 500L - 7863
Ford C-Max, Flex - 21768, 19570
Kia Soul - 147133
Lincoln MKT - 4696
Mercedes-Benz E-Class - Not available
MINI Cooper Countryman - 16686
Subaru Outback - 152294
Toyota Prius v - 28290
Volkswagen Golf Sportwagen - Not available
Volvo V60, XC70 – 4362, 5118Not surprisingly with the Germans, with the exception of the Audi, I can't find the sales breakout of wagons from their models. My completely random guess is around 4000 for each. Who knows if that's even remotely accurate. Probably not.
A couple of data tidbits.
- 2015 was the best sales year since introduction for the Kia Soul. Love it or hate it, it's a sales success.
- The Subaru Outback was the station wagon sales king for 2015. The fact that the company primarily sells wagons, with a few sedans and coupes on the side, is interesting. Yes yes, they're considered "crossovers"...they're still wagons, to me. Marketing-speak.
- Wait. Who is buying the 500L?
- Sedans and wagons used to be Volvo's bread and butter before they wisely answered the siren song of the SUV (really, they're all Crossovers). Ten years ago, they sold three times that many XC70s.
- Note that the sales total for the V60 does not inclued 2769 Cross Country variants.
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| The 2015 sales king, in all its CVT glory. Do yourself a favor and buy the 3.6. |
422,418!
Wow. That's nearly half a million wagons sold in the States in 2015. That's far from nothing. No wonder makers want to keep pumping them out. All of them are just variants of current models anyway, so why not just slap a backpack on a sedan? That's good business. Of course, Toyota sold 429355 Camrys, but that's just freakish and I don't want to compare apples with oranges. Still, it's interesting that the Venza got yanked (bargain hunter alert!). In 2015, Toyota sold 21351 of the wildly over-tired (21s? Really?) luxo-wagons. Why pull the plug unless you've got an update in the works? It's easy money. According to the Wikipedia page on the model, Toyota is cancelling it because of "customer preference, competitiveness within the segment, and deteriorating sales". I smell BS; there's another reason that they're not telling us. If the Germans are happy selling a couple of thousand wagons to buyers to keep them in the family...
But the conclusion is clear; wagons have been on the market for a long time, buyers still choose them and they don't appear to be going away anytime soon. Probably never.
A little off topic, it's interesting to note that the V6 Venza was a roughly two AND A HALF ton vehicle. Add nearly 300 pounds MORE for the AWD system. With the 4-cylinder, it was grossly under-powered and so the six was the only logical choice in my mind. If the weight of the Venza had been kept in check and the exterior styling more pleasing to more buyers, would it have been a bigger success? Like the Honda Crosstour, we'll never really know.
ReplyDeleteFiat doesn't seem all that interested in success in the States. I think they've been distracted by their new toy, Chrysler, and especially Jeep.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I can't figure out the whole Fiat thing. I fully expected them to go bankrupt in Europe not so long ago, and to see them hooking up with another perpetual-life-support patient just left me shaking my head. Like so many before them, I imagine Jeep was the draw. But then they introduce the Fiat-based Renegade disaster. What are they thinking?
DeleteSeeing those tiny volumes for some of these wagon variants makes me shake my head even more at Ford's wagon-delete on the Focus. I assumed they did not want to spend all the money getting a separate model certified, but when I see only 4696 Lincoln MKTs.....
ReplyDeleteJeep fascinates me. It seems to currently occupy a mainstream appreciation with cult-like status, similar to Harley-Davidson. Other than the right sized GC, most if not all of its products are inferior to competitor products in every way. There's nothing from Jeep that you can't buy better from another source, with the exception of the Wrangler and most owners have no business buying one in the first place.
ReplyDeleteMost Jeep owners don't seem to be aware of this, which tells me that's why the popularity and sales. Product crudeness can add character and I'm very aware of that as a Morgan owner. But horrible build quality and a dreadful long term ownership experience does not make character. FCA ownership suddenly makes perfect sense.
I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks that the "Jeep Mystique" is likely a spellcheck auto-correction of "mistake".
DeletePut the K2 machine in motion and let's get some more wagon love up in this hizzle.
ReplyDeleteI remember that piece you wrote about what defines a station wagon. Still remember you saying something like stretching a wagon vertically doesn't make it something else. That was funny and true. Crossover...come ON.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you wrote and a quick look at sales numbers makes me think that there's probably more than a million wagons sold here. Prob several million when you start counting cars like the RAV4.
Yesterday, I was invited to a ride and drive by my local Maserati dealer. I've been considering replacing my Active7 with a Ghibli S Q4 four door, which is probably too small for me (I'm tall). The event was to push the new Levante and they had a number of other vehicles on hand to compare it to, including a Grand Cherokee SRT8. The Levante was really nice and it fit me much better than the Ghibli ever could. But when I drove the Jeep, I liked it a lot which surprised me. It did feel cheaper and was obviously not assembled to the same standard. While the Maserati isn't most likely the cheapest and easiest of ownership experiences on down the road, it felt like the Jeep probably wouldn't make it that far in the first place.
ReplyDelete