America's 10 Fastest Growing Vehicles: October 2014 YTD Sales

The Chevrolet Corvette is the fastest growing auto nameplate in America through the first ten months of 2014.

Four of the other members of this list of America’s fastest growing vehicles are also General Motors products.

Corvette volume is up 146% this year, an improvement of 17,150 units. Two other nameplates, the Lexus GX and Mercedes-Benz S-Class, have both doubled their October 2013 year-to-date volume.

Thorough redesigns certainly play a big role, as the Corvette, S-Class, Lexus IS, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade are all freshly revamped models. The Lexus GX460 wasn’t a new product for MY2015, but Lexus did update the GX while making a conscious decision to more actively pursue sales in a market that’s increasingly leaning toward SUVs and crossovers. The same could be said for the Toyota 4Runner.

As for the mostly forgotten Infiniti QX50, formerly the EX, its presence in this group basically adds fuel to an embarrassing fire. The EX debuted nearly seven years ago and, aside from a single powertrain upgrade and a name change, has undergone little in terms of re-engineering. An increase of 45% in 2014 points us not to a sudden uptick in sales but 2013’s downturn. Last year, the QX50/EX tumbled 38%. Sales had fallen 42% in 2012 and 28% in 2011 and have never been higher than the 12,873 units Infiniti achieved in its first full year, 2008. Acura will sell more than 40,000 RDXs this year.

But a list of the fastest growing nameplates shouldn’t be filled with Infiniti doom and gloom. The Corvette, one of Detroit’s most iconic machines, will generate more than 30,000 sales in 2014, the first such occasion since 2007. True blue off-road enthusiasts can get excited about the surge of interest in the 4Runner – year-to-date sales have already reached a seven-year high. Ruthless executives will be pleased by the S-Class’s surge. S-Class volume hasn’t been this strong in eight years.

We have not included vehicles which weren’t on sale throughout 2013. (The Buick Encore went on sale in January of last year.) We’ve also measured the vehicles on a percentage scale. If measured by volume, the Infiniti QX50’s paltry 720 extra sales would not be sufficient to crack a fastest-growing list. For the record, many of America’s best-selling vehicles have generated far greater additional sales in 2014’s first ten months. The Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Silverado, Honda Accord, Kia Soul, Nissan Rogue, Nissan Sentra, Nissan Versa, Ram P/U, Subaru Forester, Toyota Corolla, and Toyota RAV4 have all added more sales than the Toyota 4Runner, this vehicle which, among vehicles on this list, most greatly expanded its volume.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures.