Americans Might Not Even Buy 1.4 Million Midsize Cars This Year; Market Share Down By Half Since Recession

Remember the midsize sedan death watch?

When TTAC introduced the series, Americans were still acquiring over 2 million midsize cars per year. That fact, the 2M+ aspect of the segment and the 1M+ nature of the top models, combined with the category’s 12-percent market share, caused many readers to doubt the possibility that any other intermediate sedans would ever bid farewell.

Others have, of course, fallen by the wayside. Joining the long-lost Mercury Milan, Pontiac G6, Saturn Aura, Suzuki Kizashi, Mitsubishi Galant, and Dodge Avenger in that great midsize parking lot in the sky are cars such as the Chrysler 200 and Ford Fusion. The Chevrolet Malibu is not long for this world.

Meanwhile, sales of the remaining midsize cars continue to tank. The notion that America’s midsize segment is a reliable provider of more than 2 million units per year is now cast by the wayside. Americans are likely to purchase and lease fewer than 1.4 million midsize cars in 2019. That’s 15-percent fewer midsize cars than Americans drove home in 2009 during the depths of the Great Recession.

Leading up to that economic collapse, 16 percent of the U.S. automotive market’s volume was produced by midsize cars. That figure now stands at 8 percent.

In the last year alone, the midsize segment’s market share has fallen by more than half a percentage point. In a market that’s down less than 2 percent year-over-year, midsize volume is down nearly 7 percent through the first three-quarters of 2019.

It’s a drop caused by every member of the segment save for the departing Ford Fusion, where a dead cat bounce is causing an artificial spike at the end of the Fusion’s lifecycle.

Double-digit year-over-year percentage losses have been reported this year by vehicles such as the Hyundai Sonata and Subaru Legacy (down 16 percent), Mazda 6 (down 30 percent), and Volkswagen Passat (down 61 percent).

The class-leading trio (Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima) are among the most recently redesigned. But while their market share in the segment is rising – from 56 percent in 2018 to 59 percent in 2019 — their sales are also in decline. The Camry, Accord, and Altima combined to lose 22,000 sales over the last nine months.

In the face of blustery headwinds, numerous midsize carmakers are forging ahead with distinct strategies. Volkswagen’s Americanized Passat has suffered consecutive annual sales declines ever since its arrival in 2012. Volkswagen’s path forward is a lightly refreshed example of an aging car.

At Subaru, where Legacy sales have never been strong, a brand new model is launching now despite the fact that other automakers have fled the scene while producing more sales in a quarter than the Legacy can in a year.

And at Hyundai, the Sonata is reverting to a bold styling strategy. It worked for the sixth-gen Sonata in 2011, but the seventh-gen Sonata in 2015 was an overly cautious and forgettable attempt. Sonata sales tumbled 55 percent between 2012 and 2018, so Hyundai went back to the drawing board. Is it too late for the Sonata to recover?

For the Passat, 2019 is on track to be the worst year since 2012. Legacy sales are projected to fall to a new low (since before Outback/Legacy sales were isolated.) The Sonata’s drop will cause sales to fall below 100,000 units for the first time since 2003; it’ll be the first 5-digit Kia Optima sales year since 2011. Chevrolet Malibu sales are tracking toward a 16-year low. If Mazda’s 30-percent Mazda6 decline continues in Q4, 2019 will be the nameplate’s worst year ever.

And what about that top-tier trio? Revamped for 2020 with new powertrains and available all-wheel drive, the Nissan Altima is on pace for an 18-year U.S. sales low. If not for a disastrous, tsunami-inflicted 2011, the Honda Accord’s 276,000-unit 2019 tack would point the highly regarded Honda in the direction of early 80s output. In 13 of the last 20 years, Toyota has reported more than 400,000 U.S. Camry sales — Toyota is on pace for fewer than 340,000 in 2019. In the last two decades, only 2010 and 2011 stand out as lower-output years.

It’s disappointing individual results that explain how a segment could see its market share fall by half in a decade. The good news for lovers of the midsize category? The rate at which the segment is shedding market share has slowed noticeably. In 2015, the segment lost a full percentage point of share, and within two years another 2.4 points were gone. Between 2017 and 2018, midsize market share collapsed from 10.3 percent to 8.6 percent, a 17-percent decrease. 2019’s slide from is modest by comparison.

Yet, and this will come as no surprise, we still expect to see America’s midsize car category slip below 8 percent in 2020.

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Driving.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars and Instagram.

[Images: Toyota, Honda]