America's Best-Selling Midsize Cars Are Exerting More Control In 2014

With fewer than 1.7 million sales through the first eight months of 2014, U.S. sales of conventional midsize cars are down 0.2% in 2014. Just 0.2%? Out of context, it’s not a bad number, suggesting that midsize sales are basically level with the totals achieved a year ago. Yet in an overall new vehicle market that is on pace for its first 16 million unit sales year since 2007, sluggish sales in a massively important category is in fact a consequential result.

In 2013, when the new vehicle market grew 7.5% compared with calendar year 2012, Camry-class car sales in America were up less than 2%.

It’s easy to point the finger at the expansion of the small crossover market as the leading cause for the midsize segment’s difficulties. Toyota sold 44,043 Camrys and 35,614 RAV4s in August 2014, compared with 30,185 and 6502, respectively, in the RAV4’s rough August 2011. We’ve previously explored the Honda CR-V/Accord equation. Ford now sells nearly as many Escapes as Fusions – the Taurus outsold the Escape by more than two-to-one in 2002. Sales of all SUVs and crossovers are up 12% in 2014.

Finding explanations isn’t all that complicated. Yet there are cars that have broken free from the midsize sector’s stagnation this year, cars which have easily exceeded segment-wide expectations. Not coincidentally, five of the six key cars to have done so are the category’s five top sellers.

In other words, the portion of the midsize market controlled by the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima, Ford Fusion, and Hyundai Sonata has grown from 65.8% during the first eight months of 2013 to 69.7% during the same period one year later. In August, this was even more obvious, as the five top sellers improved their market share to 72.1% from 68.9%.

Second tier midsize cars, on the other hand – Malibu, Optima, Passat, 200, Avenger – now control 25% of the category, well down from the 29.2% they achieved during the first two-thirds of 2013. This decline is due in part, but not at all exclusively, to Chrysler’s major model transition.

There is a one key exception among the less popular midsize cars. Mazda 6 sales have shot up 28% to 37,598 units in 2014, an 8234-unit increase over eight months. In 2013, 6 sales had climbed to a five-year high. Yet even if the 6’s current pace holds, Mazda is unlikely to sell more than 57,000 6s in 2014. They averaged nearly 67,000 annual sales between 2003 and 2007, when the 6 lineup was much more expansive.

Besides, 6 sales growth would have to be infinitely more impressive if it was to challenge the leaders in terms of volume. In a record-setting August for the Accord, Honda’s midsizer outsold the 6 by more than nine-to-one, and this was in the 6’s third-best sales month in more than two years.

Combined sales of the Camry, Accord, Altima, Fusion, and Sonata are up 6% this year. Clearly, America’s five favourite midsize cars are increasingly favoured.

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