The CR-V Tops Honda's October 2014 Leaderboard, Outsells Accord And Civic

In October 2014, for the first time since March 2012 and just the sixth time in the last five years, the Honda CR-V was American Honda’s best-selling model.

Finishing the month ahead of the Accord and Civic, given their longstanding status as two of America’s best-selling cars, is no easy feat. Only a handful of new vehicles typically do so every month, including the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, Toyota Camry, and Ram P/U. (The Civic also trails the Toyota Corolla and Nissan Altima this year.) Yet in October, the CR-V outsold the Accord by 2129 units and the Civic by 15,103.

Compared with 2011, when the CR-V managed this feat on three occasions, circumstances have changed dramatically. Or rather, the numbers have dramatically improved.

Honda averaged fewer than 20,000 CR-V sales during the three months in which it topped the Honda leaderboard that year, as the market was still in recovery mode.

Moreover, the CR-V didn’t even end that year as America’s top-selling utility vehicle, as the Ford Escape – which outsold the Honda in two of the months in which the CR-V led all Hondas in 2011 – took over the crown that had been worn by the CR-V in the four previous years.

Now, however, the CR-V is routinely putting up big numbers, averaging slightly more than 27,000 monthly U.S. sales, topping 30,000 units twice this year, achieving its best ever October in October of all things, and finishing six of the last seven months as America’s best-selling SUV/crossover.

Is there a deeper meaning behind October’s results? It’s not as though the Accord was unpopular, with an 8% increase and a position as America’s second-ranked passenger car. The Civic has struggled of late to match last year’s pace – sales have declined in four consecutive months compared with particularly lofty results a year ago – but with more than 24,000 October sales, the Civic is an extraordinarily common car. But yes, of course there is a deeper meaning.

Car sales in October were up nearly 3%, which was a surprisingly strong increase given the year-to-date improvement of just 1%. SUVs and crossovers, on the other hand, jumped 10% in October and are up 12% this year. The CR-V’s October status in Honda showrooms was simply a symbol, a rather large and shiny symbol, of a gradual changing of the guard in the market as a whole.

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