#CompactCrossovers

The 2016 Honda HR-V is set to hit showrooms May 15 with a beginning base price of $19,115.

Happy days are back again for automakers selling to the United States, with auto sales projected to rise through 2017 before dipping slightly through 2020.

With the Volkswagen Tiguan going bigger for the United States market in 2017, senior execs believe a smaller entry-level crossover could soon take its place.

Want to know where Toyota might go in the near future for the crossover segment? The C-HR Concept as seen above might be a clue.

Looking for an EV that doesn’t cost Tesla money or resemble a jelly bean? Then Kia might just have what you need with its electrified version of the Soul when it arrives in showrooms later this year.

Even though I tipped the Audi Q3 to win the compact crossover sales race, a story in Automotive News highlights another problem that Mercedes, and other luxury brands, could face: a lack of inventory.

If any of you were hoping for a small crossover underneath the Subaru XV Crosstrek, you may breath now. The Pleiades-bedecked automaker has no plans for such a thing, as it has its sights on the Mulsanne Straight.

There are so many automakers chasing the segment, perceived to be red hot, that one is tempted to set up a keyboard macro to type out “compact crossover”. The next step in Ford’s attempt to revive the Lincoln brand is exactly one of those, the 2015 MKC.

We’ll confirm it. Again. America is becoming ever more hungry for small premium brand crossovers, and that’s not simply a result of there being more $40,000 German utility vehicles from which to choose.

If you want to know why Jaguar and Lexus are introducing compact crossover concepts at the Frankfurt Auto Show this week, all you have to do is check the sales data. Crossover sales are soaring, particularly compacts. Last month, Toyota’s RAV4 was up 50% year to year, and the CR-V at Honda had its best sales month yet. Car sales in general are good in the United States right now, with overall August sales up 17%, but sales of smaller crossovers have doubled that and then some at 36%. Crossovers have gained market share for 10 straight months and now take just over a quarter of the total market, on a pace to sell about 4 million units this year. Overall crossover sales are up about 2% from last year, with compacts making most of that difference. As recently as 2007, crossovers only made up 15% of U.S. light vehicle sales. Pickup trucks are usually seen as America’s favorite vehicles, but in August crossovers outsold pickups by almost a 2 to 1 margin.

Normally this is something I would have saved for our “TTAC Staff” news items, but I’m the arrival of the Mercedes-Benz GLA is significant. We’ve reached the event horizon for compact crossovers and their global proliferation.

Domestics rule the compact crossover segment this month, with the ageless Escape standing above the crowd (albeit without weighting for fleet sales). Again, Honda and Toyota show bigger drops than Nissan’s Rogue, reinforcing the perception that Nissan has done a remarkable job recovering from the tsunami. Intriguingly, Jeep’s Patriot is essentially flat year-over-year, while the Compass has bounced back on the strength of its redesign… but only to about the Patriot’s rate. Meanwhile, Hyundai has yet to find the disruptive success in this segment that it’s enjoying in the C- and D-sedan segments.