Sales of large SUVs in Europe have been in a downward trend in recent years and that trend continues in the first quarter of 2019 with a decline of 27% in deliveries as this remains the smallest segment of the European car market with fewer than 10.000 sales in the first three months of the year. Interestingly, this same segment is one of the largest in the United States representing over 12% of the total market with just over 500.000 sales in the first quarter, compared to just 0,2% of the European market. Every single nameplate in this class loses volume in Q1 of 2019 and four out of six are down by double digits with the remaining two down by single digits, both helped by recent model updates. The top-3 has been turned upside down with the new generation Hyundai Santa Fe reclaiming the top spot it last held in 2016, even though its sales are still down by 6%. The Santa Fe improves its share of the segment to 26,1% but its sibling Kia Sorento is still very close behind in second place despite losing more than a quarter of its sales. Hyundai-Kia now holds more than half of this segment as the 2017 leader Ford Edge sees its sales plummet by more than a third. The recently facelifted Toyota Land Cruiser gains share as its deliveries are down by just 9%, while the SsangYong Rexton is already down 30% despite still being the second freshest model in the class. The Mitsubishi Pajero (Montero in Spain, Shogun in the UK and Ireland) is down 78% after struggling with the new WLTP standards.

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The large SUV segment is one of the smallest in Europe with fewer than 53.000 sales in 2017, down 4%. Compare that to the US where almost 2 million of these vehicles were sold last year, up 9,4% and surpassing sales of midsized sedans for the first time. Unlike the midsized crossover segment, where some models are also available as 7-seaters, there are not a lot of new entrants to this segment in Europe, but brands are actually withdrawing their slow selling models, like Nissan which no longer sells the Murano and Pathfinder and Mazda which never really sold the CX-9 in significant quantities, as opposed to the US. Then again, Ford entered the segment in 2016 by bringing the Edge over from the States. And while absolute volume remains relatively low (16.000 in Europe vs. nearly 143.000 in the US), it has quickly become the segment leader with more than 30% share. However, the Edge was already down 31% in the last quarter when the segment as a whole lost 25% as the entire top-5 lost by double digits. Only the low-volume SsangYong Rexton gained volume thanks to the all-new generation now available in Europe. [Read more…]

At just 42.000 sales in the first three quarters of 2017, the large SUV segment is one of the smallest in Europe, in contrast to the US where it’s almost the largest segment as Americans buy 32 times as many of these cars than Europeans do, as American dealers have already sold almost one and a half million of these vehicles this year. And every single model in the US midsized (yes, they have an even bigger segment above these) crossover segment top-13 (out of 19) outsells the entire European segment combined. No wonder most of these models never make it to the old continent and the segment continues to shrink with Nissan not replacing its Murano and Pathfinder or Mazda its CX-9 as they have done in the US. Then again, Ford entered the segment by bringing the Edge over from the States. And while absolute volume remains relatively low (13.100 in Europe vs. nearly 105.000 in the US), it has quickly become the segment leader with a commanding 31,2% share. However, that can’t prevent the segment from losing 19% of its volume in Q3, as every other nameplate lost with double digits, except for the low-volume SsangYong Rexton. In fact, if it wasn’t for the Edge, the segment would be down 30% in the third quarter and down 19% in the first nine months, instead of up 4%.

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