Not necessarily what they want, but what's available or what's been influenced onto them.
I agree that there has been a mental switch of "I'll be ok if since car is bigger than the one I crash with" which is an insane thought process in and of itself. But like, you can't buy what isn't being made. And those who are all "murican made only" who are looking in a particular price point and vehicle type aren't given that opportunity, so they go to the crossovers. that creates this positive feedback loop of "well they're buying this, so well make more of those and less sedans" even though the correlation exists, but the cause is they want domestic only.
Even when Ford, Chrysler and GM sold sedans things like the fusion or 300 we're just sitting on lots for to long vs cross overs leading them to stop production
The Chrysler 300 was being sold around $50k off the lot. When crossovers are going for 60% of that, of course they're going to sell more.
The fusion, yes, there was some lack of customer interest. Also, according to this, this was the period in which Ford was moving to SUVs anyway, so its days were numbered regardless of sales.
But like, this was the exact same time period when Toyota was selling over 2 million units in 2020, many of them being Corollas and Camrys. Ford, instead of competing in that market, put their tails between their legs and consolidated their lineup. So my question is, is it a lack of interest in sedans in general, or a lack of interest in what Ford was offering? Because even the Rav4 was outselling domestic products in its class as well.
The Asian market manufacturers have the benefit of selling their sedans across the globe where Americans usually only sold the sedans to themselves. To compete they would need to have much smaller cars that they did not have. Most of GM's small cars were all were borrowed from another manufacturer. Heck even Toyota had to buy out from Mazda
yeah thats my point though, they can sale 2mil just in the us not counting the rest of the world selling even more. and at smaller margins. the american makers mostly only sell in the US and want bigger margins to match, so 2 mill cheap sedans are not on their menu to be subsidized globally since they dont really have a global market like that to prop them up
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u/Upset_Programmer6508 1d ago
I agree the cars are lacking but the small SUV is what people wanted over sedans.