By John LeBlanc
Like the semi-aquatic mammal the duck billed platypus, new car buyers have hard a hard time getting their head around the SUV-coupe segment. To the point where sales are not living up to what their respective automakers had hoped for.
According to a report from
Automotive News, sales of these sort-of-coupes-and-not-really-SUVs are dropping — and fast. Five of the vehicles the publication named in its article suffered big sales drops in the U.S. last month. In a market were luxury-crossover sales were off only 4 per cent, year-on-year sales last month for the Infiniti FX/Q7, Acura ZDX, Toyota Venza, Honda Crosstour, BMW X6 and BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo were down between 30 per cent and 80 per cent.
Perhaps the most-disappointing SUV-coupes have been the Honda Crosstour and Acura ZDX. The Crosstour — an Accord-based four-door hatchback that was launched for 2010 — saw U.S. sales peak in its first year at just over 28,000 units, where Honda was hoping to sell 40,000 annually. Sales for 2013 may break 15,000. Sales of the ZDX — a “four-door coupe” version of Acura’s popular MDX crossover — have been equally disappointing. Projected to sell about 5,000 copies annually, like the Crosstour, sales peaked in 2010, with 3,259 sold. Honda has already announced that 2013 will be the last mode year for the ZDX.
Proportionally, sales of SUV-coupes are even less in Canada. However, despite the apparent lack of interest in the SUV-coupe segment, some late-to-the-party automakers think the idea of less-practical utility vehicles are a good one.
By the end of next year, we’ll see a coupe version of the BMW X3, called the X4 in 2014. As well,
Car and Driver is reporting that Mercedes-Benz has confirmed its version of BMW’s slow-selling X6 (only the BMW Z4 Roadster had less takers in the U.S. last year) will appear next year as well. Apparently dubbed the MLC, the Mercedes coupe-SUV will be a less-roomier version of the current ‘Benz ML-Class.
So why do automakers continue to build these vehicles that nobody seems interested in? According to
Car and Driver, a Mercedes-Benz executive argued the case for the new MLC SUV-coupe saying “the engineering work and costs are low, and the profit margins will be high.”
What do you think? Are these SUV-coupes simply a fad? Or, despite the lack of interest today form buyers, will they become a permit segment in the future?
Sources:
Automotive News,
Car and Driver
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