Segment continues its gentle decline, propped up by aging Dodge Grand Caravan and new Honda Odyssey
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Sales in the US Minivan segment fell by 0.5% to 482,185 in 2018, their lowest level since the car market bottomed out in 2009. Overall, this puts the segment roughly where it was in the mid-1990s, before a boom in uptake took total sales to almost 1.3 million cars in 2004. And it’s not just the customers who have been fleeing the segment – the number of models on sales fell from a peak of 20 in 2006 to just 5 in 2018, including the well-past-its-prime Dodge Grand Caravan and the Kia Sedona, which is likely to be discontinued before long.
Note: clicking on the model name opens the sales data page for that model; clicking year in the legend turns the display for that year on/off
Highlights:
- Dodge Grand Caravan not only comfortably remained at the lead of the segment, but actually managed a 21% sales increase compared to 2017, though the large majority of this are presumably fleet sales
- Chrysler Pacifica maintained its sales level from the year before, although this meant that it lost ground not just to the segment leader, but also to the new Honda Odyssey, which saw its sales rise by 6%
- Toyota Sienna saw its sales fall by 21% in anticipation of the arrival of an all-new model in 2019, causing the Toyota to lose a spot to its arch-rival, the Odyssey, for the first time in eight years
- Now that Nissan Quest and Mazda5 have been discontinued Kia Sedona inherited the segment laggard mantle, though with sales falling by a quarter despite a recent facelift the model may itself soon leave the segment
Note: clicking on the model names in legend turns the display for that model on/off; data is displayed from 1990 onwards, but starts in 1973 – access previous years using slider on bottom