Horse Race

SOURCE: Company data

The horse race in mid-sized automobile sales in the U.S. heated up a bit when the redesigned Honda Accord eclipsed the reigning-champion Toyota Camry in April 2013, and the redesigned Ford Fusion overtook the redesigned Nissan Altima that same month. Though things rebalanced in May, a couple other stories are developing:

1. The redesigned Mazda6 beats its mid-sized competitors in recent comparos (Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, Driving.ca, Car Advice, Prescott eNews), but currently sells in numbers well below the others: even a 72% jolt to sales kicked them to just 3,944 sold in May 2013, a tenth of Camry sales.*
2. Chevrolet debuted a refreshed Malibu on May 31st, only a year after the fully-redesigned 2013 model arrived. Malibu sales declined 36.1% in May (18.4% year to-date), shunting the sedan to sixth behind the Hyundai Sonata (whose sales slipped 13.4% YTD). 
3. Chrysler comes out with its redesigned entry in the mid-sized segment at year-end, replacing the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger. This is expected to be a game changer for Chrysler, setting a new signature style across all models, but might also nudge them into the mid-sized spotlight where they haven't appeared too much of late.

Sales average more than 2.1 million units a year in this segment (since 2007). Multiply this by the average transaction price of a vehicle in this segment (about $25,140 in May 2013 according to KBB) to see how important the midsize sedan segment is to automakers.

---

*33,756 of the Mazda6 sold for all of 2012; about 8 percent as many as Camry (Motor Trend).