New Nissan Altima rings death knell for Detroit sedan
WHEN Nissan Motor’s redesigned Altima flagship goes on sale this week, it will pound another nail in the coffin of sedans built by companies based in and around Detroit -- the city that invented the whole idea of family cars.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles stopped building sedans in the US two years ago. Ford Motor plans to follow suit in 2020 but won’t bother to advertise sedans in the meantime. With only General Motors left in Detroit still pursuing a full lineup of cars, Asian carmakers have a pretty clear field and are poised to capture 88 per cent of midsize car sales by 2022, up from 64 per cent in 2012, according to Zohaib Rahim, a Cox Automotive analyst.
This car dominance is worth less to the Asian companies, including Korean affiliates Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, in 2018 than it used to be, since American consumers are still flocking to sport utility vehicles and crossovers. Alan Baum, an independent auto analyst in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, expects total US car sales to drop to 4.0 million in 2023 from 7.1 million in 2012. Already last year, the traditional domestics’ car sales fell below their 2009 level, Baum said.
But Nissan, Honda and Toyota can withstand this decline better than their Detroit competitors, Baum said. That’s because their flexible factories can shift more easily from cars to crossovers -and perhaps back again if rising oil prices spark a sedan revival, he said.
The new Altima, for example, shares mechanical underpinnings with the Leaf electric sedan.