SUV Trend: Smaller Is Better

N E W   Y O R K, June 5 -- Americans have been snapping up huge sport utility vehicles for years, but now a new idea seems to be taking hold among the nation's car buyers: Smaller is better.

At least that seems to be the trend so far in 2001 based on the monthly sales figures for May released by several automakers last Friday.

Overall sales of sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, remain healthy despite a slumping car market. But inside the numbers lies a distinct pattern: sales of smaller sport utility vehicles, based on regular car designs rather than truck frames, are soaring. At the same time, drivers are beginning to shun the biggest SUVs Detroit and its competitors have to offer.

"We see it as the mainstream of SUV purchases in the future," says spokesman Wade Hoyt of Toyota, whose Highlander is one of the popular new car-based, or crossover SUVs. "We see car-based [SUV] sales increasing and the truck-based ones decreasing."

A Ford Story

Nowhere is this trend more evident than at the Ford Motor Co., the world's second-biggest automaker.

Ford has cut into General Motors' leading market share in recent years thanks largely to the success of its heavyweight SUVs. The Ford Explorer, the best-selling SUV in the country, moved about 37,000 units last month.

But sales of the Explorer — beset by questions about its safety and the announced recall of its Firestone tires — were down 17 percent compared to May 2000, while the still-larger Expedition and Excursion both dropped 22 percent. That means combined May sales of the three vehicles dropped by nearly 13,000, compared to a year ago.

Picking up the slack for the company, however, is Ford's Escape, a smaller SUV based on the chassis of the Ford Contour (a sedan the company no longer makes). Despite a series of recalls after its debut last fall, the Escape has become the best-selling crossover SUV in the country, according to market research firm J.D. Power & Associates. In May, Ford sold 13,362 Escapes.

"The newer forms are … providing an entrée for people into the SUV market," says George Pipas, Ford's manager of sales analysis. He calls the evolution of smaller sport utility products a "natural step" in the decadelong growth of the SUVs.