The SUV Era ‘Is Over’

The sustained high price of gas has meant Americans are consuming less gas for the first time since 1991. “Gas consumption so far this year is down about 0.2 percent compared to last year,” McClatchy reports.

Gas prices are also changing the behavior of new car buyers. It looks like the Hummer is giving way to the Honda Fit (a car which would be a tight squeeze for former Hummer lover Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

From the New York Times:

Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.

In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.

Could this be the tipping point where American drivers fall out of love with huge SUVs? It’s becoming more likely each day the price of gas remains high:

“The era of the truck-based large S.U.V.’s is over,” said Michael Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation, the nation’s largest auto retailer.

Sales of traditional S.U.V.’s are down more than 25 percent this year. In April, for example, sales of G.M.’s Chevrolet Tahoe fell 35 percent.

Full-size pickup sales have fallen more than 15 percent this year, with Ford’s industry-leading F-Series pickup dropping 27 percent in April alone.

Tags: gas prices, suv