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Consumer affinity for the sport-utility concept continues to
grow, with retail SUV market share climbing to 56% in the second
quarter of 2021. What doesn't get much visibility, but is perhaps
more amazing, is that this metric reached 70% for the eighteen
luxury brands in the same time period (the corresponding metric for
mainstream brands is 54%).
In the past six years, SUV share of the retail new luxury
vehicle market has risen 24 percentage points, compared to a 15
percentage point increase among the 19 mainstream brands. Part of
this growth in the luxury SUV space is attributable to the fact
that there are no luxury pickups, driving up the shares of the
remaining luxury body styles.
SUV growth industry-wide has come at the expense of both sedans
and the combined group of coupes, convertibles, and hatchbacks, but
the declines for both groups have been greater in the luxury space.
Luxury sedan market share has dropped more than 17 percentage
points to 23.3%, while mainstream sedan share has declined 14.9
percentage points to 17.8%. For the aggregated three lower-volume
body styles, luxury share has declined 6.6 percentage points while
mainstream has dropped 4 points.
This decline in popularity of coupes, convertibles, and
hatchbacks among luxury brands gives the impression that the sporty
vehicle concept is disappearing, but this is not the case. As the
sport-utility concept has gained favor, product planners and
designers have combined this style with a sporty, fastback-like
silhouette frequently referred to as "sportback." In the first
seven months of 2021, 40 (14%) of the 290 luxury SUVs on the market
have this more sporty, fastback-like design, and they account for
4.3% of all retail luxury SUV deliveries.
