Picture a shopper who walks onto a Honda lot looking for a small SUV and drives home in an Accord. Honda says switchers like that helped Accord sales jump, and passenger-car sales at Honda Motor (HMC) rose 18% in the third quarter, their best showing since 2020. Small cars are back in favor, the Journal’s Ryan Felton and Christopher Otts report, and the reasons are on the window sticker and the gas-station sign. “Thank God we never gave up on passenger cars,” says Randy Parker, chief executive of Hyundai Motor America.
The quarter’s winners share one thing: a starting sticker under $25,000. That goes for Hyundai’s Elantra, up 18%; the small Corolla from Toyota Motor (TM), sharply higher this year; and the Chevrolet Trax and Trailblazer, the small SUVs behind a big gain at General Motors (GM). The heavyweights struggled: Chevy’s Suburban and Tahoe declined, Hyundai’s three-row Palisade slipped 1%, and the Grand Cherokee from Stellantis’s (STLA) Jeep fell 30%. Edmunds sees total U.S. new-vehicle sales for the quarter edging down from a year earlier, and analysts have been bracing for a flat-to-lower 2026 — evidence that pricier cars and gas, with AAA’s average hanging above $4.41 a gallon, are taking a toll.
Detroit’s answer is mostly to stay the course. GM and Ford Motor (F) have largely left the sedan business for more profitable SUVs and pickups. GM’s overall sales slid 5.5%, but it kept its crown as the top seller by volume, its full-size pickups rose, and its North American chief, Duncan Aldred, said the company doesn’t want to simply respond to today’s gas prices. That’s a sensible strategy for a carmaker’s margins. It isn’t a household budget.
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This is a Cash Flow (M5) piece. The lineup on the lot is built around what earns the automaker the most; your driveway should be built around what you actually need — seats, cargo, commute, weather — and what the whole thing costs to own. That’s the price plus interest, fuel, insurance, maintenance and the depreciation nobody prints on the sticker. Bankrate’s average 48-month new-car loan is 6.97% this week. Borrow $25,000 at that rate over 48 months and you’ll pay roughly $3,700 in interest; borrow twice as much for a bigger SUV and the interest roughly doubles, before the extra fuel.
General principles, then: decide what you need before you visit the dealer, price the insurance before you sign, and if the payment only works stretched well past four years, the car’s too expensive for the budget. Toyota is held at weight in six model books; nothing added — the trade this weekend is in your garage, not your portfolio. Do the math at the kitchen table, not in the finance office; umbrellas are cheapest before the first drop.