Small Crossovers Rapid Increase

The Fastest-Growing Vehicle Segment

The fastest-growing vehicle segment in the first quarter was subcompact crossovers, the category that took off in 2015. The 10 subcompacts cars now on sale are up 83 percent for the year. Top contenders are Jeep Renegade, Honda HR-V, Mazda CX-3 and Fiat 500X, combined for 46,346 sales in the first quarter or 43.6 percent. But they were nonexistent in the first quarter of last year, except for the 943 Renegades that sold in March 2015 as the little Jeep was arriving.

Killer category:
First-quarter sales of the four nonpremium crossover segment compared with a year ago
Subcompact: +83%
Compact: +6.3%
Midsize: +3%
Large: +0.5%