Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: April 2013

Nissan and Ford led a strong month for the auto industry, with sales up 23.2% at Nissan and 17.9% at Ford thanks to big gains among both carmakers' strongest sellers. Nissan Altima sales gained 35.4% while Ford Escape sales spiked 52% — despite similar year-over-year incentives on both and lower dealership supply for the Escape.

It may seem bizarre that the Altima, then, isn't among the top 10 best-sellers. It's been there for ninth months straight, and in March it was the best-selling car (not truck) in America. But a year ago, sales were dismal — less than 17,000 in April 2012 — so even a healthy spike kept Nissan off April 2013's top 10.

The Toyota Camry and Honda Accord had higher-profile struggles. The Camry's sales drop could signal plateauing demand for Toyota's seventh-generation family sedan, whose year-over-year sales have declined for three straight months. The new Accord, meanwhile, is just 7 months old, and shoppers found significantly lower discounts versus the 2012 Accord a year ago. It's a factor that could affect Accord sales through autumn. Still, Ford didn't seem to have a problem with that. Anyone considering the new Fusion found a similar situation — lower discounts versus year-ago levels — but it didn't stop shoppers from flocking toward the popular sedan, whose sales boomed 23.7%.

Recall Alert: Honda CR-V, Honda Odyssey, Acura RDX

Honda is recalling some 204,500 SUVs and minivans for a brake-shift interlock that can allow the transmission to shift away from Park without the driver pressing the brake. The recall, which affects the 2012-2013 Honda CR-V SUV and Odyssey minivan, as well as the 2013 RDX SUV from Honda's Acura luxury division, has not resulted in any incidents or complaints, Honda says, but an internal investigation found the automatic transmissions can slip out of Park in freezing temperatures.

In total, the automaker will recall around 128,000 CR-Vs, 59,000 Odysseys and 17,500 RDXs.

Honda will send notifications in May and encourages owners to bring their cars to authorized dealerships. Owners can also visit www.recalls.honda.com or www.recalls.acura.com, call the automaker's recall lines at 800-999-1009 (Honda) or 800-382-2238 (Acura) and select option 4, or call the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's vehicle safety hotline at 888-327-4236.

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Recall Alert: Airbag Problem Affects Millions of Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mazda Vehicles

Four Japanese automakers — Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mazda — have announced a voluntary recall of 3 million vehicles worldwide because of possibly faulty airbags; more than a million of those vehicles are in the U.S.

According to the automakers, the problem lies in the front-passenger airbag inflator, which in affected vehicles could deploy with too much pressure due to improperly manufactured propellant wafers, causing the inflator casing to rupture. This could result in injuries to passengers, though none have been reported. The airbags were manufactured by Japan's Takata Corp., a major world supplier of airbags.

According to Toyota, affected vehicles in the U.S. include 510,000 Toyota Corolla compact sedans, Matrix compact hatchbacks, Sequoia SUVs and Tundra pickup trucks, as well as Lexus SC 430 sport coupes, all manufactured between 2001 and 2003. According to news reports, Toyota is recalling 1.7 million vehicles worldwide.

Toyota said it will notify owners by mail. Dealers will inspect the front-passenger airbag; if it is equipped with an affected inflator, the inflator will be replaced with a new one for free. Toyota owners can go to www.toyota.com/recall or call Toyota customer service at 800-331-4331; Lexus owners can go to www.lexus.com/recall or call Lexus customer service at 800-255-3987.

2014 Subaru Forester Rises Seven Spots in Small-SUV Affordability

A few weeks ago we threw the redesigned Toyota RAV4 into our compact crossover affordability index, and the popular Toyota ranked right around the group's average. Subaru fans may notice the outgoing 2013 Forester sat near the bottom, largely because the small SUV got mediocre gas mileage and required stepping up a trim level to get a telescoping steering wheel — one of seven features we included in our pricing scheme.

Our affordability index compared 13 models — each was the least expensive trim level that included common equipment like an automatic transmission, Bluetooth connectivity, steering wheel audio controls, cruise control, remote keyless entry, a USB/audio jack port and tilt/telescoping steering. We also factored in the destination charge and four years of gas.

With its 2014 redesign, the Forester moved up seven spots, thanks to more standard features and better gas mileage. In fact, the new Forester is the third most affordable compact crossover on the market, behind the Mazda CX-5 and Mitsubishi Outlander Sport — and it has standard all-wheel drive.

Top 10 Best-Selling Cars of 2012

When the dust settles, 2012 will mark the third consecutive year of automotive sales gains, and the best sales year since 2007. (Remember back then? Here's a refresher.) Sales for the top seven automakers increased 12.9%, suggesting new-car sales will end in the mid-14 million range. That would be the third year in a row of sales gains, with totals up some 40% over a recession-ravaged 2008. It's the best sales year since 2007, but it still falls below sales totals through much of the 2000s.

Which cars fared best? The top sellers for 2012 include a lot of regulars, with six of the 10 cars redesigned for 2012 or 2013. The Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Cruze, both on this list a year ago, are gone; both had a relatively flat sales year.

Check out the list below.

Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: December 2012

Cliff, shmiff. Holiday shoppers brushed aside concerns about impending fiscal doom (which Congress averted, sort of) to drive new-car sales to their best December since 2007. Pickups trucks remained atop December's sales pyramid, with Chrysler's Ram trucks moving up a notch. That's typical for the month, especially amid a sustained recovery for the truck-reliant construction industry.

On the car side, Santa left Honda a nice present under the tree. A substantially restyled 2013 Honda Civic sedan hit dealerships in November and sales for the nameplate shot up 61.2% in December; it secured Honda's workhorse compact the title of America's best-selling car for the second month in a row. The Toyota Camry held the spot for the first 10 months of the year.

In fact, Honda sales overall shot up 26.2% over an inventory-strapped December 2011, thanks to strong demand for the Civic and redesigned Accord — two models that regularly account for nearly half of the automaker's sales. Toyota gained 9% while Nissan fell 1.6% as its redesigned Altima dropped 7.7%. The Altima boasts impressive EPA mileage, but drivability and cabin issues left the car in last place in Cars.com's $26,000 Midsize Sedan Showdown.

Honda Dominates Cars.com's 2012 Face-offs

Pitted against competitors in three of the most bustling auto-sales segments today, Honda prevailed in Cars.com's 2012 head-to-head face-offs, emerging as the last brand standing. The 2013 Honda Accord, 2012 Honda Fit and 2012 Honda CR-V earned the automaker a flawless victory in Cars.com's trio of challenges, including the $26,000 midsize-sedan, $16,000 subcompact and $25,000 compact-SUV challenges. In each face-off, judged by a panel of five experts plus a real-world family, Honda averaged a nearly 26-point lead over the runner-up, including a very narrow nine-point lead in the competitive midsize-sedan showdown.

Check out the links below to revisit the scores of Cars.com's 2012 faceoffs:

$16,000 Subcompact Shootout: Overview
$25,000 Compact SUV Shootout: Overview
$26,000 Midsize Sedan Shootout: Overview

One-Stop Shopping: Car Seat Checks for 2012's Best-Selling Family Cars

If you're shopping for a family car, chances are high that at least one of the vehicles on our list below is on yours, too. These are the best-selling family cars for January-November 2012, and we've installed child-safety seats in all of them.

Will one of these cars work for your family? Our Car Seat Checks are designed to tell shoppers how easy or difficult it is to install safety seats into a car and what works well and what frustrates us about each car's Latch system.

The Cars.com Redesign Index

It can cost up to $1 billion or more to develop a new or redesigned car, so sales success — and not just a little bit of it — matters. Determining which of those new cars hit the mark with consumers is no easy task. In the past three model years, significant redesigns averaged a 33% increase in year-over-year sales in the months after they were launched compared with their predecessors in the same period a year earlier. With numbers like that, most automakers could claim success with a redesign. But some cars rose above that lofty mark while others fell below. Which were the redesigns that car shoppers lined up for?

Cars.com crunched sales figures for 61 redesigns or introductions that replaced outgoing cars over the past four model years. We set a sales floor and grouped cars into three sales tiers — after all, a bit player can easily double its sales with a sharp redesign, but market saturation makes it harder for a popular model to do the same. We compared six months of sales after dealers ramped up inventory with the same time period from the year before. Finally, we also accounted for the growth in the overall auto market, meaning that if the whole market went up 10%, we assume that tide would have carried these redesigns as well.

October's Fastest- and Slowest-Selling Cars

It appears shoppers clamored more aggressively for incoming 2013s last month. Cars for the 2013 model year averaged just 23 days to sell from the day they hit lots while 2012s averaged 121 days. Combined, the group averaged 73 days to turn. That's a wider gap than October 2011 when 2011 and 2012 cars averaged 15 and 93 days to turn, respectively.
 
New or redesigned cars topped the month, with the seventh-generation Nissan Sentra and all-new Subaru XV Crosstrek taking just five days each to move. The redesigned Ford Fusion and Honda Accord plus the all-new Ford C-Max Hybrid made this month's movers, as well.
 
We focused on just 2013 models for October since automakers had a vast majority of 2013 models on sale. October did have one notable redesign in the Loser column: the Chevrolet Malibu Eco, which averaged 92 days on dealer lots. The regular Malibu, meanwhile, took 32 days to sell. That’s better but still below average for 2013s. Is the new Malibu getting lost in the slew of redesigned family cars? Sales fell 6% in October, putting the Malibu behind the Fusion and well in back of the redesigned Accord, Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima.

Here are October's fastest- and slowest-selling cars: