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Timothy Cain·
Small SUV Sales
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U.S. SALES OF SMALL SUVs – MAY 2010

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volkswagen tiguan

Recently news began spreading that the next Volkswagen Jetta was to be priced substantially lower in North America than it is at present. If the Volkswagen Passat is to compete with the Honda Accord, after all, shouldn’t the Jetta compete with the Honda Civic and thus be priced like a Honda Civic?

That question poses another interesting question. The Volkswagen Tiguan has a base price around $2,000 more than best sellers like the Ford Escape and Honda CR-V, more than $4,000 higher than the trendy Hyundai Tucson. Not nearly large enough to compete with vehicles like the more expensive Honda Pilot or Toyota Highlander, the VW Tiguan is stuck between a rock and a hard place: too expensive for the crowd with which it’s similarly sized; too small for the crowd with which it’s more similarly priced. The end result is dreadfully low sales. Could the Tiguan also benefit from a significant price drop? 

Nearly nine Honda CR-Vs were sold in America every time somebody purchased a Volkswagen Tiguan last month. What’s worse, unfavoured vehicles like the Dodge Journey and Kia Sportage sell at a greater clip. Volkswagen was late to the game and the German conglomerate is now paying the price. The Ford Escape, clearly the most popular cute-ute in 2010, has been around for a decade. The Volkswagen Tiguan, on the other hand, came around more than a decade after the Honda CR-V debuted.