When Chevrolet announced the 2019 Spark facelift earlier this month, it also shared some interesting demographics data about the mini car’s buyers.
The Stats
The Bowtie brand says that “Spark customers are among the youngest in the segment” and that “females make up 55 percent of buyers”, which is the highest rate in the segment.
The Segment
Describing the segment in which the Chevy Spark competes in is no easy feat, as the vehicle is technically in a segment of its own in the United States market. One could argue that the U.S. small mainstream mini car segment could consist of the Mitsubishi Mirage as well as the Fiat 500, though both of those vehicles might be better placed in the subcompact space (B-segment) instead.
Chevy Spark sales have been hovering around the 35,000 units per year range mark for the last few years, with the small car hitting 39,159 sales in 2014, 32,835 units in 2015, 35,511 in 2016 and 22,589 in 2017. Chevy attributes the substantial drop-off in 2017 to an airbag-related recall and associated stop-sale, which took months to resolve.
Based on the rate at which the Spark sold during the first three months of 2018, the vehicle is on track to hit 26,000-30,000 deliveries this year, and it’s highly likely that Chevy hopes that the modest 2019 Spark refresh will enable that figure to land near the top-end of those estimates. We’ll see just how that pans out.
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Comments
This shouldn’t be a surprise as women simply want transportation while men want something that projects their ego and personality.
There will always be a need for small cars. Watch the documentaries and news bulletins that cover other nations, and you will see thousands of tiny cars, some even smaller than the Spark. Driving a small car is a good experience (I have driven a few), and a necessity for those who live in cities and have parking issues. Most of the famous Asian brands began with small cars in the past century, including Honda, Nissan (as Datsun), Mitsubishi, and even Toyota. Only a few of these still offer small cars here because the U.S. population prefer big cars , trucks, and SUVs, as if gasoline were free! All that will be ending and the market will change in favor of small cars again, hybrids, and electrics. The Spark, as manufactured by GM Korea, will have a fixed market for many years.
For those here who love big cars and trucks, you were warned! I drove many big cars (one was over 17 feet long) and I will not go back to them.
Profit margins are extremely small on micro vehicles making it hard for automakers to justify using unions…
My coworker said after he gave his daughter $5K just before college towards a car, she bought something BMW which was out of warranty and had high payments…After it left her stranded on the side of the road a second time and the repair bill was $2000+ to fix, he said if she traded it in he would give her another $2500 if she got a new car with a warranty…She decided on a Spark as it was cheap and had CarPlay. I wonder if there are similar scenarios to parents contributing money?