If you look back at old sales numbers in the late 70's/early 80's, coupes were all the rage. Camaro and Firebird sold ~500,000 cars a year despite the gas crunch. The personal luxury coupe was in...Ford sold hundreds of thousands of T-birds and Cougars.

Now the coupe market is deader than a doornail aside from the Mustang. I am too lazy to look...but from what I remember the Monte Carlo sells like 70K units a year, and the rest of the market is somewhere between 10-25K units. Why is this so? I know I would take a coupe over a four door any day if it is offered. I would have a Grand Prix coupe if they still made it. Is it just shifting tastes I guess?

 

Well, there are a few reasons. I think the main contributing reason is that families are somewhat bigger now then they were in the 70's and 80's. You also have to take into consumer expectations such as safety, which has stronger ties to the sedan body. Consumers are also looking for more stylish coupes, and the more attractive of the two door kind on the market are all over $35k, which doesn't make them easily accesible to younger folk who are more likely to consider a coupe than older individuals.

 

Only in physical size, not in number.

The main reason does, however, seem strongly correlated to how big a PITA it is to get a baby seat/baby in and out of the back seat of a coupe.

 

That's what I'm saying. Haha.

 

If aI can recall, the coupe market tanked int he early 90;s but has risen since then. Obvioulsy not to 70/80's levels. I blame the SUV!!

Actually new technology. It went from coupes to 4 doors. Now you don't have to sacrifice 2 doors to have fun

 

Because the population is too obese to get in and out of and fit inside a coupe? That is why SUVs became popular.

 

O yeh, and "bigger is better". However, Ford(form what i Know) has had no problem shevling Mustangs off of their dealer lots, that may have changed by now though?

 

I can name quite a few Coupes on the market. I don't think they've really tanked that much at all.

Alot of Imports took the Coupe market, look at the Civic? etc...

Instead of 5 or so popular Coupes on the market, there's probably close to 10-15.

 

I can certainly understand the car seat thing. That's why my wife and I have a Vibe right now - easy to get the car seat in and out of (though I greatly miss my Monte Carlo).

But my next car, I'll go back to some kind of coupe. I have a strong preference for two door cars - as I'm sure 99% of the people on this forum do, but I think a lot of people once they have kids leave the coupe market and never go back.

Remember when there was a two door of EVERYTHING? My dad was a Buick salesman from 1970 to 2002 and up until the mid-late 80s there was a two door of everything. Take the 1986 lineup - LeSabre Coupe, Century Coupe, Somerset Coupe, Regal was coupe only (man I miss the G bodies), Riviera was coupe only, Skyhawk coupe. That is 6 coupes in the Buick lineup alone! So, there were three times as many Buick coupes available in 1986 as there are CARS in the Buick lineup in 2006.

Plus there were "T-Type" versions of Somerset, Regal, Skyhawk and Riviera, a Century Gran Sport, and Regal and LeSabre Grand Nationals!

 

Because these days everyone is a whiner and likes to stick their nose in everyone elses fun.

Can't have a car that has lots of HP, because omg you'll surely kill someone
Can't have a car that doesn't get 5 star saftey in every category because omg were all going to die
Can't have a car that sucks gas because omg you'll kill the planet and thats not cool
In california can't have a car that doesn't run on a battery because omg green peace and the environment is the 'in' thing.
Can't have a 2 door because omg it's all about the family.
Can't have a two seater because omg car pooling is so PC.

 

ROFLMAO

That was good. And I agree; you can't replace common sense with Technology. You can try, but just as soon as you think you got it nailed, someone dumber comes along...

 

that was good.

 

Great question! Good mystery! The coupe market was around for 90 plus years, then all of a sudden, tanked to a fraction of what it was in just over a few year span. I'm sure the SUV craze is partially to blame, but I have a hard time imagining someone trading in a Thunderbird or Monte Carlo for a Explorer or a Tahoe. Yet sales figures seem to show that happening.


Just to throw out some numbers:

In 1996 Ford Thunderbird sales dropped 33%, Cougar dropped 25%, Mark VIII down 10%. In 1997 Ford sold 79,721 Thunderbirds. In 1977 they sold 325,153.
Monte Carlo the same year (1996) dropped 14% to 80,717 (it sold just 57,679 last year).

Camaro dropped from 122,844 in '95 to 66,827 in '96 (roughly a 50% hit.), rebounded to 95K the next year, and went into a freefall afterwards.

Mustang wasn't immune either.

It went from 190,994 in '95, to 135,980 in '96, to 108,344 in '97. After that, Mustang was all over the map. 175K in '98, 134K in '99, 236K in 2000 . It then settled into the 150K range till the new '05 Mustang came out, and is bumping at 190K per year, but won't go beyond that. That's the maximum capacity of the part of the factory devoted to the Mustang.

In 1994, after the SN95 Mustang came out, Ford Probe's sales crumbled. It went from 119,997 in 1993 down to 52,696 by 1995, and finally 32,505 in 1997 (the worse selling Ford that year).

The only coupes that survived were coupes that were based on high volume sedans, which to a model were small FWD cars. Mustang, the exception, is based on a slightly widened & very decontented DEW (Lincoln LS) chassis. Sounds familiar somehow.

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N9/briefs2.9w.html
http://www.montecarlocity.net/inform...production.txt
http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/...production.htm

 

hmm, taking an existing luxury car platform...
decontenting...
reducing costs...
and making a coupe....
damn, where have we heard of this besides mustang?

 

You all are saying it tanked... I don't really know, but maybe a better statement would be Domestic Coupes tanked...

I'd venture that as the domestic coupes tanked, the import coupes were on the rise. Be interesting to see the WHOLE market numbers.