The best- and worst-selling vehicles of 2007

So-called "crossover vehicles," or CUVs, are also leaving lots. Rather than being related to pickups or commercial vehicles like traditional SUVs, these vehicles combine sleeker, more modern looks and car-like road manners without sacrificing the utility of an SUV — and they've been the fastest-growing vehicle segment in recent years.

Teahen says crossover sales for the first 10 months of 2007 are up a whopping 24 percent from the same period last year. By the same gauge, pickups are down 5 percent, minivans are down 21 percent, and truck-based SUVs have fallen 6.5 percent. And according to data from Ward's, CUVs grew from about 14 percent of the total new-vehicle sales in 2002 to nearly 28 percent in 2006.

One of those CUVs, the Honda CR-V, jumped into the top-10 sellers so far this year, to be included in our list of best-selling Vehicles.

An trend that's not so apparent by looking at the best- and worst-sellers, according to Teahen, is the continued slide of U.S. automakers. The "Big Three," including all the domestic brands of General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler) combined sales are down 7.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2007, vs. the same period in 2006.

That's good news for imports: "For those sales to be down by that amount," Teahen says, "import-badge cars must be up nicely."

Teahen says that it's largely a case of shoppers' perceptions and impressions having not yet caught up with reality. By most gauges of quality and reliability, many of the domestic-brand models have caught back up, but it could be a long road ahead before sales bounce back.

The methodology
To find our best- and worst-selling vehicles of 2007, we looked at year-to-date sales data on a model-by-model basis, as compiled by Automotive News, which relies on regular sales reports from automakers. Finding the best-sellers was easy, but since model-year transitions vary depending on the manufacturer and model, when picking out the worst-sellers, we looked past models that only sold for part of the year or were being introduced or phased out. With each respective vehicle, best or worst, we consulted data for the same 10-month period for 2006 and indicate the percentage change over the year period.

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