America’s auto market is still selling vehicles at a surprisingly healthy pace, but the brands benefiting most are changing. Cox Automotive’s latest third-quarter forecast puts General Motors, Ford and Stellantis—the traditional Detroit Three—on course to capture just over 36% of U.S. new-vehicle sales during the quarter, which would be their lowest combined share on record.
The shift is happening even though GM remains the country’s largest automaker by sales. Toyota is narrowing the gap, Hyundai and Kia are gaining ground, and Honda is growing as buyers show renewed interest in hybrids, fuel-efficient cars and smaller vehicles. The change does not mean Detroit has suddenly lost its core strengths in pickups and large SUVs. Instead, it highlights how quickly the centre of the U.S. market can move when fuel costs, affordability and consumer preferences begin rewarding a different mix of vehicles.
The 36% Figure Reflects a Much Longer Transformation
Cox Automotive expects the U.S. market to generate roughly 4.12 million new-vehicle sales in the third quarter of 2026. GM is forecast at about 671,700 vehicles, Ford at 504,200 and Stellantis at 317,300. Added together, those numbers leave the Detroit Three with a little more than 36% of quarterly sales. GM’s year-to-date share is projected at 16.7%, down from 17.4% a year earlier, while Ford is expected to fall from 13.4% to 12.5%. Stellantis is the exception, with its year-to-date share forecast to improve modestly from 7.5% to 7.8%.
The significance becomes clearer with some historical perspective. The Detroit Three still controlled roughly three-quarters of the U.S. light-vehicle market in the mid-1990s. Their share slipped below 50% during 2007 and ended 2008 at about 48%. What is happening in 2026 is therefore not a sudden collapse but another step in a decades-long redistribution of market share. More global automakers now compete across nearly every vehicle category, giving buyers far more alternatives than existed when Detroit dominated American driveways.
Toyota Is Turning the Race With GM Into a Much Closer Contest
General Motors remains the U.S. sales leader, but Toyota has moved considerably closer. Cox expects GM to sell about 671,706 vehicles during the third quarter, compared with approximately 642,707 for Toyota. Through the first nine months, GM is forecast at just over 2 million vehicles and Toyota at roughly 1.89 million. That leaves a gap of only about 121,000 vehicles heading into the final quarter. A year earlier, GM held a noticeably larger share advantage.
The difference in momentum is just as important. GM’s year-to-date volume is projected to fall 6.2%, while Toyota is expected to increase 1.1%. Toyota’s own second-quarter report showed 673,971 U.S. sales, with 383,091 classified as electrified vehicles, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery-electric vehicles and fuel-cell models. That represented 56.8% of Toyota and Lexus volume for the quarter. GM remains enormously strong in pickups and SUVs—it led the U.S. industry in the second quarter—but Toyota’s wider presence across hybrids, cars, crossovers and SUVs gives it exposure to several parts of the market currently gaining momentum.
Hybrids Have Become One of the Biggest Competitive Advantages
The U.S. electrification story in 2026 increasingly revolves around hybrids rather than solely battery-electric vehicles. Kelley Blue Book estimated that while overall new-vehicle sales declined during the first half, hybrid sales increased by about 9%. Consumer interest is moving in the same direction. Kelley Blue Book’s Brand Watch research found that 22% of new-vehicle shoppers considered a hybrid during the first half of 2026, up from 20% a year earlier, while consideration of fully electric vehicles slipped slightly.
Several Asian brands already have substantial hybrid volume. Honda reported a first-half record of 213,513 U.S. hybrid sales, with hybrid versions accounting for 55% of CR-V sales during that period. Kia said its hybrid sales jumped 99% year over year in August and were up 111% through the first eight months. Toyota’s lineup is even more deeply electrified. Detroit is not completely absent—Ford sold a record 46,507 Maverick Hybrids during the first half and another 24,596 hybrid F-150s—but Asian manufacturers currently offer hybrids across a broader selection of high-volume cars and crossovers.
Passenger Cars Are Quietly Becoming Important Again
America is not abandoning SUVs and pickups, but passenger cars are showing more resilience than many expected. Cox Automotive’s September forecast called for compact-car sales to reach approximately 100,000 units, up 18.7% from September 2025. Midsize-car volume was forecast at 65,000, an increase of 18.8%. Cox specifically identified passenger cars alongside hybrids as a category where Asian manufacturers currently hold significant advantages.
That matters because affordability remains one of the strongest forces shaping the market. Many compact and midsize cars sell well below the industry’s average transaction price, which reached $50,089 in August. Earlier in the summer, Kelley Blue Book also noted that buyers were increasingly gravitating toward subcompact SUVs, compact cars and midsize cars while some expensive full-size pickups, large SUVs and luxury segments showed softer demand. Honda illustrates the trend: its passenger-car sales were up 15% through the first half of 2026, helped by the Civic and Accord. When consumers begin hunting for efficiency and manageable monthly payments, brands that never abandoned conventional cars suddenly have more options sitting in their showrooms.
Hyundai and Kia Are Adding a New Kind of Pressure
Toyota is not the only Asian competitor taking share. Cox Automotive expects what it categorizes as Hyundai Motor Group to post approximately 511,421 U.S. sales during the third quarter, up 6.5% from the same period last year. Ford is projected at roughly 504,172, down 7.1%. That would put the combined Hyundai-Kia group slightly ahead of Ford for the quarter, although Ford would remain ahead on a year-to-date basis. Ford has also noted that Hyundai and Kia are separate companies, an important distinction when interpreting the comparison.
The underlying sales momentum is nevertheless difficult to ignore. Kia reported 83,793 U.S. sales in August, the highest monthly total in the brand’s history. Through August, Kia had sold 590,377 vehicles, 3% more than during the same period of 2025. Its hybrid lineup has become an especially important growth engine, including electrified versions of mainstream products such as the Sportage, Sorento and Carnival. Instead of relying on one breakthrough vehicle, Korean manufacturers are competing across sedans, affordable crossovers, three-row SUVs, hybrids and EVs. That breadth increasingly resembles the strategy that helped Japanese automakers gain U.S. share over previous decades.
Detroit’s Truck and SUV Strongholds Are Still Extremely Powerful
A record-low combined market share should not be mistaken for an absence of successful Detroit products. GM sold 714,896 vehicles during the second quarter and remained America’s largest automaker. It also led the full-size pickup and large-SUV categories, while strong commercial demand helped make GM the industry leader in fleet sales during the first half. Those are enormously important segments where Detroit continues to enjoy scale, brand loyalty and substantial pricing power.
Ford’s strengths are similarly clear. The F-Series recorded 357,801 first-half sales, maintaining its position as America’s best-selling truck and outselling its nearest competitor by more than 80,000 units. Ford sold 576,288 trucks and vans during the first six months of 2026, while Bronco and Explorer also posted strong results. Even the September market forecast shows the full-size pickup segment growing 7.3% year over year to approximately 190,000 vehicles. The challenge is therefore not that Americans have stopped buying Detroit’s most successful products. It is that growth in hybrids, passenger cars and smaller crossovers is allowing rivals to collect more sales elsewhere in the market.
Lower Detroit Share Does Not Mean America Is Simply Importing Everything
The nationality of an automotive brand no longer tells the whole story about where a vehicle was built. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and other international manufacturers operate extensive production networks inside the United States. U.S. Department of Commerce data show that foreign-owned automakers accounted for nearly half of American motor-vehicle production in 2024. Over the previous three decades, those companies nearly tripled their U.S. manufacturing facilities while increasing U.S. vehicle production by 145%.
Industry data for 2025 paint a similar picture. International automakers produced approximately 4.9 million light vehicles in U.S. factories, representing about 49% of domestic light-vehicle production. Their operations extend well beyond assembly plants to engine factories, battery operations, research centres and suppliers. This distinction matters when discussing Detroit’s declining market share. A Toyota, Honda or Hyundai sale can still support American factory employment and domestic suppliers. The competitive shift is increasingly about which corporate groups and products capture American buyers rather than a simple contest between vehicles made in the United States and vehicles shipped in from overseas.
The Next Test Will Be Whether the Product-Mix Shift Persists
The broader U.S. vehicle market has proven more durable than many forecasts suggested earlier in the year. Cox Automotive has raised its full-year 2026 new-vehicle forecast from 15.8 million to 16.1 million units. Credit access has also improved substantially, with Cox’s Dealertrack index reaching its highest level since late 2015 in August. At the same time, affordability remains difficult: the average new vehicle sold for $50,089 in August, and the estimated average new-vehicle loan rate was about 9.49%.
Those conditions make product mix especially important. Buyers who still have the financial ability to purchase expensive pickups and SUVs remain valuable to Detroit, while households focused on fuel costs and monthly payments are giving hybrids, compact cars and smaller crossovers more attention. Cox expects the market-share movement toward Asian brands to continue through the remainder of the year, but the 36% figure remains a forecast rather than a completed result. Actual third-quarter results from the manufacturers will determine how closely reality matches those projections. Either way, the latest numbers show that Detroit’s challenge is no longer simply defending its truck franchises—it is competing wherever buyers are moving next.
