Cadillac, Lincoln Fight Each Other for Share

A more interesting question may be how GM and Ford are doing against each other. On just total numbers, Cadillac is outselling Lincoln by about 80%, with 2015 to-date sales of 52,976 units against 29,612 units for Lincoln.

The Cadillac total, however, is down 1% year-over-year while the Lincoln total is up 4.2%. Lincoln’s total sport utility vehicle (SUV) sales are up nearly 36% in 2015, primarily on the strength of the redesigned Navigator SUV sales, up 70%, and sales of the all-new MKC compact crossover, which have added nearly 7,100 to the 2015 total when there were none last year. Sales of Lincoln’s other two utility vehicles, the mid-size MKX crossover and the full-size MKT SUV, are down 40% and 26%, respectively.

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Cadillac’s story is not without its own illusions. Sales of the Escalade and the Escalade ESV are up 118% and 138%, respectively, for the year to date. The 2015 Escalade was completely redesigned for 2015, and that has given the full-size SUV its big sales boost. The ESV, a longer version of the Escalade, benefited from the redesign as well.

Looking at just the three redesigned full-size SUVS, the Navigator has sold nearly 3,800 units to date in 2015, while the Escalade has sold nearly 6,800 and the ESV has sold nearly 4,400. Cadillac is winning this bit of the competition.

In the compact crossover struggle, the all-new Lincoln MKS with sales of 7,100 is matched against the Cadillac SRX, which has sold more than 18,000 units so far this year. And Ford had better make hay while it can because the SRX is scheduled for a new version for the 2016 model year.

In other news, the cars from both Lincoln and Cadillac are selling worse than they did last year. Lincoln car sales are down 22% for the year, and sales of the Cadillac ATS are down 21% and CTS sales are down 42%. Sales of the full-size sedan, the XTS, are up 7.6%, but they total just over 8,400. Combined sales of the Cadillac models total about 23,000, compared with just over 12,000 for the Lincoln cars.

So far this year Mercedes has sold nearly 116,000 units in the United States and BMW has sold more than 105,000. GM and Ford have a long way to go to compete with those numbers.

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