Overall sports car market is down 12 percent, and Mazda MX-5 and Subaru BRZ did three times worse than that, but Toyota GR 86 and Nissan Z bucked the trend
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- US sports car sales dropped 11.8% to 131,410 in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023.
- Ford’s Mustang topped the chart, closely followed by the now-dead Dodge Challenger.
- Losers include the Mazda MX-5 and Subaru BRZ, which both suffered 40+ percent sales drops.
Grab ’em while you can, because sports cars are on the winding road to oblivion. US sales in the sector dropped by 11.8 percent in the first six months of 2024 versus the same period a year earlier, sliding from 148,395 to 131,410 units.
And, worryingly, one of the cars leading that slide was the Mazda MX-5. Deliveries of the world’s most famous affordable two-seater sank by 42.1 percent to 1,746, and that’s despite Mazda announcing a subtly updated roadster last fall, though in fairness the revised car didn’t go on sale until spring.
Related: Corvette Crushes It, Sells Nearly Twice As Many As Supra, Z, GR86, MX-5 Combined In 2024
Audi’s abysmal TT showing (down 90 percent, just 38 cars sold) can be explained by the model being axed and Chevy also finished Camaro production in December, helping justify its 69.4 percent drop to 5,306 units. But then again, Dodge also canned the Challenger at the same time and yet its sales dropped only 12.6 percent to 21,217.
Which means that despite fighting with one arm behind its back, the ancient Challenger sold almost four times as well as the Camaro, and wasn’t that short of the Mustang’s tally (27,444, up 7.7 percent), even though the Ford was brand new for 2024.
Also down, by a shocking 43.7 percent to just 1,414 units, was the Subaru BRZ, a fact made all the more incredible by its Toyota GR 86 sister car’s radically different experience. Sales of the GR increased by almost as much as the BR’s declined, climbing 41.9 percent to 7,467 units.
Toyota’s Supra didn’t fare quite so well, deliveries softening by 7.8 percent to 1,495 units. It did at least outsell its cheaper Nissan Z rival, if only by 38 cars, but with the Z’s sales having rocketed by 50.8 percent to get there and Toyota having now canned the Supra’s four-cylinder variant, things might be different when the next half-year numbers roll in.
BMW’s 2-Series also enjoyed a big upswing, sales jumping 53.7 percent to 6,436, though since BMW doesn’t break out those numbers into Gran Coupe sedans and real coupes, it’s hard to make direct comparisons with the other sports cars in the table.
More: We Drive The New Corvette E-Ray
While the podium positions might be a touch murky due to BMW bundling their 4 Series numbers (coupes and convertibles mingling with sedans, tsk tsk), Chevrolet’s Corvette deserves a shout-out.
Technically ranking fourth with a 5.2% sales bump in the first half of 2023 (moving 17,914 units), it likely snagged the bronze medal in the true sports car arena. Not bad for a mid-engine model with a starting price of $70,000, reaching up to $113,000 for the Z06—and that’s before adding options.
We also don’t have final H1 sales figures for the Porsche 911 and the 718 Boxster and Cayman, but going by the Q1 figures we doubt they were rushing out of showrooms in the past three months. Sales of the 911 were down 23 percent in January to June and 718 deliveries tanked, dropping by 29 percent. Porsche will be hoping the new all-electric 718s launching this fall will help fix things.