Sedans Poised To Make A Comeback Thanks To Gas Prices, Young People And ‘SUV Fatigue’

Good morning! It’s Monday, May 18, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

On this morning’s edition: reports of the death of the sedan have been greatly exaggerated; auto manufacturing’s spike is already on the chopping block; Ford is investing heavily in the European market; and Acura looks to hybrids while its parent company is all about that gas-only power. All this and more on this sunny start to a four-day work week. 

I wanted to kick off this Monday Morning Edition with that elusive tidbit: some good news. The Detroit Free Press brings glad tidings to the weary hearts of car enthusiast everywhere who are sick of seeing the same old walls-of-metal style SUVs everywhere; the sedan is poised to make a comeback. That’s right. The body style American automakers have rejected whole cloth is on the rise, and there’s a lot of different reasons for it. Expensive models, gas prices, and the younger generation viewing SUVs the way stations wagons were viewed by Gen X, or minivans by Millennials, as old people cars, according to the Freep: 

“I do think there’s become kind of, an SUV fatigue I’d call it, that everyone is experiencing from consumers to car designers to rental agencies,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars. “There’s a group of people looking just to not look like everyone else. A sedan offers that — which is funny because they were considered boring and now they are cool.”

Many auto industry observers point to the younger generation as holding the keys to the sedan’s future as the SUV becomes “your father’s Oldsmobile” in their eyes. Take the study from Escalent’s EVForward 2025 Teenagers DeepDive released in February 2026. It surveyed more than 1,000 teenagers ages 14 to 19 to understand their attitudes toward vehicles. When we asked what vehicle they imagine driving in the future, 51% said a sedan, 31% chose an SUV and 14% a truck.

I just love that The Youth think SUVs are uncool. Finally, something that the younger generation is dead on the money correct about. The Freep pointed out that there were 130 sedan models for sale across brands in 2016. That number just stands at 50 today. Should an automaker re-enter the sedan market, there’s plenty of room to make a splash with a cool new model. The average cost of a new car also factors into the picture; the average cost of a compact car is around $27,590 while a compact sedan costs $37,514. That trend continues up the size ladder. Add in staggering gas prices, and you have an America ready to bring the car back, especially as automakers can easily scale up or down on flexible EV platforms. 

Good thing domestic automakers have a bevy of cars to choose from in their stable. What? You’re telling me they pretty much all made the short-sighted decision to exclusively build SUVs, trucks and crossovers? It’s not just the gas prices that are recalling the 1970s.  

Okay, back to reality. U.S. factories saw a nice boost in production driven by automotive manufacturing. Manufacturing output increased 0.6% last month but cars and parts manufacturing boomed at 3.7%. The good times are just gonna keep getting gooder…right? 

Oh yeah, the U.S.-Israel war. From Reuters: 

The Fed’s Beige Book ⁠report last month noted “many producers remained cautious about increasing drilling due to uncertainty about the persistence of higher prices.

“That second consecutive decline, despite higher oil prices, should serve as a reality check to anyone hoping that a surge in U.S. production will help to offset supply losses from the Middle East,” said Stephen Brown, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.

The war’s stranglehold on raw materials shipping could undo all this manufacturing good times, and Trump and Iran spent Monday morning rattling their sabers. This is why we can’t build nice things.

Honda ditched EVs in the U.S. back in March and suffered its first annual loss in 70 years thanks to the draw down. And it wasn’t a small loss either, Honda took a $5.7 billion hit. The dream of electrification remains alive, however, in the brand’s luxury arm Acura. 

“In the luxury segment … we’re already seeing a very high percentage of hybrids,” he told Automotive News. “We are expecting an even higher percentage of electric vehicles in the luxury segment going forward.”

Acura instead will use hybrid systems now under development to deliver added performance and a more engaging driving experience.

A new hybrid architecture should hit U.S. roads by 2028 with the new Acura RDX. The company is keeping gas powered engines around, but rather than design new ones, it is updating the ones it already has. It’s not profitable to sell EVs in the U.S., but it seems there isn’t much of a point in designing new gas guzzlers either. Sticking with hybrids means Honda can easily transition back into EVs should the world open its damn eyes in time to mitigate climate change even a little. 

The European car market is so wildly different from the U.S. EVs, Chinese cars, and small city cars all thrive on the continent and Ford is upping its game to stay competitive. Per Reuters:

“Our ​plan is to actually grow our market share… in a marketplace that is ​almost fracturing in terms of the number of competitors,” Jim Baumbick, Ford’s European ⁠president, told Reuters. “We need to stand out in a crowd.”

Five of Ford’s new models will ​be passenger cars, including a small electric car and a small electric SUV that will be ​built at a Renault plant in northern France using the French automaker’s technology, and three SUVs that will come as hybrids as well as fully electric models.

In the last decade Ford has lost a lot of ground in Europe, going from over one million cars sold annually to 426,000 last year, falling behind the luxury cars offered by Mercedes-Benz. BYD is its biggest competitor; while Ford grew 0.1% last year, BYD grew 270%. Tough crowd. 

We stan Maria Teresa de Filippis around these parts. On this day in 1958, she made history as the first woman to attempt to qualify for an F1 race at the Monaco Grand Prix while racing with the premier team, Scuderia Centro Sud. She didn’t make the cut, but did eventually qualify for the Belgian Grand Prix where she placed 10th in the field. She did all of this while driving Juan Manuel Fangio’s Maserati. History is amazing.  

Another day, another fuel up. Gas didn’t do much rising over the weekend — and it even did a little bit of falling — but as we head into the Memorial Day Weekend, it seems like there won’t be much relief for road trippers. Gas fell a whole one cent since we last checked in, with WTI Crude Oil Futures dropping $4 and Brent Crude staying steady at $100 and $108 respectively. On average, a gallon of regular unleaded go-go juice will run you $4.51. 

AAA

Gas is predicted to rise again, according to the Associate Press, as the U.S. and Iran saber rattle among rising tensions, so hold on to your wallets. If you’re one of the 45 million Americans intending to travel this weekend, well, good luck. 

The vibes on this track are immaculate, and that band name! Indications are the day is going to be very smooth.