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Mazda North American Operations has announced its sales figures for 2017, totaling 289,470 units.

That marks a 2.8 percent decrease compared to 2016, although there were 306 selling days this year compared to 305 last year. Taking that into consideration, the full-year Daily Selling Rate (DSR) saw a 3.1-percent drop. But the total sales figure includes fleet and retail and Mazda has continued to significantly reduce fleet sales as part of its brand value management strategy. This year, the Japanese automaker sold 11,346 fleet vehicles, marking a significant decrease of 44.3 percent year-over-year. Removing fleet sales from the equation and looking at strictly retail sales, Mazda North America actually posts a 0.2-percent increase with 278,124 vehicles sold.

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Helping lead the way last year for Mazda was the CX-5, selling 127,563 units in 2017 compared to 112,235 in 2016. The Mazda CX-9 sales the biggest growth in sales with a 60.9-percent increase from 16,051 units to 25,828 units. The MX-5 Miata also saw an increase from 9,465 units to 11,294 units. The Mazda CX-5 also posted record sales numbers in December, marking its best-ever month with 14,097 units sold.

Proving that customers are shifting from traditional cars to crossovers and SUVs, all the other vehicles in Mazda’s lineup saw a drop in sales compared to 2016. The Mazda3 was down 21.5 percent to 75,018 units, while the Mazda6 dropped 26.6 percent to 33,402 units.

Looking at the big picture, sales of cars for Mazda dropped 20.7 percent year-over-year, while crossovers and SUVs grew 15.6 percent. In total, Mazda sold 119,724 cars compared to 169,746 crossovers and SUVs.

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