Highlander Buyers Didn’t Leave Toyota, They Moved Up

Toyota Highlander sales fell 37.3 percent in 2025, but the buyers it lost mostly stayed in the family, because the larger Grand Highlander and Lexus TX both nearly doubled in the same year.

The Highlander finished 2025 at 56,208 sales, down from 89,658 in 2024, in a year when Toyota’s brand as a whole grew 8.1 percent. The hybrid held steady at 24,720, almost exactly its 2024 total, so nearly the whole decline came from the gas model, which fell by more than half to about 31,500.

The bigger three-rows grew far faster than the Highlander shrank. Toyota’s 2025 sales release shows the Grand Highlander rose 90.7 percent to 136,801, and the related Lexus TX climbed 100.2 percent to 57,346. The Grand Highlander added 65,080 sales, nearly twice the 33,450 the Highlander lost, so the two Toyotas together grew from 161,379 to 193,009.

Model	2025	2024	Change
Highlander	56,208	89,658	-37.3%
Highlander Hybrid	24,720	24,777	-0.2%
Grand Highlander	136,801	71,721	+90.7%
Lexus TX	57,346	28,640	+100.2%

The slide is longer than one year. The Highlander sold 222,805 vehicles in 2022, the year before the Grand Highlander went on sale, according to autoevolution, so its volume has fallen by three quarters in three years.

Price has pushed buyers along. For 2026, Toyota dropped the front-drive Highlander LE and made all-wheel drive standard, so the cheapest Highlander now costs $45,270, according to Carscoops, while an all-wheel-drive 2027 Grand Highlander LE is $44,160.

The decline has leveled off in 2026, the gas model’s final year before the nameplate goes electric. Through September, Highlander sales were 42,950, up 0.6 percent from 42,677 a year earlier, according to Toyota’s third-quarter sales release. The mix has flipped, though, with Highlander Hybrid sales up 34.8 percent to 26,739, or about 62 percent of all Highlanders sold. The Grand Highlander is still pulling away, up 8.7 percent to 108,511 through September, and in September alone the Highlander slipped 8.6 percent to 3,733 while the Grand Highlander rose 10.5 percent to 11,594, outselling it about three to one.

The Toyota Report Take

The Highlander didn’t lose a fight with Honda or Hyundai; it lost to its bigger brother, which offers a roomier third row for little or no extra money, and Toyota has priced the two so that the choice is easy. Toyota can live with that trade, since the customer still drives home in a Toyota, and it explains why the company felt free to turn the Highlander name into an electric SUV. The question for 2027 is whether the electric Highlander can win back the smaller-family buyer, or whether those shoppers have already settled into the Grand Highlander for good.