A bet by Japanese automakers that Americans still want sedans is turning out to be expensive. April sales in the U.S. from Japan’s big three automakers— Toyota Motor Corp. TM -0.59% , Nissan Motor Co. NSANY -3.32% and Honda Motor Co. HMC -2.15% —were down, with Nissan suffering a double-digit drop. The big culprit was the sedan, the bread-and-butter car for the Japanese car makers since they entered the U.S. decades ago. As Americans’ taste shifts toward sport-utility vehicles, Nissan’s U.S. sedan sales fell almost 35% in April from a year earlier, driving an overall decline of 28%. Honda’s overall sales fell 9.2%, while Toyota’s dropped 4.7%. It isn’t that the Japanese companies have ignored the U.S. trend. They all make pickups, SUVs and crossover SUVs, and they have been ramping up production as quickly as they can, sometimes by exporting from Japanese plants that have […]