Daily selling rates are playing silly buggers with some of this month’s sales results, but the numbers in the headline reflect Automotive News [sub]’s calculations on a pure monthly basis. Since both Toyota and Honda‘s official numbers are based on DSR though, they come out a bit higher. Either way, both firms saw increases in popular Cash For Clunker models, while trucks and luxury brands continued to sell slowly.
Honda’s Fit was a hands-down C4C winner, improving sales by nearly 200 percent to 13,593 units. Civic was up nearly 50 percent as well, while the hybrid Insight logged a mere 4,226 sales and the Accord dropped by about 5 percent. CR-V was the other big winner, up 58 percent to 30,284, only about 9k less than the Accord. On the Acura front, the TSX was up 7 percent while everything else fell by at least 37 percent.
Toyota saw surprisingly little C4C help in Yaris sales, which fell 47 percent to under 5k units. Corolla, Camry and Prius all increased by 51.9 percent, 28.2 percent and 45.7 percent respectively. Scion’s xB got a three percent lift and xD got a 15 percent lift, with both remaining well under 5k units.
RAV4 was buoyed by strong compact CUV demand, rising 47.3 percent to 18,312 units. Highlander increased by 37 percent, but all other CUVs and SUVs were down by between 20 percent (Sienna) and 76 percent (FJ Cruiser). Tacoma was up by 5 percent, on strong 4×4 model sales. Tundra was down by 53 percent.
Lexus could only claim a single victory last month, namely the RX with an 8 percent sales increase. Otherwise, sales were down across the board, with the IS (-20 percent) doing best and ES holding on with -25.8 percent sales. LS (-48 percent, 880 units) and GS (-58.8 percent, 669 units) are both suffering mightily.
Are Yaris sales down in August because they had run out of them by the end of July? While I was getting the oil changed a few weeks ago, I asked to look at one and they literally didn’t have any. Was there a model changeover under way for the Yaris?
Acura – I’m wondering when Honda will just give up. 20+ years of confusion and simply delivering nicer Hondas (sans NSX) – it’s the FWD no v8 luxury maker, it’s the new Volvo, it’s a wrong wheel drive BMW competitor, now recently it will be the fuel efficiency leader (???). It’s only saving grace is good cars for a decent value – but when you want to be a luxury or performance brand – that just doesn’t cut it.
The 2D Yaris is better than 4D, but there’s not much market for it, and in 4D area Fit rules the roost, Yaris is just not there. The bloated xB on Corolla platform was never a success.
BTW, when I checked last month they were out of Scion. Between two dealers in town, each had a lonely xD on the lot and that’s it. Pure insanity. Simply no cars at all. Plenty of Toyotas though :-)
Wow, Toyota’s numbers would have been terrible without the C4C bump. Toyota garnered the largest share of the C4C business yet got beaten in the sales comparisons by Honda, Ford, Hyundai and Subaru. Winning the C4C race but still loosing market share to your strongest competitors is not good news.
So Toyota sold 122,000 vehicles under the C4C program and had a 6.5% bump, doesn’t seem like that much benefit.
Of course GM did worse, they sold 112,000 vehicles and had a 20% loss (but at least they got rid of some unwanted inventory).
At least Hyundai and Subaru managed to turn most of their C4C sales into additional sales.
I was surprised not to see more van sales…
I wonder how much of Toyota’s relatively poor showing was due to lack of inventory? I went with a friend this afternoon to pick up some parts for his grandson’s ’92 4Runner. The new car area was almost completely sold out. A few Tundras, one Camry, one Tacoma and so on. Their online inventory show 24 new units of any kind in stock. This is a dealer which sold 120 cars last month. They had almost nothing left to sell. Toyota does seem to be rushing to refill the pipeline. Check out this quote:
“Carter said that from September through November, Toyota would raise its average deliveries to dealers by about 43,000 vehicles per month over its rates from the summer. ”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/32377706/site/14081545?
jaje :
September 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Acura – I’m wondering when Honda will just give up. 20+ years of confusion and simply delivering nicer Hondas (sans NSX) – it’s the FWD no v8 luxury maker, it’s the new Volvo, it’s a wrong wheel drive BMW competitor, now recently it will be the fuel efficiency leader (???). It’s only saving grace is good cars for a decent value – but when you want to be a luxury or performance brand – that just doesn’t cut it.
Agreed…Given Honda’s gold-plated rep for quality and performance, I don’t think Acura is really that relevant. I, for one, wouldn’t have a problem buying a TL if it was badged as a Honda.
One thing’s for sure – they won’t get far against the likes of BMW and Mercedes selling rebadged Accords anymore.
The only Japanese upscale maker that’s really managed to separate itself product-wise from the mothership is Infiniti. The only obviously Nissan-sourced vehicle they sell is their big SUV, and while the G series shares a platform with the Nissan Z, the cars are so different that it’s tough to tell where they came from. Besides, if your “downscale” platform source is a Z-car, that ain’t no bad thing.
“So Toyota sold 122,000 vehicles under the C4C program and had a 6.5% bump, doesn’t seem like that much benefit.”
Keep in mind that this increase is versus last years sales. Toyota did not start really feeling the effects of the “bank crisis/economy” panic until much later then most other car companies. For example, to say that Ford had a good month because they had a 17% increase over last August when $4 gas was killing their truck and SUV sales vs Toyota having a bad month with a 6.5% increase over a fairly good August last year (over 211K sales)is not apples to apples.
In short, it’s silly to praise a company because they had a year to year incease over a crap month and then not praise a company that had a year to year increase over a good month.