As the earlier post indicated, the Germans are increasing exports while their domestic market swoons. The German Big Four all posted increases in February, as well as YTD. Daimler experienced the least levity, with the Mercedes brand up 5% while Smart continues to smart, down 69%, and 77% YTD. The only bright spot: Smart was at least up substantially in February over last month, but when the total units is 442 for the month, its just not much to crow about. The new E-Class was up a hefty 92%, and the C-Class continues as the biggest volume seller and was up 6%. Mercedes is up a decent 20% YTD.

BMW had a cheerier month, up 14% overall. The BMW brand was up 26%; the Mini only 2%, continuing its laggard ways of late. The X5 shot up 76%, and the new 7 Series is the top dog in its category YTD. Audi and VW follow, but not in sales increases; (Read More…)

Always hankered for a Citroen? The Subaru SVX is the closest thing we’ve gotten to one these past few decades. I find the resemblance to the XM more than coincidental. Which is a bit odd (or not) considering that the XM beat the SVX to the market by a few years (1989). And the XM was styled by Bertone, while arch-rival Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Ital design did the SVX. A case of great minds thinking alike? Or just the styling cliches de jour? Given the Subaru’s “aircraft-inspired glass-to-glass canopy” with the very unusual windows within windows, the SVX was actually more “Citroen” then the real thing. No wonder it’s such a curious oddity today. (Read More…)

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy and Transportation, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he was “looking at the possibility of recommending” mandatory brake override systems on all new vehicles sold in the US. Given the congressional hysteria about auto safety in the past few weeks (not to mention the already-expectant MSM headlines), such a requirement would likely face little political opposition. When Toyota first announced that it would be installing the buzz-worthy “failsafe” system on its new cars, we whined that the days of doing burnouts in Mom’s autobox IS350 were over. Which, frankly, was fairly petty of us. At this point it’s become fairly clear that, whether there are unfound defects still lurking in the evil minds of our appliance-mobiles or not, Americans need to feel that they could stop their cars in a worst case demonic possession scenario. So let them eat brake override systems, say I. At least until I hear someone advocating for mandatory manual transmissions.

Toyota and GM have both announced 0% financing on 2010 models, reports Automotive News [sub]. GM will offer the 60-month financing deal on 55 percent of its new models, while Toyota will offer the same terms on its Camry, Corolla, Matrix, Avalon, Yaris, Highlander, RAV4 and Tundra (not including hybrids). According to GM’s Susan Docherty, Toyota’s woes had nothing to do with the decision to offer finance deals, telling AN [sub]:

Obviously, with our hot launch products, we don’t need to put 0 percent financing for 60 months on that. That 0-for-60 will be primarily on products like our pickups. That’s completely in line with what our marketing strategy is. We’re going headstrong into truck month for both Chevrolet and GMC, which is a traditional play that we have normally done during March.

And no wonder: GM’s truck sales were flat in February. According to Automotive News [sub], Toyota will also offer several lease and dealer cash deals which vary from region to region.

Subaru crushed it again this month [via PRNewswire], with the Outback and Forester both breaking 6,000 units of sale and overall sales up 38 percent. Suzuki, not so much [full release here]. Despite a recently-launched (and relatively well-received) C-segment sedan, the Japanese brand managed to sell only 1,375 cars last month. That’s fewer units than the Jeep Compass, and only slightly better than the Dodge Nitro and Buick Lucerne. On their own. Suzuki’s one sick puppy! Details after the jump.

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Hyundai’s sales improved 11 percent last month according to the company’s sales release [via EarthTimes], while Kia’s release claims a 2.3 Percent improvement [via PRNewswire]. Elantra was down slightly, and Veracruz fell by over 50 percent, Azera/Amanti are down and Sedona is way down. Otherwise, it’s all sunshine and flowers. Hit the jump for details.

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The Honda Accord has Camry schadenfreude written all over it. With a 41% increase, and 22k units sold, the Accord is off to a likely win in the passenger car sweepstakes of 2010. The Civic didn’t ride the updraft nearly as well, with a modest 5% lift. The Insight’s 2k units continue to tail the Prius’ 8k units by a 1 to 4 ratio, somewhat better than a few months back.

The Honda brand was up 12%, and Acura by 17%. But all of Acura’s cars were down; its growth was fueled by the two CUVs: MDX: +65%; RDX: +20%. Honda CUVs were all down a bit, and the Odyssey up a tad. And three FCX Clarities were leased. Full details: (Read More…)

GM has announced its new North American organizational shuffle [full release available here], and have included the following slides to help explain some of the changes. The clear winner: President of NA operations, Mark Reuss, who had this to say:

It’s become extremely clear to me since taking this role that there is a better way to structure this organization. The premise of the structure is simple — a clearer marketing focus to sell more vehicles, and freeing our sales and service experts to focus on customers and dealers. In order to be successful in North America, we need the right mix of product, people and structure. We’ve worked with a small group of executives to align this model and appoint the best candidates for each job.

Notice how he doesn’t call the new structure a simplification. As the following slides show, there’s nothing simple about the structure changes. In fact, the only thing that’s certain about this latest GM reshuffle is that wrestling with GM’s bureaucracy still takes up as much time for top managers as actually working on products, planning, outreach and other core business activities.

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Chrysler sold exactly 399 more vehicles in February than it did in February of 2009, which would be a respectable performance if the comparison weren’t with one of Chrysler’s worst months on record. GM may be tentatively nosing its way out of the bottom of a sales trough, but Chrysler is treading water at unsustainable levels (CEO Sergio Marchionne has said he “needs” Chrysler to sell 1.1m units in the US this year). Considering that a huge amount of Chrysler’s sales release [PDF format here] is spent detailing the company’s many consumer incentives, Marchionne’s goal of turning ChryCo into a 1.1m-unit, incentive-less juggernaut seems less realistic with every passing month.

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Is it good news or bad news? After January’s 16% drop, February’s 9% slide could be evidence that the worst is behind Toyota’s fall from sales grace. It certainly seems that the models most connected to the recalls and bad news are being hit the hardest, with the flagship Camry down a nasty 20%. Just to show how the tide has changed, Camry outsold the Fusion by exactly 93 units. The Avalon was off 65%, suggesting that the gray panthers are avoiding its UA issues; let’s just hope they’re not buying Town Cars instead. The newly revised Lexus ES 350, also a UA posterchild, was off a fairly mild 9%.

Overall, Toyota brand vehicles were hit harder (-11%) than Lexus, which was up 5% in the month. The Lexus GX (+185%) helped keep the division in the positive side of the ledger. Prius managed a tidy 10% gain despite the bad publicity. Corolla was down a modest 6%. The new 4Runner is off to a good start with almost 3k units and up 55%. Full details after the jump: (Read More…)

Here’s a question for you automotive sales historians: when was the last time (month) Ford outsold GM? Four hundred and seventy one cars was the difference, but the bragging rights would have been worth it if Ford had given them away. Here are the highlights: Sales were up a Toyota tidy 22% from January. Camry-fighter Fusion experienced unintended sales acceleration, rocketing ahead at an unrestrained 116 mph percent.Ford brand vehicles were up 46%; Mercury +24%; Lincoln +19%.  Company wide, passenger cars were up 54%, utilities +39%, trucks +36%. Retail sales were up 28%, as fleet sales came back to “normal” after a near stand-still a year ago. Ford estimates its February market share at 17%, up a hefty 3 points from a year ago. Detailed charts follow: (Read More…)

With rumors of another GM executive shakeup flying thick and fast, we expected a downright miserable sales performance from The General in February. By the year-over-year numbers [full release here, sales numbers in PDF format here], there’s no such flow of red tape, as GM’s four “core brands” gained 32 percent and total sales (including Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn) were up 11.5 percent. But that’s in comparison to February of 2009, when GM’s sales were down 53 percent from the year earlier. In short, GM appears to have hit bottom in terms of volume, but it still has yet to recover to anything close to 2008 volume.
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Motor Trend reports that former PT Cruiser stylist Brian Nesbitt has been relieved of his duties as the head of Cadillac, ending GM’s post-bankruptcy experiment of putting a stylist in charge of an entire division. But MT figures that Nesbitt’s ouster isn’t as simple as a failure to perform; according to their sources, the firing was political.

The shakeup has major implications for Bob Lutz’s future at GM. He hired Nesbitt away from Chrysler earlier last decade and made sure there was a place for the PT Cruiser designer at post-bankruptcy GM. Nesbitt’s departure would indicate Lutz’s role as one of three GM vice chairmen has diminished to almost nothing… Clearly, [recently-promoted sales boss and President of North American ops Mark Reuss] is putting his own team together, and it doesn’t include Nesbitt, who was posed as the aesthetic face of the Cadillac luxury division.

TTAC Commentator Toyondai92 writes:

Mr Mehta and Lang, I’m writing in for my non-tech savvy parents who are starting to look for a “new” car. I say new with quotes because only one of the choices is actually a brand new car. Background wise it’s simple, my parents are in their 50s and I am 17, both of my parents work, typical stuff etc. We have three cars, a 2000 Hyundai Elantra Wagon, which despite my mother driving it like an Integra- yes it’s a five speed- has been bulletproof to us, a 1989 GMC pickup and a 1999 Chevy Metro whose auto trans is starting to clunk out. Thus, the need for another car. I should add that I, the 17 year old, will most likely NOT be driving said new car, as I have my eyes set on an 80s Acura Legend. This is an import-biased comparison, helped by the fact that GM and Chrysler don’t offer manual transmissions in their family sedans and you can’t say the F(ord) word near either of my parents. (Don’t tell me to try and break that grip, I already tried!) Toyota’s declining quality and recalls have scared them away from that brand, hence no Camrys or used Lexus in this list. The main choices we’ve been looking at are:

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Yesterday I asked our Best and Brightest if congress should hear testimony from former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller. The lack of unqualified endorsements mirrored my own skepticism about the testimony of a guy who has sued Toyota several times, and today it seems that congress may just agree. When the House Oversight Committee wrote Toyota’s Yoshimi Inaba asking for a response to Biller’s accusations, it attached several of Biller’s apparently damning documents to its letter [PDF of original letter and attached Biller documents here]. But, as the Detroit News reports, the letter has been reposted without the attached Biller documents after Toyota claimed they violated attorney-client privilege (the alleged internal memos all have non-disclosure requests attached). Senate hearings on the Toyota recall have just started, and are available at Cspan.org.