One month after the Chrysler Group outsold Toyota USA and grabbed 13.6% of the U.S. auto market, Toyota, Lexus, and Scion (14.1%) combined to outsell Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, and Ram (13.3%) by 10,000 units in October 2014.
As is the norm, this month’s chart shows something of a Big Four, or an Expanded Big Seven. GM, Ford, Toyota, and Chrysler generated six out of every ten U.S. auto sales in October. Throw in Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai-Kia, and there’s only around 15% of all auto sales left over for the Volkswagen Group, BMW, Daimler, Subaru, Mazda, and a handful of truly niche auto brands.
Compared with October of last year, Nissan’s market share (Infiniti included) grew from 7.5% to 8.0%. The Chrysler Group’s year-over-year market share growth meant a surge from 11.6% in October 2013 to last month’s 13.3% as they managed to sell 30,000 more vehicles in October 2014 than in October 2013.
Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures.
Oh, geez, FCA slipped from #3 and they were doing so good
#3 was snagged because Toyota had a bad month while FCA kept growing. If FCA continues to outpace the market, it could become permanent however.
Spin control here. Last month FCA numbers were elevated because FCA threw up huge numbers of left over 14 models with big discounts.
jimmy, talking out of the wrong end as usual. A 0.3% increase in Incentive to ATP ratio month to month in September doesn’t account for the difference.
jimmyy, maybe Toyota buyers just held off buying until the 2015 Camry came out.
Maybe not over the next couple of months, but I do see Ford dropping into 4th with the new F-150. That would place Toyota 2nd and FCA third.
The F-150 will sell in large numbers, but how large?
They are doing great, best from all major automakers, but they were No.3 for just 1 month and i said it here that for october-December they won ´t outsell Toyota, Toyota is far closer to replace Ford as No.2 than FCA to replace Toyota as No.3
True, they have passed them before.., Ford
Local adds are stating toyota received an additional billion dollars for incentives. Which I think is from the Japanese government. This could have something to do with the massive rebates and low toyota finance rates and increase in sales.
4 weeks ago Oct 10th USD/JPY rate was 107.66, 7th of Nov it is 114.60.
For a company writing revunue in JPY, they can sell the cars in U.S for less dollars for same profit in yen. Government has absolutely nothing to do with it.
If they do in any chance, I hope it will be used to recall Takata’s airbag ASAP.
For years, the US automakers have been propped up with FED QE, which weakened the dollar … that allowed the Detroit 3 with a price advantage relative to foreign nameplates. But, that party is ending since FED QE is being cut. This will level the playing field, and the Detroit 3 will not be able to compete.
So all auto makers are propped up my there local government. Does matter US, Jap, or European branded vehicle..
A suggestion: When you use a racial slur to describe the Japanese, then you make it too obvious what motivates you to dedicate your time on this website to attacking Japanese automakers.
This reminds me of a JD Power survey conducted some years ago that found that the most common reasons that consumers avoided buying American cars were concerns for quality and reliability, while those who avoided Japanese cars did so because the cars were Asian.
Racial slur. Someone is little so PC I think. Almost sounding like a left wing liberal. I guess Asian made cars are your passion. And Asian is not a racial slur by any means. Every Asian I work calls themselves Asian.
Jap is a racial slur, and I’m pretty sure that you used it for that reason.
My car is German and I’ve never owned a Toyota. But my preferences aren’t motivated by bigotry, which is something that can’t be said about you.
Jap is an English abbreviation of the word “Japanese.” Today it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur among Japanese minority populations in other countries, although English-speaking countries differ in the degree to which they cons*der the term offensive. In the United States, Japanese Americans have come to find the term controversial or offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. In the past, Jap was not cons*dered primarily offensive; however, during and after the events of World War II, the term became derogatory.
-Wikipedia
Yeah. And Japanese are my favorite sentient aliens. I daresay they’ll continue to prosper despite the scorn of a guy who couldn’t manage to center his avatar.
I’m sorry to afflict any damage to people when I named the country of origin of a particular group of vehicles. From the past posts on this site I did not think shortening a countries name could cause such a offense. Having said that being politically correct for a select few can be nauseating.
Hi VW 16v,
I understand nothing was intentional, and personally I don’t care.
Working in a multi national company, I am used to these innocent language. My only worry is any of my local client would not hear the word from my foreign colleagues.
I was more amazed with the quality of comments picking up the small matter and correcting to the better direction. It made my day.
Jimmyy,
I think there may be some confusion here.
1. “Detroit 3” does not exist. FCA is a Dutch company, headquartered in London and led by Italians.
2. Foreign automakers are the ones gaining market share – FCA and Nissan, not domestic.
3. Even if your contention that quantitative easing had lowered the value of the dollar were true (the dollar has actually been strong), that would not necessarily benefit foreign automakers. Remember, Honda is a net exporter of cars from North America. The yen/dollar relationship does not control Honda’s pricing or profitability.
The dollar has just recently gotten strong because QE was being tapered and will be ending soon. For years, it was abnormally weak ( because of QE ) which gave the Detroit 3 an unfair advantage. In fact, the abnormally weak dollar wrecked the Japanese and Euro economies. Better put your seat belts on because that game is over.
VoGo and jimmyy are both correct.
The appreciation of the USD will impact export performance of US product.
It appears the USD has risen in value against ALL other currencies of late.
QE has artificially lowered the USD’s value which did give the US manufacturers a lift.
With the EU woes and the Japanese pumping yen into their currencies I do think it’s now the US’es turn to feel the pinch.
But, the US economy is in a better state to make some internal transitional changes.
The Chinese also are slowing down.
Even cheaper oil isn’t all great for the US economy either. There is a down s!de.
@petezeiss,
I’ll be f4cked!!!
How hard is this to fix. I must use a hell of a lot of S_D’s.
It’s amazing that volvo, mitsubishi, jaguar land rover, and a lot of other brands combined don’t even reach 2% of market share.
Yep. That’s one reason why Carguy Narcosis is so entertaining.
Agreed. We all stand on the pyramid, looking only up. The share of mind these cars take is all out of proportion to the actual numbers. While expensive cars will scale with the price of the area, I’ve seen (or think I’ve seen) so many Teslas, you’d think them more than the rounding errors in the chart
I’m a proud 2-percenter! We’re gonna start a movement, kinda like the Wall Street movement only there’s less of us. :)
2% is still a statistically relevant number though, we’re talking 20K units atleast (presuming sales are roughly linear…and I’m going to be lazy). That means most of the dealers are selling about 20 cars a month but as they’re almost all exclusive high-end luxury brands they’re servicing their own models by virtue of the aggregate numbers out there. So a small showroom with only a few well dressed salespeople and selling a car every other day for a margin of upwards of 10K+ isn’t exactly hurting the dealership bottom lines.
I find it a lot more amazing that BMW has nearly 2X the market share of Mazda.
The incentives out there right now are crazy/awesome; in the last week of October I snagged a new Nissan Murano for about $8500 off MSRP. That is an expensive way to build market share, but at that price I was happy to help out.
You just did the equivalent of buying a winter coat at close out in the spring or buying Christmas stuff after Christmas. Congrats…you do realize the all new 2015 Murano has started production?
Glad you got a deal….you will also have some depreciation to deal with as the all new model arrives. Nothing wrong with that, but your statement about the ‘great deal’ needs the context of where the Murano is in its lifecycle.
His Murano will have all the bugs worked out. The new generation will not. Very smart move.
I agree, I’d rather take the deal on the perfected last gen then to beta-test the next gen
Absolutely a good deal. The new one could have issues like the new Q50 which is noted to having lots of issue per Consumer Reports.
Didn’t say it was a dumb move…just putting context on the ‘golly gee the incentives are CRAZY’ statement. Context is important, especially for those that read here and don’t really know the car business.
Not everyone is offering “crazy deals” on old models. Ford thinks very highly of their outgoing F-150s
Timing dude.
Ford won’t have reasonable supply of the new F150 until next spring. No reason to give it away beyond the usual truck rebates…especially since they weren’t able to build up a big supply due growing truck sales over the last year or two and the fact that their plants are on staggered shut down.
GM was able to build up supply before their change over that many mouth-breathing morons on here and elsewhere stroked out about. Somehow that ended up okay.
One can make a reasonable argument about which path was is better…if they know the real numbers. No one here does. I don’t think Ford had the capacity to produce more than they did leading up to this changeover…so they are doing what they are now.
Ford did run one of the F150 plants flat out for the month or so preceding the change over shut down and continued to run the second plant at about normal capacity. So there was some build of up in preparation of the change over but not anything on the scale of what GM did.
That is not correct. They were 3 shifts at both plants since Q3 2013.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100697596
My point was the demand for new trucks was/is higher this year than in 2012 when GM was planning for their changeover. Ford simply couldn’t overbuild too much because sales were so high.
So the Detroit 3 only hold 45.7% market share, which is a near historically low market share. Now that the dollar is rising against JPY, and that the Detroit 3 own the lower end of the Consumer Reports reliability rankings, that share will quickly erode into the low 40s. What does that mean for metro Detroit real estate … sell sell sell.
Nah, “burn burn burn.”
Nissan is not to high up on that consumer report ratings.
Why are H and K listed as one OEM? Two diffetent companies. Hyundai owns a portion of Kia, yes, but that is not like Lexus belonging to Toyota.
Wirh that reasoning Tesla should have benn listed as Toyota or Daimler since they owned share.
Great point!
Respectfully, seems to me you are missing the forest from the trees, or the trees for the forest (never can remember the correct saying).
Kia does what Hyundai wants. Their cars are the same. They sort of compete, but it is a tightly coordinated effort. Like Renault and Nissan, which are all but indistinguishable nowadays. Whenever I write industry stuff, I lob Hyundai and Kia together, as I do Renault and Nissan, Peugeot and Citroën and DS. FCA is already a unit, but the brands are not so closely tied up. Could well be that into the future they will be more tied.
THe Tesla situation is more like Chrysler – Mitsubishi collaboration in the past. Limited to a few cars and systems, neither had a preponderance over the other. Hyundai’s preponderance on Kia is undeniable.
Marcelo,
You are probably right, although in truth, it’s not clear to me how much control H exerts over K.
Hope you don’t write for a living…..
no one in Europe where all the brands you lump together are sold separately would lump them together. Also legally they are diffetent entities.
As for cars being the same… did you ever look at a Kia and Hyundai and see they are not closer to each other than to other similar cars? Which Hyundai equals the Soul? Which Kia equals the Accent?
Toyota Aygo and PSA equivalentscare the same due to collaboration. So you add PSA to Toyota? And in this case the cars actually are the same.
You can´t be serious with PSA and Toyota minicars – it´s JV in Europe, like another 20 i can tell you – Mitsubishi-PSA in Russia, Fiat-PSA in LCV´s, GM-Renualt LCV´s and many others, it has nothing do to with auatomakers being controlled by another or as automotive group, so JV is totally different thing – of course they have basically the same cars- that´s what most JV are, rebadged cars from 2 automakers, but mostly it´sjust cooperation on specific model and 1 factory
Well, actually I do, at the moment anyways. So whatever it is that you find offensive about Hyundai owninng Kia, or ok, to be more specific, absolutely contolling Kia I can t imagine what it is. But thatis life, it does not always happen according to whatever it is we choose to believe.
I should clearly mark sarcasm…..
exactly my point that they can’t be lumped together even if they share a car. Even less valid to lump H and K or Renault an Nissan together.
They own 33.8%. Last time I checked that is smaller than 50%, the threshold to count the cars as production.
This isn’t personal, but I come to TTAC for factually correct data. Saying Hyundai and Kia are the same company and build identical cars is just wrong.
Kia Rio = Hyundai Accent
VW16: not sure whay you see. But their websites show different sheetmetal.
The similarity is approx. Size and 4 wheels. But then a Corolla, Focus etc. should be the same car……….
Agree with Marcelo and btw you can´t compare Hyundai/Kia to Lexus – it´s just created brand, it´s not automaker with history and all other factors, just something Toyota guys-engineers created back in 1989 i think
Anyway Hyudani does not control officialy Kia- i think their share is like 30% or something around this number, but Hyundai-Kia are generally accepted as 1 group, and agree that Hyundai clearly dictates what Kia does, Kia is not autonomous automaker that can produce and do whatever they want
Also comparing to Tesla…. that is just technological investition there – it´s exactly like Toyota-Fuji/Subaru/ deal, Toyota helps them with engines and other stuff and are investor in them
Very interesting point.
although I have no favor to them, it seems odd. In same theory, at certain point of time, ford and mazda had to be bundled together.
Ford-Mazda is interresting example, Ford once had like 1/3 of Mazda i think in 90s to early 2000s, Mazda was seen as independent automaker, yet in Ford annual reports there was MAzda their unit sales and other stuff like with Ford brands – back than also PAG -Volvo, Aston, Jaguar, LR and there was Mazda as unconsolidated affliated company i believe, but Mazda´s numbers were never included in total FMC numbers when Ford was back than No.2 after GM, they sold let´s say 7million cars, but nobody was countin another 1m from Mazda, question is how much independent was Mazda, Ford had influence over them, but far smaller comparing to Hyundai-Kia situation
50% is the threshold to count those cars. That is why in those Chinese JV it os a huge difference between 49.9999% and 50%.
That’s why Ford couldn’t report Mazda sales and Hyundai cannot report Kia sales. Not for stockholer reports anyway. Obviously TTAC can lump data at will.
I get your point, unless someone has majority of shares it shouldn´t be counted.
Hyundai-Kia and Renault-Nissan are not on the same level as VW group-owning their brands, other automakers, but if you ask me what are top 5 automakers i say always Toyota, VW, GM, Renault-Nissan, Hyundai-Kia – i think we can count them together as automotive group and together, but if we want to be correct than you also are right.
Chinese JV are bad example, both GM and VW don´t have 50% in their JV, at least FAW-VW is not 50-50, VW has i think 40-45%, there were articles recently they want to buy more in that JV to be equal partners 50-50
GM in Wulling is also not 50-50, they have like 39% i think
Hyundai never report Kia sales, but they count it together as Hyundai-Kia or Hyundai group
I’m sure my comment will pop out sooner or later.
Regardless, due to the dilution of stock and the fact that Hyundai controls 33.9% with the KIA Pension fund controlling roughly another 7% they together control 40% of all voting stock, the next largest institutional investors control barely 7%. So presuming the remaining stock is held amongst various groups and non-voting entities Hyundai sets the agenda. In fact Hyundai as it stands has nominated and controlled every member of KIA’s board since the original take over. You don’t need 51% to control the company, just enough to vote in a block at meetings to make your voice consistent and controlled. Presuming that the pension & largest investors are going to vote with Hyundai due to Hyundai’s balanced approach and willingness to divest shares to them (and not squeeze the market by retaking shares as necessary) they generally get to set the entire board the way they want.
Hyundai is Kia. It’s just a convoluted control scheme. If you own a 1/3rd of a company, and I own 1/5th and we vote largely together we’ll control everything regardless. This is what Hyundai has done.
“I’m sure my comment will pop out sooner or later.”
Old it may be, but isn’t Ex-Lax still a great product?
Xeranar
I agree with you, for accounting matters and be politically correct we can ´t also agree that having 50.1% is majority and everything under 50% is not so we can´t count them, but i agree with your argument too, i said in my earlier post here that i always count Renault-Nissan and Hyundai-Kia togeter, for example Renault has more % in Nissan than Hyundai in Kia – 43% i think and Hyundai has those 34% how you sand i knew it was around-above 30%
So Renault owns more in Nissan, but we can both agree that Hyundai-Kia are ,,seen,, more as 1 group, 1 automaker than Renault/Nissan, despite RN having the same CEO.
Hyundai-Kia are sharing everything – here in Slovakia Kia has plant and are producing Hyundai model, the same goes for HYundai Czech plant producing Kia, Kia Slovakia is producing engines for Hyundai czech plant and so on – they are seen together, cooperating on everything – Hyundai-Kia are together sponsors of Fifa WC for example, if either Hyundai sign, they would just show Hyundai logo not both and so on – so many examples that HYundai-Kia must be seen as 1 group, but i can see also other side that Hyundai doesn´t have 50% + 1 majority, but i think this is not important, because if they want they can easily buy some stock and take their share to 50%+
I cannot understand the VW Group. They have misunderstood the North American market for 40 years. Since the halcyon years of the Beetle, their market share projections all seem unmet. I am not their target or their demographic, but if my 20 year old son is any marker, they mis-fire with him, too. A drivers car image. German heritage. Constant innovation. All are checks for the line, yet something gets lost in translation. If someone came along with the answer and rapid results, a long term seven figure deal would materialize. Maybe eight or even nine. With this incentive, why the revolving door with no solution?
Because making cars well is hard work and would involve perfecting technologies instead of innovating new gimmicks.
Rapid results are not possible for VW. It’s not just bad marketing; they have no product for North America. For starters, they have no full-size pickup. The top four in this chart all have credible full-size trucks. Without that, they are capped around the 8-9% that Honda and Nissan are stuck at. Yes, Nissan has the Titan, but I doubt its sales are meaningful even compared to the Tundra, never mind Detroit’s trucks.
The lineup that VW does have is mostly ancient and overpriced. Tiguan, Toureg, Eos, CC? The Beatle is a niche car. The Passat and Jetta are probably competitive enough in their class, but the competition is stiff. VW needs to offer something really special in those segments to overcome their poor dealer network and reliability rep, and they don’t.
To me, the Golf/GTI is by far VW’s best product. Unfortunately for VW, the US is allergic to hatchbacks with less than 5″ of ground clearance.
Then again, Mazda has fresh, competitive products in important segments; look where it got them. Maybe western markets are mature enough that it’s simply too late to make meaningful differences in market share?
Your comparison to Mazda ignores the fact that Mazda sells even fewer cars in the US than VW. About 30K monthly for VW an 26K monthly for Mazda. So copying Mazda would sell even less…..
I didn’t ignore anything, that was my point. I guess I will use sarcasm tags next time.
Their only problem is main VW brand, other brands are doing fine or great.
Problem is that they want to present VW as ,,german,, brand as something better, but in other countries Europe, China, even neighboring Mexico VW is mainstream volume brand in all segments, so they need more models, more segment in NA to grow in volume, VW brand should be 2x as big i think as it is, but they need to decide what they want. But so many years wasted it´s really shocking that as mighty automaker with succes in every part of the world can´t solve their US operations
Why does VW keep coming to this party? They’re never going to get laid and even its old loser buddies like Subaru have hooked up by now and stopped sitting sullen, despondent at a darkened corner table clad in a V-Tex jacket mumbling to itself about how no one ‘gets them..’
EDIT: I just realized ‘VW Group’ must also include Audi and Porsche. Good God…
Again, anguish, more comments that aren’t working.
It’s pretty clear by now that there is one single glitch you need to work around: don’t use any word that includes the letter sequence S*D where *=I. So, write cons*der instead of putting in the “i”.
Lorenzo discovered it a couple of weeks ago and it has tested true since then.
And God forgive me if you actually learn from this and can successfully comment again.
Thanks, petezeiss.
This exchange gave me the giggles.
petezeiss, all you wrote is probably true, but I have lost comments for different reasons than you mentioned, none of them profanity or dollar figures. In some cases, my comments are marked as spam when I try to edit them using my Win8.1 PC using either Opera, Firefox or IE11.
But other comments disappear for none of the reasons stated and that happens mostly when I use an iPad or iPad Air using Safari running on iOS 8.1.
If what he says is correct (and it seems it is) , you just have to avoid the words (replce i for *) s*ide, ins*de, outs*de, cns*dering etc. (or a total of 434 english words according to ‘scrabbelfinder.com’ including curbs*de, and s*deburns)
It’s amazing any comment manage to come through at all…
Cons*dering
edit: Wow, that explains so much
Can someone at TTAC explain why I can only submit roughly 1 in 3 or 4 comments????
Please. The silence and “we are fixing it” approach isn’t working.
What do I need to do to be able to submit a comment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Provide some guidance.
Really, it’s getting quite frustrating.
Lost more comments to the ttac server-void than I was able to post, sometimes one-liners without the verboten letter combos.
I get a mental pictured of some really frazzled people in ttac Systems Administration trying to manage the ever increasing lost comments.
Don’t have these problems posting on kickin’ tires, putc, any of the money boards, any of the real estate/broker boards, amazon.com, newegg.com, WSJ, Jeep.com or Toyota owner support, sites I visit daily.
Gotta be unique to wordpress.