More bad news from Europe: The new car market in Germany, last year an island of stability in a sea of red, was down 8.6 percent in January. On the back of worse news from other European volume markets, this does not bode well for when ACEA will publish its European data next week. Read More >
As we all know, TTAC has an occasional thing for pink cars. So has Fiat. Right where I live. Fiat delights Japan with the 500 Fiore Rosa (i.e. “Pink Flower”) limited edition of its Cinquecento. Read More >
Local propaganda almost always serves to screw the little guy. With rare exception, it never fails to do so.
“We need a new stadium!”, cries the billionaire whose team already got one just two decades go. “Please pay for it John Q Public!”
“Hey! What about me?”, screams the local electric company CEO. “We really need to double the monthly service charge for our local residents to manage our costs. But let’s also throw in a double digit rate reduction for those who use a lot of energy. Like the billionaire and his businesses. After all, they create the jobs out here!”
And the story drones on. The trash company that owns a multitude of companies that have virtually nothing to do with trash, wants to hike your bill. Because they need to hit their numbers. Just like everybody else. The insurance company. The gas company. The local government. The state government. Heck, every local monopolist and oligopoly is thrusting their well oiled lobbyist machines right at your shrinking wallet.
Guess who else is doing it now? The auto parts stores.
Today, ad agencies all over the country crunch numbers to prove to their clients that the outrageous amounts of money spent for production and media buys of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads were well spent. Too bad their clients already saw on TTAC which ads were shooting stars, and which were duds. Oh, and Mercedes did not run the car wash ad. They had something more devilish in store.
No doubt each agency will find the most fitting metric to prove that their ad was great. Edmunds has a handy and free metric that shows how well an ad resonates. They call it the “lift.” Edmunds watches your clicks as they are driven to the respective cars on the Edmunds website. It’s a seismograph for the impact an ad has. If the clicks signal a lot of lift, the ad works, as far as Edmunds is concerned. If the needle stays flat, that ad is a dud. Here is the play-by-play. Read More >
By the time you read this, I’ll be under the knife, but I wanted to share with you my favorite Super Bowl ad. I don’t have any real profound insights, but I did get a real kick out of it, as I recalled my own prom night, an event that largely faded from memory.
The rightful winner
The year 2013 starts with a scandal in the usually buttoned-up circle of auto analysts at America’s brokerage and research houses. For more than a year, TTAC has graded the predictions of analysts, as published by Bloomberg, against (hopefully real) data published by OEMs a few days later. In all that time, we haven’t seen a drama like yesterday: For the second time, Bloomberg ruined the chances of an analyst. Now, the analysts fight back. Read More >
EV sales had shown minor signs of life in the last quarter of 2012, only to collapse sharply in January. “Sales of the Chevrolet Volt, the Toyota Prius Plug-In and Nissan Leaf each had deep dropoffs in January from December,” Reuters says. Read More >
Toyota, along with its Japanese peers, has wallowed in double digit minus territory in China, ever since cars were upturned and dealerships torched in September over a few uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea. In January, China sales of Toyota shot up 23.5 percent compared to the same month a year earlier. Are Japanese fortunes in China finally turning to the better?
Read More >
Remember how you all mocked me for my earnest proclamation that the 2013 Ford Fusion would be a “game changer”? Well, January looks to be a promising prelude to my inevitable vindication, as far as sales goes.
Since we’ve been discussing Mazda the past few days, Timothy Cain, TTAC’s favorite indepndent sales analyst, has taken a look at how well the much-loved Mazda CX-5 is doing.
From Mazda’s point of view, the CX-5 has likely been a roaring success. But Mazda’s point of view doesn’t require success to be measured against other popular vehicles. Other than the 3, Mazda simply does not sell a high-volume product. Even the 3, which accounted for 45% of Mazda sales in the U.S. in 2012, sells once for every two-and-a-half Civics.
The U.S. new car market was up strongly in January. GM and Ford surprised analysts with double digit sales rates. Toyota, up 26.6 percent also surprised. Read More >
Back in my college days, it seemed like every single Chrysler commercial featured a car that would morph from the old model into the new model.
Minivan morph. Neon morph. Intrepid morph. The technological transitions were quite well done, and I always enjoyed a commercial that reminded me of the movie “Terminator 2.”
But then I had a few ideas of my own…
Hot on the heels of curated-Tweet advertising comes the news that the MKZ is so successful, sales are down!
TTAC readers, this is the one you’ve been waiting for; a fun-to-drive, lightweight, stick-shift sports sedan that doesn’t require a home equity loan to purchase. Now, the question is, will anyone buy it?
If anyone is hoping for a turn-around of the European car market, be it Opel, PSA, or Pch101, January definitely was not the month it happened. Some people, who get paid a lot of money for a very long-term vision, believe we have to wait years for the turn-around. The French car market dropped 15 percent in January, with “Volkswagen and U.S. carmakers leading the drop,” Reuters reports. Massive sales subsidies of 2,000 euros ($2,700) per car, reintroduced in October in Spain, could not reverse the Spanish market. It dropped 9.6 percent. Read More >
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