As reported earlier, Fiat’s new baby is quickly becoming Brazilians’ new darling. But that was perception. Now cold hard numbers are coming in, and believe it or not, the new Uno is being adopted at record rates. Widely-read Brazilian car site Webmotors cites numbers of the Brazilian Motor Vehicles Distribution Federation Fenabrave. According to the official count, the new Uno, launched but a week ago, is already creating havoc with Brazilian car sales rankings. Read More >
Honda’s decision to delay a redesign of its Civic piqued some curiosity amongst our Best & Brightest, particularly Mark MacInnis who requested a five-year sales chart on the Civic and a few competitors. We’ve gone one better and worked up a 15-year graph of sales volume for some of the more popular compact sedans in the US. Of course a significant number of those pre-2001 Civics were hatchbacks, and Toyota counts its Matrix hatch as a Corolla, so the numbers are just a little skewed. Still, it gives a fairly good sense of where the major players stand in this important segment.
Sadly, my internet came crashing around my ears just as GM’s Q1 results conference call was getting interesting. Typical Monday. I’ll rock myself to sleep tonight with a recording of the call and report back tomorrow, but at this point the big news is plainly visible on this single slide. Yes, GM finally got control of its incentives and wrestled them below the industry average… for a month. That month (March) also just happened to be the worst month this year for GM market-share wise. The next month (April), the incentives went back over the industry average, and market share increased once again. The lesson seems obvious: GM won’t gain market share on promises of high-quality cars and taxpayer payback alone.
Now that GM has released its Q1 data, let’s have a look at the race for the top spot, world’s largest auto maker. We are counting global deliveries only, not production. Even with “deliveries” there is room for interpretation. Deliveries to customers? Or cars dumped on dealer lots? We’ll never know. All we know is: Read More >
Whereas Chrysler’s surprise operating profit in the first quarter of this year was achieved mainly through cost-cutting, GM’s just-announced Q1 profit comes on the strength of sales increases in most of its global markets. Though The General’s sales numbers are still lower than they need to be, momentum is headed in the right direction… albeit somewhat more slowly than had been hoped.
Well, the suspense is over. General Motors announced its Q1 earnings this morning, and for the first time since 2007 the quarterly numbers are positive. GM’s net revenue jumped to nearly $31.5b on strong performances from its North American and GM International Operations (GMIO), and across-the-board sales improvement for the Chevy brand. General Motors Europe was The General’s sole unprofitable division for the quarter, losing half a billion dollars while it waits for a deal on financial assistance to clear. Operating cash flow was $1.75b, with about $755m of that going towards capital expenditures. That left just under a billion dollars in free cash flow, as GM finished the quarter with $35.7b in cash on hand. Net income attributable to shareholders was $1.068b, less $203m for cumulative dividends, for a total net profit of $865m [Full financial highlights in .doc format available here].
Despite suffering from a market-induced sales conflagration at home and in Europe last April, Volkswagen can pat itself on the shoulder for outperforming the global market. In the first four months of 2010, the world bought 20.9 percent more Volkswagen Group cars than in the same period of last year. That versus an 18.1 rise of the general market.
VeeDub’s bacon was saved by China and Brazil, “where Volkswagen is particularly successful,” said a proud VW sales Chief Christian Klingler today. Looking forward, he’s hedging his bets. “Despite the very positive performance to date, we remain cautious about our forecast for the full year. It is still very difficult to predict macroeconomic developments,” a Volkswagen communiqué cites Klingler.
Klingler is right to be careful. Read More >
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association ACEA released sales numbers for April. As predicted on Friday, the numbers are bad. For the first time this year, and for the first time in 10 months, numbers are negative. New passenger car registrations in Europe fell by 7.4 percent in April compared to the same month last year. They will get worse. Read More >
Ford Europe will swallow a tried and trued antidote against flagging car sales: Heavy discounting. Yesterday, Ford had announced – in a rather roundabout way – that their European sales had dropped a breathtaking 17 percent in April. Putting cash on the hood is no surprising move. Wouldn’t there be another detail. Read More >
Brazil beats America! Over at well-known Brazilian communications giant Globo, they are reporting that little ole Brazil has overcome big ole USA in car production and has taken 5th place worldwide. Can this be true? It depends on how you look at the numbers… Read More >
I guess, a lot of people at Ford European HQ are sorry of their “Europe’s biggest brand” rararah of last month. There will be a lot of “eat your words” in Cologne. Or “eat a broom” as they say in Germany. Much less appetizing than eating words. Ford’s sales numbers for April are horrible. Read More >
Who said Brazilians are wary of imports? According to Brazilian car site bestcars.com.br, sales of imported cars rose a whopping 190 percent in April compared to the same month last year. The Brazilian Association of Importing Cars Companies – Abeiva – reports that in the first four moths of the year, a record 26,708 imported cars were registered in Brazil. 17.9 percent of cars sold in April were imported. Read More >
Those Chinese sure are tenacious. After European Brilliance importer HSO went bankrupt last November, after Brilliance wrote a whopping loss for 2009 while the Chinese market went through the roof, after Brilliance announced that they had stopped all exports to Europe (there wasn’t much to stop,) one would have thought that China’s Brilliance thoroughly had it with exporting to Europe or any of the first world countries. But no … Read More >
Japan is the land of crazes. There is a small, but steady imported car craze developing in the land of the supposedly closed car market. Imported car sales rose 2.6 percent year on year to 11,642 units in April, the sixth straight month of increase, says The Nikkei [sub], citing data by the Japan Automobile Importers Association. Read More >
Slowdown in Chinese car sales? Unheard of, as far as Beijing is concerned. In the beginning of the year, Beijing had 4m cars. By the end of the year, the Chinese capital is expected to have 5 million cars on the roads. That’s the educated guess of the government, as reported by Gasgoo. Read More >
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