Remember how GM brags that they are the largest auto manufacturer in China? CAAM, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers says otherwise (via Gasgoo.) Here is the official CAAM list of the 10 largest passenger vehicle manufacturers in China, and their units sold in 2009:
Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co: 708,100 units
FAW-VW Automobile Co Ltd: 669,200 units
Shanghai General Motors Co Ltd: 668,200 units
Beijing Hyundai Motor Co: 521,000 units
Dongfeng Nissan Ltd: 459,300 units
BYD Co Ltd: 448,400 units
Chery Automobile Co Ltd: 409,300 units
Guangqi Honda Automobile Co Ltd: 337,200 units
Tianjin FAW Toyota Motor Co Ltd: 334,700 units
Geely Holding Group Co Ltd: 329,100 units
Taken into account that VW makes their Chinese cars with two joint ventures, SVW and FAW-VW, Volkswagen’s combined total rises to 1,377,300. The imported VWs bring the number well above 1.4m . Read More >
Last night, our U.K. correspondent Cammy Corrigan reported that Toyota is seriously in trouble in Europe. The findings were based on a report in just-auto.com that carried the news that in Europe, sales of Toyota branded vehicles had dropped 20 percent in 2009, while Lexus branded vehicles dropped 40 percent.
Alarming news.
Just a few days ago, Bloomberg reported: “Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Daimler AG, the world’s top luxury-car makers, fell behind Toyota Motor Corp. in European deliveries in 2009 as government incentives failed to boost demand for their vehicles. BMW and Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz, dropped to eighth and ninth place in Europe, while Toyota, including the Lexus brand, rose to seventh, according to figures released today by the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.” Eh? Or more polite: Mou ichido ossyatte kudasai. Excuse me? Say what? Read More >
Grand news for owners of 1999 model year and later Pontiacs! Buick-GMC GM Brian Sweeney tells Automotive News [sub] that “one of our most important tasks is keeping [Pontiac owners] in the database and keeping them as service customers until such a time that the Buick portfolio has developed fully.” The plan: send owners of 1999 model-year and later Pontiacs coupons for free tire rotations and oil changes. GM sales boss Susan Docherty has spoken about the importance of these “free agents,” or GM buyers orphaned by the cutting of their brands. As well she should: it’s more cost effective for any business to keep existing buyers than win over new ones. But is it free oil change easy? If GM thinks it can make Buick believers out of the jilted Pontiac faithful, what does it say about the cynicism with which it approaches branding? Once again, GM’s need to build lost Pontiac volume for the Buick-GMC dealer net leads to the willful suspension of common sense.
Despite what you think of Toyota, it’s a company you should respect. They brought reliability to cars when others couldn’t. They popularised lean manufacturing techniques that others are still trying to copy. And they introduced green technologies at a time when petrol was cheap and still made a success of it. In short, when Toyota put their mind to it, they can make a good success of just about anything… except for the European market. For some reason, Toyota cannot make in-roads in the European sales no matter how hard they try, and the latest set of data suggests that that trend is continuing. Read More >
Smart’s new President, former Saturn overseer/undertaker Jill Lajdziak, knows how the dying brand thing works. With Smart sales down a (barely) Chrysler-beating 41 percent on the year, the Penske-owned Smart USA is teaming up with Daimler Financial Services (Smart vehicles are produced by Daimler in Europe) for a good-old captive lease deal right out the old GM playbook. According to Automotive News [sub], Smart is offering
a 36-month lease for $169 a month, $999 down, a $595 acquisition fee and the first month’s payment due at the time of the lease.
That’s a lot more realistic than the the old deal they were offering ($3k down, $200/month) but we’re still talking about a 10k miles-per-year lease. On a car makes a Yaris seem luxurious, overpowered and confidence-inspiring. Incidentally, were you aware that the Smart ForTwo was first introduced way back in 1998? The more you know!
Remember the BRIC countries, saviors of the auto industry? Brazil, Russia, India, China. Brazil (+11.35 percent,) India (+18.7 percent) and especially China (+45 percent) performed as advertised. But Russia? Russia’s car 2009 car sales are such a disaster that BRIC will stay BIC for the foreseeable future.
Did we say that the auto industry has to deal with severe capacity problems? China has capacity problems alright. It looks like the biggest impediment to further sales growth in China is a shortage of cars.
China’s car makers are running three shifts and still cannot keep up with the demand, Bloomberg reports. Nissan’s factory in central China is making cars almost 24 hours a day, yet customers are faced with three month waits for their new car. Other companies, such as Ford and Honda, are running their Chinese factories at full capacity, with overtime and weekend shifts, and still can’t deliver enough cars. Read More >
Europe avoided the worst of carmageddon. While the U.S.A. was down 21.2 percent in 2009 and China was up 45 percent, Europe as a whole ended 2009 with the same sales as in 2008, more or less. According to data released by ACEA, the European Union survived 2009 with a slight drop of 1.6 percent. Read More >
According to our data, the full-size pickup segment declined by 29.4 percent last year. Of all full-sized pickups, the Chevy Silverado lost the most volume, dropping 32 percent and an eye-popping 148,521 units compared to 2008. GMC Sierra dropped 33.6 percent, or about 56k units. Overall, GM shed half a million pickup sales last year, as its total truck sales fell to 1.2 million. When you’re losing that kind of volume in a shrinking segment, you know it’s time for a hold-em-or-fold-em moment. According to the Detroit News, GM is doubling down on its full-sized truck ambitions, allocating “several hundred million” of your tax dollars towards a re-working of the GMT 900-based trucks.
Chrysler’s sales fell 36 percent last year, as bankruptcy and some of the weakest products on the market conspired to keep sales and market share trending downwards. CEO Sergio Marchionne figures Chrysler’s slide has hit bottom, and indeed his turnaround hinges on considerable improvement over last year’s dismal numbers. How much improvement? Marchionne tells the Freep that ChryCo needs to sell 1.1m vehicles in the US next year, an 18 percent improvement on 2009’s number, in order to reach his break-even projections. Worldwide, Chrysler needs to sell 1.65m vehicles, or 27 percent more than last year. Given the downward sales and market share momentum, the overall uncertainty of the US market, and the lack of new products until the end of this year, reaching those volume numbers won’t be easy. Especially because Marchionne refuses to cut any corners.
GM has a tough row to hoe in 2010, with the launches of key products like the Cruze and Volt going on sale, an IPO to worry about, and a sales slide (down 30 percent for 2009) to reverse. Still, according to GM’s new North American boss Mark Reuss, navigating the congressionally-mandated dealer arbitration is the top challenge of the coming year. At a speech last night, Reuss told reporters from Automotive News [sub] that:
I welcome this as an opportunity for GM and the dealership network to go through a change in our network with integrity,
As opposed to the arbitrary bankruptcy-era dealer cull? Read More >
NPR reports that Hyundai’s Assurance Plan, which is widely credited for much of that automaker’s success since the financial meltdown, has been taken advantage of fewer thn 100 times since it was instituted a year ago. In that time, Hyundai has sold over 435k vehicles, meaning the program has cost surprisingly little. Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafic explains:
we treat it almost like a kind of insurance, a kind of social insurance, so we had to make some, you know, financial set-aside for it. And in the end, it ended up being substantially below what our expectations were, thank goodness.
According to Krafic, the program took only 37 days to implement. [Hat Tip: ClutchCarGo]
Volkswagen has grand plans for the U.S.A. Volkswagen wants to “increase sales and market share in 2010.” Ok, who doesn’t. Now, for the delusions of grandeur part: By 2018, Volkswagen wants to more than triple annual car sales in the U.S. to 1 million a year, with Audi accounting for 200,000 sales, reports the Wall Street Journal. Seen any flying pigs lately?
Why 2018? By 2018, Volkswagen wants to rule the world, and trounce Toyota in unit sales, profitability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and most likely size and quantity of cup-holders also.
Everybody in the company has to do his or her share for the grand plan. Read More >
If even the DetN prints it, then we can assume it’s official: China’s total light vehicle sales came in at 13.6m, slightly higher than the estimates. The Chinese car market grew 45 percent compared to 2008. This according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association. China’s official auto sales data for 2009 are scheduled to be released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers next week, but should not differ much from the figure which was put on the wire by the state news agency Xinhua.
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