Subaru and Jeep are consistently two of America’s fast-growing auto brands. Aided by expanding portfolios and clearly understood branding, Jeep volume jumped 41% in 2014; Subaru sales shot up 21%.
Are any two auto brands more easily identified with winter than Subaru and Jeep? (Read More…)
A new chart from the Department of Transportation claims that taking the bus is actually less fuel efficient than driving a car or light truck. I’ll grab the popcorn while you read this and mull over Ronnie’s piece on EVs.
Hat tip: Glenn Mercer
After selling in virtually identical numbers in 2013, light truck sales in the United States overtook car sales in 2014 for the first time since 2011.
Light trucks, a category which encompasses everything from pickups and body-on-frame SUVs to minivans and commercial vans to SUVs and very car-like crossovers, accounted for 52% of U.S. new vehicle volume in 2014, up from 49.9% in 2013. (Read More…)
The Asociación Mexicana de la Industria Automotriz reported a 7% increase to 1.1 million new vehicle sales in 2014.
Nissan is Mexico’s best-selling auto brand. Sales at the Nissan brand jumped 11% to 291,729 units in 2014. Combined with Infiniti and Renault volume, the Alliance owned 28% of the overall Mexican auto market, up slightly more than a percentage point compared with 2013. (Read More…)
2014 was a record-setting year for auto sales in Canada, a fitting follow-up to a record-setting twelve-month period one year earlier.
Auto sales in Canada jumped 6% to 1.85 million, an increase of 107,000 units. Pickup truck and minivan sales growth lagged slightly behind the overall industry’s pace, commercial van volume jumped 16%, and SUV/crossover sales rose 15%.
• Record sales achieved by 15 auto brands
• F-Series, Civic, Escape, Grand Caravan lead categories
• Six auto brands report YOY declines
Car sales were flat, which resulted in a market share decline from 44.6% in 2014 to 42.1% in 2014. In December, even with a somewhat impressive 11% improvement, passenger cars accounted for less than 38% of all new vehicle sales.
The fastest-growing auto brands were not so afflicted. Jeep volume shot up 58% to a record-setting 70,503 units. Jeep, of course, does not market any passenger cars. (Read More…)
We haven’t shied away from discussing the error of Volkswagen USA’s ways here on TTAC nor the results of those ways. Yet while the brand saw its U.S. market share fall from a measly 2.6% in 2013 to 2.2% in 2014 and group-wide market share fell from 3.9% to 3.6%, year-over-year, VW Group market share in the United Kingdom grew by half a percentage point to 20.7% in 2014.
True, the Volkswagen brand itself saw its market share fall despite year-over-year volume growth of 4%. Volkswagen is the UK’s third-best-selling brand behind Ford and GM’s Vauxhall.
Subtract the growth achieved by America’s 19 most meaningfully improved vehicles in 2014 and the U.S. auto industry was up just 1.0%, not 5.9%, last year.
The Audi A3; BMW 3-Series/4-Series; Chevrolet Cruze and Silverado; GMC Sierra; Honda Accord and CR-V; Jeep Cherokee; Kia Soul; Nissan Sentra, Rogue, and Versa; Ram P/U; Subaru Forester and Outback; and Toyota’s Camry, Corolla, RAV4, and 4Runner all produced in excess of 20,000 more sales in 2014 than in 2013, combining for 764,885 extra sales in a market which grew by approximately 927,000 units. (Read More…)
Conventional wisdom holds that consolidation among auto makers is inevitable. But this chart from IHS Automotive tells a different story.
Compared with the prior year, the Ford Motor Company lost one full percentage point of market share in the United States in 2014. While preparing to replace their F-150, Ford/Lincoln market share fell from 15.9% to 14.9% as F-Series sales predictably stalled in an expanding market and as Ford brand car sales slid 4%.
Poised to pickup Ford’s share was Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The company’s Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram brands boosted FCA’s U.S. market share from 11.6% in 2013 to 12.7% in 2014. Maserati, Jeep, and Ram were America’s fastest-growing auto brands. (Read More…)
Nissan USA announced on December 16, 2014, that the next Titan, the second Titan, the first all-new Titan since 2003, will be introduced at 2015’s NAIAS in Detroit on January 12, 2015.
Hardly altered since the production truck arrived for the 2004 model year, the Titan is now somewhat embarrassing. Yet while the truck never had the potential to tackle full-size pickup trucks from Ford, General Motors, and Ram – Toyota can’t either – in the same way Nissan’s Altima can outsell their midsize sedans and Nissan’s Versa their subcompacts, initial U.S. volume was respectable. (Read More…)
From the Twitter page of Juan Barnett comes a breakdown of sales of the last-gen Cadillac CTS. Including the CTS-V.
Even in the Acura TLX’s best sales month, the brand’s MDX and RDX crossovers still accounted for 55% of Acura sales in the United States.
With the TLX now consistently generating around three out of every ten Acura sales in America, it’s safe to say that Acura’s passenger car division is, for the moment, in safer hands than it was with the TL and TSX last year. Together, they generated 25% of Acura’s total volume in calendar year 2013, down from 40% in 2012 and 50% in 2011. (Read More…)
The next 25 years of automotive powertrain technology belongs to the internal combustion engine, according to oil & gas giant ExxonMobil. While many will dismiss this as the wishful thinking of an industrial dinosaur, it’s worth remembering that 25 years isn’t that long of a timeframe in the automotive world.
Compared with the previous month, November 2014 saw smaller automakers pick up market share at the expense of America’s largest automobile manufacturers. General Motors and Ford Motor Company combined to lose nearly a full percentage point in November even as the Volkswagen Group, Subaru, and Daimler AG combined to equal that in terms of gains. (Read More…)
Courtesy of our own Tim Cain. The fain green line represents gas prices, starting from the peak price of crude oil in 2014. Elsewhere, we see market share figures for passenger cars, SUVs/CUVs and pickup trucks. We’ll be keeping an eye on this as the months roll on. Crude oil dipped below $70 a barrel today – truly a black Friday for world oil markets. Let’s see how consumers respond in terms of new vehicle choices.
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