With October’s compact segment numbers reflecting Midsized segment’s return to the Toyota-Honda duopoly, the year-to-date graph shows that 2011 saw the rise of a new contender in the compact class: Chevy’s Cruze. With “virtually zero” 2012 Civics at Honda’s dealers (allegedly) due to Earthquake aftermath and Thai flooding, it’s beginning to look like Civic could be kicked out of the new triumvirate, leaving Cruze and Corolla to fight it out to the finish. To celebrate the drama, we’ve included a special bonus graph showing the “Big Six” compact horserace from January through October, to go along with the YTD graph. Enjoy!
Categories:
Tag: compact
In a luxury market that’s always looking for the next big thing, “Compact Luxury” has become something of a hot trend. And with GM’s Buick brand saved from the bailout-era brand cull, a compact Buick is a key test of whether The General has moved past its bad habits of cynical badge engineering. Thus the 2012 Buick Verano is a hugely important car to The General, not only serving as a bellweather for the health of the Buick brand, but also proving whether or not GM “gets” the tough-to-crack entry-luxury market. So, does the Verano measure up?
Recent Toyota ads introducing the “Prius Family” have featured the Prius C Concept to represent the forthcoming compact Prius, which will bear only the most passing resemblance to the slick showcar. But if deception was Toyota’s game, the jig is up. Der Prius wird geschrumpft (shrunk), chortles Autobild, which says these images come from a Japanese brochure that was leaked to the web. And the car pictured does look far more production-Toyota-like than the decidedly Scionesque C Concept. Is it the real thing? Will ad-attentive Toyota fans wonder where the C Concept went? Will a compact hybrid sell well in any case? These pictures are worth a thousand questions…
Thought the Midsized segment was heating up in September? A mere 633 units separate the Cruze and Corolla in their battle to become the best-selling Compact in America for 2011. And the way Elantra and Jetta are moving up the chart, this segment could could get a lot more interesting by the end of the year. In fact, the Focus’s weak performance this month makes it vulnerable to the Jetta in the Year-to-Date sweepstakes, despite appearing to be a strong entry in the segment. Back in July it was reported that Focus production was being slowed due to problems with a supplier of dashboard skins. At the time, a Ford dealer told the Associated Press
I know they’re working 24/7 trying to address whatever component issues they have. It’s a high-visibility issue with Ford Motor Co., and senior management is very concerned and very involved.
So, is there still a supply problem, or is the Focus just not selling? A quick look at inventory data shows that Focus started September with a 33 days supply and ended with a 74-day supply, which implies that any supply problems were solved last month. Going forward, the Focus should find its sales stride… or it will become another scalp on the Jetta’s belt.
With the Cruze, Chevrolet has pulled off a rare combination: segment-leading sales (up 31 percent from last year) at a higher transaction price (up 27 percent from two years ago to $20,465, according to TrueCar). But it hasn’t hurt that the Corolla, Civic, Focus, and Elantra have all been supply constrained. Once competitors get their factories running, does the Cruze have what it takes to maintain its current lead?
Remember the Cobalt? In many markets, Chevrolet’s much-maligned small-car nameplate is not a rolling reminder of the brand’s small-car struggles, so while the US gets a new Sonic and Cruze, other markets will get Aveo and Cobalt. Unlike the new Aveo, which is exactly the same as Sonic, this new Cobalt is probably an evolution of the previous Cobalt’s Global Compact platform, and offers engines ranging in size from 1.3 to 1.8 liters. The Cobalt is being shown at the Buenos Aires Auto Show, and will eventually be sold in South America, the Mideast, Africa and Europe. Meanwhile, GM has released no English-language presser on the debut [Spanish release here], possibly in hopes that Americans who remember the previous Cobalt’s weak reputation don’t clutter the internet with tales of their previous run-ins with the predecessor. Oops!
Honda and Toyota have been valiantly holding off an all-out assault on the compact segment thus far, and Civic and Corolla still lead the C-segment’s year-to-date sales race. FOr the month of May, however, the barbarians made it inside the gate, and turned the compact market on its head. Chevrolet’s Cruze, which was one of the first of new breed of compacts to launch, took advantage of its head-start in the marketplace to tear into first place, beating the new Focus by a mere 408 units. Elantra was about 2k units behind the Focus/Cruze leaders, but finished nearly 2k units ahead of Civic, which itself beat Corolla by nearly 1,500 units. Now that the Compact Wars are well and truly joined, we can expect more of this back-and-forth each month. In any given month this can be anyone’s segment… the question now is whether Honda and Toyota can possibly hang onto their YTD lead and finish 2011 with the volume win. It’s by no means a sure thing… hit the jump for a month-by-month breakdown of “big six” compact sales.
The previous day’s usage had left me in a pickle. With the 12 miles left and only nine-and-a-half hours charging time at 120V. Of course if I constantly had to remind myself, if I had a 240V charging station at home this would be a non-issue as the Leaf would have been completely full. However, my situation as it was, the Leaf was perhaps a hair over 40% charged when I left for work with the range indicator displaying 59 miles, hopefully enough for my 57 mile drive.
Since I needed all the juice I could get to make it to Burlingame I decided to forgo the pre-heating and let the Leaf charge to the very last second. Fortunately this morning was a hair warmer than the day previous being a brisk 40 degrees. Unfortunately the temperatures and humidity conspired to fog the windscreen. Without sufficient power to make it to work and use the defogger, I chose to defog the old-fashioned way: windows open.
Yes, this is a $27,340 Ford Focus. And nav would add another $795. How could a Ford Focus possibly be worth this much? Read on.
Honda has never paid too much attention to how other car makers do things. In the past this led to many highly successful innovations. Today…well today we have the ninth-generation Civic, recently launched as an early 2012 model.
The slide above shows Chrysler’s product plan for the 2010-2014 timeframe, and as it shows, after the new 300 and “refreshed” 200 and T&C, the next Chrysler was supposed to be a C-segment compact sedan. But, reports C&D’s Justin Berkowitz, the subcompact car (essentially a rebadged Lancia Ypsilon) has already been canceled for being positioned too close to the Fiat 500. Meanwhile, it seems that now only one of Chrysler Group’s brands will get a forthcoming compact sedan, and since Dodge has confirmed that it will get a Fiat-based Caliber replacement next year, it seems Chrysler won’t be getting any help in one of the most important segments in the market. So, without a subcompact or compact car coming down the pipe, what does Chrysler have to look forward to? Another crack at the D-segment, come 2013, and a crossover based on the same platform. Apparently the Chrysler brand, which is supposed to be a Lancia-style luxury brand in the Fiat empire, doesn’t need more than four products.
When Chevrolet announced a few months ago that its new Cruze compact sedan would start at $16,995, more than a few people (who likely had not had a chance to personally experience the new car) were shocked. The Cobalt, which the Cruze replaced, had been priced nearly $1,300 lower—and had required incentives to sell at that price. Now Ford has announced pricing for the totally redesigned 2012 Focus, and it starts at…$16,995. (Read More…)
Having earned its place in the American market by launching focused products at its biggest segments, Honda’s 2010 sales performance proved the danger of chasing niches. In his remarks at the North American International Auto Show, Honda’s John Mendel insisted that
sales of the sporty and stylish CR-Z are also exceeding our expectations with sales of more than 5-thousand vehicles in the first four months. It’s great to see our customers embrace this vehicle … and our effort to push hybrid technology in a sporty direction
but besides proving that expectations for the CR-Z were extremely low, it’s hard to see what he meant. Expectations for the 2012 Honda Civic, on the other hand, are considerably higher.
Having recently invested in an all-new global compact car, the Cruze, it was inevitable that Chevrolet would eventually come out with an MPV based on the Cruze’s underpinnings. When the unavoidable people-mover debuted at the 2008 Paris Auto Show as the severely handsome Orlando Concept, its clean yet distinctive look certainly got our attention. And with initial plans calling for US production (Hamtramck), it seemed that The General really was ready to put up to seven Americans in a compact-car-based vehicle. But after we called the Orlando “The Cruze To Wait For,” GM entered bailout hell and the Orlando was canceled and uncanceled for the US market with every new executive that passed through the RenCen.Now, with the first images of the production Orlando hitting the web, the post-concept reality of Chevy’s “Delta MPV7” reflects its troubled development.
The very European-looking concept has been softened into what looks more like a US-market crossover (i.e. something you might spot in Orlando)… but it’s going to be made by Daewoo in South Korea, and is focused on the European market. And based on the current plans, Americans looking for this kind of car from GM will have to spring for a GMC Granite “Urban Utility Vehicle.” Because apparently GM’s product planners think Europeans are into generic, American-named people movers, while Americans are looking for over-the-top designs and an upmarket brand from their fuel-efficient kiddy haulers. On the other hand, as little sense as that premise makes, the production look of the Chevy Orlando won’t exactly inspire anyone to contradict it.
Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen/Audi are all moving inexorably towards a major downmarket expansion, as they develop a new generation of compact and subcompact cars based on front-wheel-drive architectures. Though Volkswagen has played in this space for some time, the move is a major cultural shift for BMW and Mercedes, which are typically associated with rear-drive luxury cars, particularly in the US market. But the truth is that the German luxury brands have always sold products in the German and other European markets that don’t match their premium overseas brand images (see, among other examples, the ubiquity of Mercedes taxis in Germany). But the strange thing about this next push towards smaller cheaper cars is that it’s not not aimed at Germany at all.
Recent Comments