“We can’t make cars as fast as they sell in China,” said an old friend of mine last night on the phone from Wolfsburg. He works at Volkswagen, the company that fights with GM for the title of King of the Middle Kingdom. I wanted his opinion on the sudden reduction in Chinese car sales. His answer? “What reduction? We are building three new factories in China, and we better get on with it.” He is right. If they don’t hustle, the competition will pour concrete faster than Volkswagen does. (Read More…)
Retail market share is one of those metrics that tends to cut through the vagueness of pure sales-volume numbers, reflecting an automaker’s performance compared to the competition, without the distraction of fleet sales. It’s not a perfect measure of a business’s overall strength, as fleet sales can help with economies of scale and capacity utilization, but it’s one of the most accurate ways to measure the appeal of a firm’s products with real consumers. And, based on this chart of GM’s monthly retail market share (as calculated by TrueCar VP for Industry Analysis and all-round data ninja Jesse Toprak), GM’s much-vaunted Lutz-era products aren’t moving the needle with those real consumers. Emerging from bankruptcy didn’t seem to provide much of boost either. And unless drastic happens soon, GM’s battle for consumer acceptance will continue its slow but steady decline. Not good!
Hit the jump for raw data and a historical chart of GM’s non-retail market share.
Volkswagen is hitting on all cylinders this year. The Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand delivered 1.23 million units in the first quarter of 2011, up 10.4 percent from 1.11 million in the same period of 2010. That according to an emailed statement from Wolfsburg.
In March, Volkswagen also racked up record deliveries: For the first time, more than 468,000 (March 2010: 446,000; +4.9 percent) vehicles changed hands. Who’s buying all these cars? (Read More…)
Reuters reports that auto market research firm CNW Research is projecting April transaction prices to be the highest in 15 years, when measured as a percentage of MSRP. According to the report, early April sales show average transaction prices hitting 87% of MSRP, the highest such level since 1996. By comparison, transaction prices were running at around 77% of MSRP during the industry’s down year of 2009. Looser credit (subprime sales are up 92% from last year), tsunami-related production delays and lower supplies of used cars, particularly small cars, are all given credit for contributing to the rising prices, although bailout-era capacity reductions clearly set the stage for this comeback. And with tsunami-related interruptions still working themselves through the system, demand could push prices higher still. But, says CNW principal Art Spinella, don’t look for the manufacturers to reap all of the rewards of rising transaction prices.
Dealers are the primary beneficiary of these dwindling discounts since they are using fewer of their own dollars to close a deal than was necessary just a few years ago
Here is another one who’s not scared by China’s suddenly sedate growth rates: Daimler. Or “Benz” as they call them in China. With 43,990 units sold in China in the first quarter, up 86 percent from a year earlier, Ulrich Walker, chairman and chief executive for Daimler Northeast Asia, told Reuters that he is planning for a growth rate of at least 20 percent in 2011, and that’s a “conservative” target. (Read More…)
The sun is shining into the shrouded windows here at TTAC HQ, seriously tempting me away from the computer for the first time since Oregon’s long, grey winter set in. In celebration of the fine weather and the impending weekend, we continue our March sales coverage by taking a look at the cars we call “weekend toys.” There’s no real rhyme or reason to this “segment,” as it spans a variety of sizes and price points. So rather than seeing this as a segment of directly-competing models, just think of it as an update on the world of (relatively) irrational vehicle purchases. The chart above represents the most popular vehicles that we think qualify as sufficiently irrational… hit the jump for an extended chart, including the higher-priced, lower-volume models.
Remember carmageddon? When the world came to an end? When luxury was definitely not PC? When we would only drive small cars or none at all, forever and ever? For BMW, it’s just like a bad dream. Munich’s BMW Group sold more vehicles in March than ever before in any month of the company’s storied history, the company tells us in an email. BMW sold a total of 165,842 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce in March, 17 percent over March in the prior year. BMW exceeded even its own pre-crisis sales high of 152,721 vehicles, recorded in December 2007. Who’s buying all those cars? (Read More…)
Having inadvertently caused confusion over GM and Ford’s full-sized pickup rivalry, and in the spirit of the reinvigorated cross-town battles between Ford and GM, I thought I’d share the longer view on the full-size pickup wars since 1995. Now, this graph is far from perfect, as GM’s Chevy Avalanche, Escalade EXT and HUMMER trucks (not to mention the Japanese also-rans) were a bridge too far for our underpowered graphing software (although, with Avalanche added, the GM total came within about 8k units of F-Series last year). Meanwhile, a real drilldown of full-sized truck data would include SUV derivatives as well as either historical data for GM’s “medium duty” trucks or a breakdown of F-Series by size. We could make excuses for why those factors weren’t included on this chart, but the omission will inevitably be blamed on bias, so why bother?
Either way, it’s easy to see why tensions are high between Ford and GM truck fans… having traded places several times over the last 15 years, the pickup wars are as tight as they could be.
Even with Sierra sales added in, GM’s trucks just couldn’t keep up with the Ford F-Series juggernaut this month. Ram, meanwhile is playing a distant third and the Japanese entries might as well not even exist. On the other hand, when it comes to compact and mid-sized pickups (chart after the jump), the Japanese entries are doing quite a bit better. Unfortunately for them, the top three compact-mid pickups combined couldn’t match the F-Series last month. Big trucks still sell in big numbers…
TTAC’s resident Volvo freak ALex Dykes points us to some first images of Volvo’s updated V70, which boasts a new interior and an updated exterior. There will be new engines for Europe, as well as a few new features like rear-seat entertainment and the City Safety system, but it’s a mild change. Is it enough to get the V70 off of Volvo’s North American kill list? Hit the jump for more pictures, and a graph of Volvo’s March US sales for a look at the challenge Volvo is facing in this country.
The stakes might not be as high as they could be in the Large/Premium segment, but as Kissinger pointed out, things can get nasty because the stakes are so low. And sure enough, by hook or by crook (or fleet sales), we have a tight fight for the vestiges of America’s once-proud large-premium car segment. You won’t find Honda and Toyota dominating this automotive land of the lost, and no sign sign of those troublesome Korean upstarts either (for now). Hell, the Buick Lucerne only missed this chart by a measly 49 units. ‘
But while the Charger’s sales improve as new models hit the lots, America’s other main contenders, the Taurus and LaCrosse, are showing signs of weakness. This old-school segment could well turn into a Mopar playground in the short term, with revitalized 300 and Charger models battling for dominance. But unless they bust out of this segment, and start competing at Impala volume (which hit 18,063 last month, forcing an update to our midsizer chart), they’ll be kings of a small, aging playground.
Despite the media’s on-again-off-again love affair with the “OMG SMALL CARS ARE TAKING OVER!” storyline, the US-market B-segment isn’t exhibiting many signs of serious competition (at least in comparison to the C- and D-segments). The Versa has ruled the segment largely unchallenged for years, with only the Soul posing anything resembling a serious threat. Former rivals like the Fit, Accent, Yaris and Aveo are getting old and losing momentum, although most have replacements waiting in the wings. A new Versa is about to debut as well, but because it’s based on the smaller, cheaper Micra platform, it may give up the Versa’s value-size advantage. We’re still waiting for American consumers to flock to subcompacts, but maybe they’re just waiting for some serious competition in the segment…
Escape and CR-V swapped spots last month, although Honda’s long-running compact CUV retained the top position in Year-To-Date sales. Toyota’s RAV4 dropped significantly last month compared to March 2010’s incentive-fueled volume binge, and though sales were up compared to the month before, it wasn’t enough to retake third place in the YTD standings from Equinox. The only other model failing to top its year-ago numbers was the Forester, a fact that may indicate a slowdown in Subaru’s strong recession-era sales growth. And though Nissan’s Juke is based on a B-segment platform and offers considerably less utility than the rest of the C-CUVs, it outsold Mazda’s CX-7, earning itself a spot on our chart.
Competition in the compact car segment hasn’t hit the fever pitch of the midsized brawl, but make no mistake, there’s a battle brewing. Toyota’s dominance last month has been reversed, with Honda taking the top spot in March, but Corolla still enjoys a five-digit advantage in Year-To-Date sales. Cruze is the leading candidate to challenge the long-reigning Honda-Toyota dominance in this segment, but it’s got a grip of upstarts breathing down its neck. Within a few months it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Honda-Toyota duopoly toppled in the coming months, just as we’ve seen in the D-Segment. Exciting times..
The stakes might not be as high as 
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