Road Reality » Industry Update

Motor Trend Announces 2012 Truck Of The Year

John Suit — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:00:39 +0000

Well, it’s award time in the automotive industry! Last week, Car & Driver announced its Top 10 Cars of 2012, and this week, Motor Trend has announced their Truck Of The Year winner, the Ford F-150. With around 650,000 variations, not including paint colors, there’s something for everyone. The F-150′s configurational highlights include four engine choices, three bed lengths, three cab lengths, and a myriad of creature comforts and capability-enhancing options. The engine which gave the F-150 a leg up in the competition was the EcoBoost V6, with its twin-turbo and direct injection technologies. Its power and fuel economy bested that of the V8s in its rivals. Click on over to Motor Trend to read their press release.

by John Suit

Source: Motor Trend

Image Source: Motor Trend

February 2011 Sales and Analysis

John Suit — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:00:52 +0000

February was a great month for new-car sales, with the total volume up 21.28% over January, and almost 27% over February of 2010. Those are the overall numbers, but the general trend for February was that American car companies had a good time, while most of their overseas competitors struggled. Click past the jump for my analysis and graphs.

Month-to-month, the big winners were Dodge, Ford, Honda, Nissan, RAM and Toyota. Year-to-year, all of GM’s brands (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC), as well as Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, RAM and Toyota had significant increases. While that may not mean a lot, it shows that cars built in North America are selling at a much better pace than those built in Europe and Asia. There may be a lot of reasons for this, but I suspect the main one is pricing. The economy still hasn’t regained a lot of its strength, so buyers are wary of spending much over $40,000, which is where a lot of BMW and Mercedes-Benz products land. Accords, Altimas, Camrys, Fusions and Sonatas are the bulk of sales for their respective companies, and with gas prices on the rise again, look for smaller cars to win out in the next few months.

Meanwhile, the surprise was RAM, which sold over 20,000 vehicles in February, a feat I doubt it will best if gas prices stay high.

On the negative side of things, Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes, Porsche, Saab and Suzuki had less sales in February than they did the previous month. While Suzuki is nowhere near a luxury marque, the rest shows just how soft the luxury market is right now. BMW had a minuscule 500-car increase in sales from January to February, which hardly counts during a month which saw 20-30% increases in month-to-month sales for some of its competitors.

With 1.8-million vehicles already sold this year in America, I’m going to stick with my 12.5-13 million new-car sales prediction. The actual number of sales may be helped or hurt by rising gas prices, as more truck owners may want to make a trade in order to gain fuel economy.

by John Suit

January 2011 Sales Figures and Analysis

John Suit — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:00:04 +0000

With the first month of 2011 done with, a lot of eyes are on the automotive sector of our economy. New-car sales figures are used by some as a bellwether of the national economy. If consumers are spending money on new cars, it means they are happy and secure in their jobs, have some sort of savings, and are willing to spend some of their precious income. When times are rougher, people obviously will forgo buying a new car until their situation improves.

After December’s fairly healthy sales volume, I didn’t expect a whole lot for January, but I was pleasantly surprised that over 815,000 new vehicles were sold. This is a big bump over January of 2010, which saw sales of only 699,000 new vehicles.

Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, Jeep, and Toyota saw big increases over 2010′s January sales, while GMC, Hyundai and Nissan had smaller – but still notable – increases. Meanwhile, Lexus and Mazda saw significant declines, which is somewhat puzzling, but hopefully just a speed bump for each company.

With 815,000 vehicles sold in January, I am predicting 12.5-13 million new vehicle sales this year. I’m trying to be conservative, given the 11.5-million new vehicle sales for the US in 2010. That’s an increase of 8.5% to 13%, for those of you keeping track at home.

Lots of new 2012 model year vehicles are expected to make their debuts this year, so the market could surprise me and do better than I expect, but I doubt it, based on what I’ve seen in the last 2 years.

by John Suit

December 2010 and a Year-end Wrap-up for Automotive Sales in the US

John Suit — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:00:50 +0000

Well, the end of the year came and went, without much fanfare. While everyone in Times Square watched the ball drop, the automotive companies selling their hardware in the US were counting the last of the sales figures. How did everyone fare? Click past the jump to find out!

The extra marketing push that accompanies the end of each calendar year surely paid off this year, with sales in December up an astounding 31% over November. Granted, there’s a lot of good deals to be had, but I didn’t expect that big of a jump!

The big winners in December were GM, Ford and Toyota, while Honda, Chrysler and Nissan also had good a good month. The surprise was Hyundai, whose sales were only up a little from November, even though they had a lot of advertising on TV and radio, and have had such a breakout year.

It was also a blue-collar Christmas, because while the more mainstream Fords and Chevys sold well, the only luxury marque to really drive numbers up month-to-month was Lexus.

Speaking of Ford and Chevy, the perennial rivals ended up at the top, with GM outselling Ford by less than 200,000 vehicles. Toyota came in 3rd, by the same margin, and Honda and Chrysler round out the top 5. The big news is Hyundai, which was bested by Nissan by a scant 14,000 vehicles sold in 2010.

It was a wild ride in 2010, so let’s hope for some good growth and stability in 2011. 11.5-million vehicles were sold in 2010, so I’d expect 12.5-13 million to be sold in 2011. Look for Ford to continue its sales successes, while GM will be working hard to hold its own. Toyota might have regained some of the faith of its customers in late 2010, so they’ll be in the hunt as well. Hyundai’s Equus is showing up sometime this year, and while it won’t be a big numbers car like the Sonata, it’ll give Hyundai an easy way to “trickle down” new technologies and features into its more mainstream cars.

Drive safely during the new year!

by John Suit

Sales Figures: November, 2010

John Suit — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:00:23 +0000

Another month closer to the end of the year, and another slump for the new-car market. Beating the slump were Nissan, Suzuki and Volkswagen, while BMW, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Subaru all had minor losses. It was a slow month, and put the US Automotive industry at a total of 10.4 million new-car sales for 2010.

November is not usually a big car sales month anyway, but to see an 8.10% drop over October surprised me a little. I expected the slump to be closer to 5%. Most people are back into the swing of work, and the temperatures are starting to drop, meaning people don’t want to be outdoors as often – much less walking around a car lot. Also, Christmas shopping and Thanksgiving traveling mean a lot fewer people on car dealers’ lots as well.

Either way, I expect to see another slump in December, with sales of luxury cars to be up or at least even, just as they were in November. We probably won’t see another big month until tax returns start showing up in February or March of 2011.

Check out Road Reality in early January, 2011 for December’s numbers and a wrap-up of the year.

by John Suit

Sales Figures: October, 2010

John Suit — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:00:05 +0000

The spookiest month of the year is over … and it wasn’t scary for most automakers. Sales were down just a hair from September, which I expected, as schools get into full swing and most people start shopping for the holidays. I don’t expect sales to pick back up until closer to the new year, with some people receiving transportation as a gift, and any leftover 2010 models having their prices slashed.

GMC and Lexus saw significant month-to-month increases, while most of the rest saw their sales numbers stay flat. In some cases, however, flat sales weren’t a bad thing – Chrysler, for instance, saw over 28,000 sales, which is being propped up by its new 2011 Grand Cherokee SUV.

Chevrolet saw a modest increase of about 3,000 vehicles, which can be attributed to its Cruze going on sale. Nissan, meanwhile, saw a continuance of its roller coaster of a year, with just under 62,000 vehicles sold in October, down 4,000 from September.

Overall, the industry has sold just over 9.5-million vehicles, and with only two months left in the year, it’ll be interesting to see if the market can buy up 2 more million vehicles in November and December, to meet my earlier prediction of 11.5-million new-cars sold in 2010. If sales stay close to where they’ve been or continue the downward slide started after July, we’re looking at closer to 11-million sales, but no more.

Oh, and before I forget: Lexus took back the luxury sales crown from Mercedes in October, giving their German rivals only a single month to hold onto it.

by John Suit