Auto Sales 2011: Everybody Gaining Except Japan
By Bill Visnic October 25, 2011
The rough ride Japanese automakers have endured this year is well- and often-documented, but a new Edmunds.com analysis of U.S. new-vehicle sales through the first three quarters of 2011 shows the pervasiveness of Japan’s pain: sales for only eight of the 33 makes tracked by Edmunds.com have declined compared with 2010 – and five of the decliners are volume Japanese makes. Excluding the low-volume smart brand, the largest sales retreat in the first nine months of the year was the 16.5-percent slide posted by Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus premium-vehicle division.
Compared with the first nine months of 2010, U.S. auto sales weathered a multifarious range of bad economic signals to improve by an overall 10.4 percent to 9,518,707 sales. And the sales performance of 21 of 33 makes was better than the industry average. Judging sales gains for the first nine months on a percentage basis, it’s been good to be small, with the gainers led by Mitsubishi Motors North America’s 58.4-percent leap to 66,007 total sales. Other small makes with the largest percentage gains included Saab USA’s 42.7-percent improvement (although volume remained meager at 4,614 units), Porsche Cars North America at 28.1 percent (on 22,644 total sales) and Volvo Cars, which improved 26.8 percent to 52,155 sales through September.
High-volume makes with the best sales improvement through the first nine months of the year include Jeep, where a 46.4-percent leap made it the second-best overall gainer in terms of percentage. Through the first three quarters, Jeep sold nearly 100,000 units more than during the same period in 2010. The same can be said of Kia Motors America, where sales improved 37.1 percent, making the South Korean brand the fourth most-improved make so far this year. Other volume makes posting marked gains compared with 2010: General Motors Co.’s GMC division (27.9 percent); Volkswagen of America (22.2 percent); Ford Motor Co. (17.9 percent and the industry’s largest volume gainer); Nissan North America (up 17.2 percent and more than 100,000 units) and Chevrolet at 15.3 percent.
No Gain = Plenty Of Pain
In an overall U.S. market up 10.4 percent, any sales decline is a bitter pill, but particularly so for high-volume makes such as Toyota Motor Sales USA, where not only was its Lexus unit the industry’s biggest loser through the first nine months, but the Toyota brand itself dropped 8.5 percent to 1,021,269 sales. Toyota’s decline surpassed major rival American Honda Motor Co. Inc. (-5.6 percent) and its Acura upscale unit’s 7.5-percent slide so far this year. Other notable decliners include the Chrysler Group LLC’s Chrysler brand, off 0.3 percent, and Nissan’s Infiniti luxury-vehicle division, where sales slid 3.5 percent compared with the first three quarters of 2011. Some formerly hot makes that have cooled are: Subaru of America, up 1 percent (to 195,550 sales) and GM’s Cadillac, which was up 7.8 percent to 113,191 sales so far this year. Ford’s Lincoln division also is pacing ahead of 2010, with sales up 2.5 percent.
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