May was a mixed bag in terms of new-car sales. Demand was down slightly because of a drop in incentives, and the supply of some Japanese brands was down because of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Unsurprisingly, Japan’s big three automakers saw sales decline from May 2010. Toyota was off the most, down a tremendous 27.9% from May 2010. Its Lexus division was down 40%.
The two other major Japanese brands were less impacted but still saw large declines. Honda was off by 16.1% and Nissan by 9%. While not as big a seller as the other three, Subaru was down 15.3% after months of strong sales.
Ford and GM saw sales flatten from last year, losing 0.1% and 1.2% respectively, despite huge growth in small-car sales. Ford’s new 2012 Focus saw sales up 31.7% to 22,303 units, and Chevy’s Cruze had another strong month, besting the Focus with 22,711 units sold.
The third domestic automaker, Chrysler, saw sales increase 10% with its best May since 2008. Three vehicles were responsible for the bulk of the growth: the new Chrysler 200 sedan and the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs.
Chrysler passed Toyota and Honda to become the third best-selling automaker in the U.S. in May behind GM and Ford.
High gas prices and the Japanese quake have dramatically shifted the best-sellers’ list for April. It’s now skewed toward high-efficiency cars as well as Korean and American makes.
April’s big winners are Hyundai and Chevrolet. Hyundai laid claim to two slots on the top 10 list — the first time the automaker has achieved this feat — for its redesigned 2011 Hyundai Sonata and Elantra sedans. 2011 Elantra sales were up an astonishing 128.8% in April. The model outsold nameplates like the Ford Focus and Fusion and Nissan Altima, which are usually best-sellers.
For the first time, the Chevrolet Cruze joins the top 10 ranks with 25,160 vehicles sold for the month. The new compact managed to outsell all its competitors except the Honda Civic. Despite the Cruze’s success, Silverado sales lagged for the month. The truck fell from its usual second place to fourth. The Ford F-Series remained the best-selling vehicle in America for April, but high-gas prices have affected that truck’s product mix. V-6-equipped F-150s made up 50% of the model’s sales, which is up from 40% in March, according to
PickupTrucks.com.
For the month, most major automakers saw double-digit month-over-month sales growth: Nissan (12.2%), Hyundai (40.3%), GM (26.4%), Ford (16.4%), though Toyota (-2.4%) and Honda (5.7%) trumped the trend.
This is the first time in at least 12 months that Japanese automakers didn’t control at least half of the places on the top 10 list. Nissan doesn’t have any vehicles within the top 10 ranks for April. Typically, the Altima sells well; it’s still the third best-selling midsize sedan year-to-date.
Nissan,
Toyota and
Honda are in the midst of a supply crunch, which is due in part to the March earthquake and tsunami that continue to thwart Japanese industrial output.
The full top 10 list is below.
Despite mounting pressures on the auto industry from rising gas prices and growing concerns involving the production delays and the earthquake in Japan, car shoppers still bought new vehicles in droves in March.
While all automakers generally did well, Hyundai (up 32%), Ford (up 28.2%) and Nissan (up 26.9%) performed above average. Ford (selling only Ford and Lincoln models) with 212,777 cars sold, outsold all four brands at GM (206,621 cars sold, up 11.4%) to become the best-selling automaker in the United States in March. GM is still the best-seller year-to-date.
Ford has three vehicles in the top 10 for March, the most of any automaker. That’s an accolade typically reserved for Honda. Toyota was the only major automaker with losses compared with March 2010 (down 9.2%). The Toyota Camry and the Toyota Corolla were the only vehicles showing falling sales in the top 10.
Seven vehicles on the list sold more than 30,000 units in March, compared with only three that did that in the first two months of 2011.
The list also shows significant gains in the midsize sedan category. Typically, the top two spots are pickup trucks, but the Honda Accord managed to wrestle the second spot from the Chevrolet Silverado, a perennial favorite. The Camry, typically the best-selling midsize sedan, fell behind both the Accord and the Nissan Altima in March. The Hyundai Sonata rejoins the top 10 after a four-month abscence, with sales up 63.4% for the year.
Check out the full list below:
The chilly weather throughout the country didn’t stop car shoppers in February. Car sales from every major automaker were up, and some like Nissan actually had record February sales last month. General Motor’s sales were up 49%.
Toyota saw sales increase 41.8% from last February when it was in the midst of its largest recall in history. While the upswing was expected, the Camry and Corolla still sold strongly overall, retaining spots in the top five.
What’s driving the boom? Increasing consumer confidence, good credit and healthy rebates on new cars all play a role. We’d like to hear from our readers if they bought a new car in February and why they did so.
The top 10 remains largely the same with the Toyota Camry taking the top spot among sedans but battling a surging Ford Fusion.
The Chevy Cruze made a strong push at 18,556 units, which is a huge number for GM’s compact sedan, but it still missed the top 10. Ford’s aging Focus (10,879) along with the new Fiesta (6,270) didn’t sell that many units combined.
January saw sales increase over the same month last year, but they couldn’t maintain the frenzied pace of the end of 2010. Interestingly enough, there was not one segment that saw a huge uptick versus another, so the top 10 list will look familiar to most of our readers.
Nearly every make, foreign and domestic, saw sales go up — some, like Subaru and Kia, at a record pace. The biggest losers to come out of the month were Lincoln, down 21% despite a new MKX SUV, and Lexus, down 30.6% without many new models to promote. Lexus sold just 2,215 ES sedans, a previous best-seller. Lincoln’s MKZ saw sales tick slightly upward 17.5% to 1,574 units.
Meanwhile, GM’s Buick is resurging. Sales of its new Regal sedan came in at 2,335 units. The LaCrosse, redesigned in 2010, sold 3,771 units, and even the ancient Lucerne outsold the Lexus at 2,816 units.
The full top 10 list is below.
Scaling back from eight brands to four seems to be working for the reconstituted General Motors.
The company sold 2.2 million new cars, trucks and SUVs in 2010, keeping its title as the best-selling automaker in the U.S. Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC are the four remaining GM brands.
GM was followed by Ford, which saw tremendous gains in market share despite shedding a few brands of its own this past year, most recently Mercury.
Toyota was one of the few automakers that actually saw sales decline in 2010, which was in part due to the gigantic recall woes it faced. See how far it fell in the chart below.
2010 was a year of rebirth in the auto industry. Not because GM and Chrysler clawed their way back to life, but because people were buying more cars of every kind.
The top 10 from 2009 was similar to 2010’s top 10, but the trend we saw throughout this past year was the return of the truck. SUVs also sold well, but the Chevy Silverado did well enough to retake its No. 2 spot from the Toyota Camry.
Unsurprisingly, the Toyota Corolla and Camry were the only two cars on the list to see sales decline in what was an otherwise booming 2010. The full list is below.
