… shows Ford, Lincoln, Hyundai, and KIA to be the winners. The other marques… not so much, although it appears that GM has not yet reported their sales figures.
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Not surprising is it? Or it shouldn’t be.
Big markups on new cars, high gas prices (and everything else!) and higher interest rates are all reasons why a buyer would move down market to the cheaper brands.
Same happening with houses. The price surge has retreated as interest rates on mortgages has increased, too.
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That is true, but it doesn’t explain why Honda has been clobbered so badly. Their cars are fuel efficient, and the Civic and HRV are–relatively speaking–cheaper than some of their competition.
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I think Honda’s (and other makers’) sales problems are largely because of limited supplies. I passed a number of car lots on a recent 9 hour drive, all were at least 2/3 empty of cars.
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Volvo may be down because of their plan to eliminate gas vehicles . Kia sales may be up on the west and east coasts but the dealer in Tulsa , OK has very few new vehicles to sell . I think the Chevrolet Trax is a decent and well priced vehicle but it seems to be on the chopping block .
I am just glad we are not in the market for a vehicle now . I even thought about a classic car but the auction prices are crazy also.
The same seems to be true in my area also–generally speaking. The major exception seems to be Tesla. Even though there are a large number of them on the road already, that company seems to have an ample supply available for sale.
At Quakerbridge Mall, a perimeter parking lot has been used as a storage facility for new Teslas for the past few years, and when I drove past it a couple of weeks ago, there were at least 40 cars in that storage lot.
No, it doesn’t. Not sure what is going on here. Honda seems to have lost their way but that problem has been a bit of an issue for a while now.
My local Honda dealer always seems to have a lot full of cars. Even during the depths of the chip crisis, they had cars. They also didn’t advertise nearly as much as the local Kia dealers.
The strangest part of that sales report relates to the specific sales figures for their very thrifty Civic:
“The just-redesigned Honda Civic, a staple of the automaker’s lineup, saw its monthly sales drop by a staggering 62.7% in August.”
Since I doubt that a large percentage of the public is aware that the reliability of Honda’s newer cars has dropped a lot over the past few years, there has to some another explanation for bad sales figures for that relatively-inexpensive, fuel-efficient model.
Local Honda dealer’s had a very empty lot for some time now, Co worker bought a Accord Hybrid this summer but had to take next one coming in, Chevy/Buick/GMC dealer’s been keeping their lot looking full with pre-owned cars, most of the new vehicles are sold before the truck arrives.
Very limited supply of Honda’s and Toyota’s around the country. Says supplies may be back up sometime next year.
These were a couple of really strange years so I’m not sure if sales figures compared to last year are significant. Given supply, people not driving, etc.
However just read that search information on how to sell my car is up 222% so there might be a glut of used cars developing out there in car land. Seems like folks are trying to reduce cost and generate some cash.
I guess Honda’s problem is they can’t sell many Civics if they have few or no Civics on the lot to sell. The next question, is the supply of Civics lower than other economy cars? If so, what is different about Honda than the other manufacturers in getting their cars to the dealerships? Maybe Honda made an unfortunate decision to use a particular high tech part source vendor, are single-sourced, and the Honda production line is now entirely dependent on the vendor supplying the needed part.
Or maybe the Civic is just more expensive than other comparable cars, like the Corolla, Sentra, Mazda 3, etc.
Well there is MRP to forecast the parts needed, then accountants insisting on JIT. In a a supply chain problem environment, JIT doesn’t work real well. Who knows what each one did though?
It sounds like ‘all of the above’. Honda just announced a 40% reduction in output at its Japan plants.
Honda To Cut Output By Up to 40 Percent At Japanese Plants (jalopnik.com)