By The Numbers: April 2009 - More of the Same, With a Twist Edition
by John Neff on May 4th 2009 at 12:31PM 
We're doing something new for this month's By the Numbers – ordering each brand and automaker by the most number of vehicles sold to the least. We used to order everything alphabetically, but figured this way easily surfaced an extra facet of information. On to the numbers. Not a single brand managed to improve its sales in April versus last year, despite talk in the media about pent-up demand for autos and incentives that remain historically very high. Past hot performers like Subaru, Hyundai and Kia are dressed in red like the rest of them, though they, along with Audi, managed to fare better than most brands.
The biggest mover and shaker in the chart below appears to be the Ford brand, which, while down 29.96%, is grabbing market share from its competitors. It narrowly beat out Chevy and Toyota for the best selling brand in April. Toyota, however, took a punch to the gut with brand sales falling 42.19% and combined sales with Lexus dropping 41.87%. Only Chrysler LLC, down 48.10%, performed worse last month versus April 2008.
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Data for By the Numbers comes directly from the automakers themselves. It is compiled and calculated by Autoblog in the above chart, which displays the volume sales data for the current month and same month last year, the volume change in percent, the average Daily Sales Rate for the current month and same month last year, and the DSR change in percent. All brands and automakers are ordered according to their current month volume sales data, greatest to least.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Kaveh 3:26PM (5/04/2009)
Wow, how is Suzuki keeping there car line going with 73% drop. Mitsubishi and Saturn sound like there about to go to. I remember the new car show this year and Nobody was Looking at Suzuki cars and trucks , really not a person.
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chconline 12:40PM (5/04/2009)
Wow, Honda is actually doing pretty well for the volume segment it's in. Acura is dragging things down though.
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Yikes 12:58PM (5/04/2009)
Actually, Acura isn't doing too bad. Go look at the drop for other luxury brands.
elprogramer 1:38PM (5/04/2009)
There wasn't a recession in 2005 either...
nastinupe 1:41PM (5/04/2009)
Yea I was about to comment on the same thing. Acura did better than Infiniti, and Infiniti has a much stronger line... to me anyhow.
But I guess that's why us enthusiast can't be CEO's of car companies. Every ride would have 20 inch rims, there would be no such thing as a "sports package" as every car would have the ground effects kit standard and there wouldn't be any "middle" car for any model, i.e, DX, LX, EX (LX being the middle car), every car would either be super duper fuel efficient or have 500 hp.
Judy Zik 2:37PM (5/04/2009)
Honda isn't doing that bad. You have to compare then to how the rest of the market is doing. Speaking of which I will use this as an excuse to post this for those who are interested...
Sorry about the formatting. Only so much you can do in the comments section.
By The Numbers Eh.
April Sales In Canada
Brand 2009 2008 change YTD09 YTD08 change 09MKT Share 08MKTShre
Acura 1,430 2,222 -35.6% 4,730 7,235 -34.6% 1.1% 1.3%
Audi 1,251 1,128 10.9% 3,245 3,062 6.0% 0.8% 0.6%
BMW 1,931 2,310 -16.4% 5,712 6,145 -7.0% 1.3% 1.1%
Chrysler 15,242 24,136 -36.8% 54,181 78,906 -31.3% 12.6% 14.6%
Ford 18,782 20,991 -10.5% 58,558 67,768 -13.6% 13.7% 12.6%
GM 29,476 38,599 -23.6% 79,644 121,284 -34.3% 18.6% 22.5%
Honda 11,865 16,412 -27.7% 35,735 51,775 -31.0% 8.3% 9.6%
Hyundai 10,809 9,412 14.8% 31,146 25,641 21.5% 7.3% 4.8%
Infiniti 542 903 -40.0% 1,944 2,785 -30.2% 0.5% 0.5%
Jaguar 88 113 -22.1% 220 325 -32.3% 0.1% 0.1%
Kia 4,276 3,719 15.0% 11,877 10,879 9.2% 2.8% 2.0%
Land Rover 138 202 -31.7% 604 834 -27.6% 0.1% 0.2%
Lexus 1,621 1,558 4.0% 4,287 4,412 -2.8% 1.0% 0.8%
Mazda 8,195 9,115 -10.1% 24,071 28,712 -16.2% 5.6% 5.3%
Merc-Benz 2,267 1,869 21.3% 7,045 5,864 20.1% 1.6% 1.1%
MINI 366 456 -19.7% 909 1,153 -21.2% 0.2% 0.2%
Mitsubishi 1,844 1,936 -4.8% 6,380 6,237 2.3% 1.5% 1.2%
Nissan 6,532 7,946 -17.8% 21,711 24,876 -12.7% 5.1% 4.6%
Porsche 191 226 -15.5% 555 632 -12.2% 0.1% 0.1%
Saab 160 140 14.3% 423 383 10.4% 0.1% 0.1%
smart 250 359 -30.4% 693 1,113 -37.7% 0.2% 0.2%
Subaru 2,050 1,970 4.1% 6,377 5,979 6.7% 1.5% 1.1%
Suzuki 917 1,451 -36.8% 3,195 3,839 -16.8% 0.7% 0.7%
Toyota 19,599 23,883 -17.9% 53,239 65,835 -19.1% 12.4% 12.2%
Volkswagen 3,496 3,382 3.4% 10,266 11,147 -7.9% 2.4% 2.1%
Volvo 613 767 -20.1% 1,753 2,190 -20.0% 0.4% 0.4%
Lt Vle Sales 143,931 175,205 -17.8% 428,500 539,011 -20.5%
Thought I would add this for comparison and interest. Sourced from Desrosiers. I like including market share since that tells the big picture. In a market that is down 17.8% I think that makes a pretty good baseline to draw from. If you are down more than 17.8% then it is your brand that is falling and not just the economy. If you are down less than 17.8% you could blame it on the economy. I think it is a better indicator of the actual strength of a brand and lineup.
Of course the big suprise for everyone following the US story is that some brands in Canada continue to grow. The meltdown hasn't burned this market as much yet and even premium brands like Mercedes are still showing growth. I would attribute most of that growth though to the implosion of Acura and Inifinity as luxury brands.
In the lower price ranges Hyundai and Kia are also up thanks to steep pricing discounts. You can buy an Accent in Canada today for less than it sold for 10 years ago. With the Canadian Dollar no longer as strong this has to be hitting their margins where it hurts. Toyota and Nissan are pretty much holding stead down almost exactly as much as the market. No suprise GM and Chrysler are down. Chrysler goes from being #2 in Canada this month last year to #4 behind #1GM #2Toyota #3 Ford. Unfortunately this comes after some massive incentives by GM and Chrysler. Some discounts at GM were virtually unheard of. A "new" 2009 Uplander was selling for $14,595 this month which is less than a 2007 Freestar retails for on the used market. The Aveo was also selling for less than $9000 which is the first time I have seen a new vehicle that cheap in a modern times. The fact that they are still down that much with that kind of discounting reflects pretty strongly on how bad things are for them.
Among the large volume brands Ford is the biggest winner picking up market share and pulling in results better than the market. The unexpected loser would be Honda pulling in a pretty steep decline. With a pretty strong lineup of fuel efficient vehicles you would expect them to be doing well. Unfortunately for Honda a lot of the strength this month in vehicle sales in Canada came from the Truck market where the Ridgeline gets little respect when compared to the new F-150 and Sierras selling for less than $15,000.
My biggest suprise this month was the way Suzuki is dying fast. For a company that doesn't have a large margin on their vehicles I don't see how they can survive at such low volumes on both sides of the border in North America for very long. I was also suprised at the way Mitsubishi continues to grow market share in Canada while dying fast in the US. It isn't a stretch to imagine Mitsu soon selling more vehicles in Canada than it does in the US. Not a good sign for their future in the US.
tuxchown 10:08PM (5/04/2009)
Honda's positioning is exceptional considering the fact that for 2008 Honda was behind all three American companies.
DJ 12:43PM (5/04/2009)
Is it any surprise that brands nearing death....HUMMER, Saab, Pontiac, and Saturn occupy the bottom of the rankings?
BTW, is this the first month that Subaru has had down sales in recent memory?
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Mr.Oak 12:56PM (5/04/2009)
GM sells more Hummers than Saabs that's surprising.
toronado455 1:11PM (5/04/2009)
According to these monthly reports that Autoblog has been posting, Subaru has been doing extremely well during the downturn. They have consistently been one of the least hard hit - and by a wide margin. This report showing only a 6.69% drop is the most significant drop I can remember seeing for them. Pretty amazing. I wonder what that is all about.
apearlman 1:21PM (5/04/2009)
GM's destruction of Saab is really sad. As recently as 2005, Saab sold three times as many cars per day as the 2009 numbers so far.
mikeyt 1:35PM (5/04/2009)
At least in my area (NJ), I can easily say that at least half of the saab francises have been shut down within the past year / year-and-a-half. When you're cutting down the outlets that dramatically, you're definately going to have less sales. People aren't going to travel 30 miles when you have a plethora of other options half the distance.
Das Otto 2:12PM (5/04/2009)
Subaru didn't have enough fleet to sustain the myth.
BigMcLargeHuge 2:22PM (5/04/2009)
@toronado,
I would guess it has to do with Subaru being a utilitarian niche-brand.
Subarus are tools to some people. More like a Craftsman than a car, you replace-as-needed.
Maybe people just kinda replace their 1994 Outback hits 250K miles. Regardless of the market conditions.
s13hybrid 2:48PM (5/04/2009)
@ BigmclargeHuge: Plus I assume that people downsizing from their SUVs find Subaru's smaller SUV/wagons with their tried and true awd to be very tempting. This back to basics mentality in the US right now makes the utilitarian Subaru a good choice (and they offer the somewhat practical WRX/STI for us performance oriented people).
Stuka 8:04PM (5/04/2009)
@s13hybrid: The only issue I see with that is that Subaru's get horrible fuel economy for their catagory. With their best fuel economy coming from a bare bones Legacy, which is rated at 29mpg. Around where I live, every other person owns a Jeep, or a Subaru. And the Subaru's get identical mileage for daily driving up here in the mountains. Some friends of mine got an Outback to use for better mileage than their excursion. Only to find out the Outback only managed 3mpg better (both were 2004's) in mixed daily driving, but carried half the people and gear.
But I do think Subaru has managed to do ok as they are a very nitch brand, they don't have other umbrella brands to drag them down, and they have never been a high volume seller.
s13hybrid 4:39PM (5/04/2009)
Stuka: I see your point, but perception is everything to a lot of buyers. To them a Jeep looks like it has worse gas mileage than their Forester.
John 5:29PM (5/04/2009)
@DJ: This is the first month in the past half-year that Subaru didn't increase in year-over-year sales (though they are still up on a Year-to-Date basis). Subaru is also losing the winter AWD bonus as things warm up.
That said, from a percentage of capacity (high water mark in sales) over the past 2 years, Subaru is absolutely *crushing* the competition. Over the past couple months, Subaru still sold within 80% of their highest sales month (Jun '08), and they are the only OEM to have 4 months selling over 75% since Sep '08 (GM, VW, and Hyundai each have had 1 good month), when things basically fell off the cliff. Subaru has consistently overperformed by retaining sales like nobody else:
59% BMW group
47% Chrysler LLC
54% FoMoCo
49% GM
56% Honda America
56% Hyundai
54% Nissan NA
76% FHI Subaru
56% Toyota
66% VW Audi
58% overall
That is, over the past 7 months, the average car group lost 42% of its overall sales volume compared to it's best sales month in the last couple years. Chrysler and GM lost more than 50% of their sales. VW Audi only lost 34%, while Subaru is retaining a commanding edge by limiting their losses to 24%.
With one "bad" month Subaru isn't in such bad shape - any other OEM would love to have such the same proportional reductions.
Revs 12:44PM (5/04/2009)
No surprises there. I'd wager an annual US sales figure of just under 10 million isn't out of the question unless the cash for clunkers bill passes, which might juice up sales somewhat. Still, the fundamentals are pretty bad: high unemployment and very tight credit don't make for good auto sales. I wonder how long even non-US manufacturers can deal with this.
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John 1:27PM (5/04/2009)
The cash for clunkers program will make little difference in the overall picture. All it will do is pull sales forward and then next year sales will be flat again. It will actually drive up used car values even higher because less will be available after scrapping cars that are still roadworthy. This will hurt lower income people who more often buy used.
In the end it's a waste of billions more taxpayer dollars.