Thanks. With the new GX coming and hopefully more HS production, sales for 2010 should hold steady. The GS and SC can continue to drop but its not many vehicles.

 

The 2011 M looks pretty good. I don't think it'll be a sales flop, because this whole class aside from the 5 series and E class aren't high volume sellers. Aside from that it'll most definitely outsell it's number one competitor the Acura RL

But I'm more interested in the upcoming GS. I hope that Lexus get's it right and that it can once again sell in 5/E levels.

 

that's really amazing. and to those who say that includes the coupe - big whoop - coupe sales are never big.

that is absurd. goals are just that, goals, and if not met, that doesn't mean something's a failure. again you fail to miss the many points. hyundai has accomplished a GREAT deal with the genesis. people are talking about hyundai. they ARE selling, fairly consistently. it takes TIME to take a brand's perception upward. with just ONE model (the coupe doesn't really count because it's certainly not a luxury vehicle and i'm sure the sales numbers are tiny even though it's a great vehicle), that makes the sale harder. acura, audi, infiniti would love to have genesis sales "failure". you just continue to pour the haterade on hyundai.

only if they need to 'move' unsold inventory, otherwise, eliminating most if not all profit is as dumb as bmw doing it. bmw does it because it's cheaper than getting rid of overpaid excess german workers due to absurd labor laws.

i agree. it's a joke.

about lexus sales... some good spin comments in here about total sales leadership, but lexus is the is,rx,es company - those 3 vehicles accounted for 85% of all sales. everything else is dead, except the HS with an ok money and the LS which is not huge but not bad for a higher priced vehicle. gs, sc, gx, lx are all dead.

on a brighter note, lexus must be ecstatic about the rx, and deservedly so. it's a great vehicle positions and redesigned perfectly. way to go!

 

GS has NEVER sold at 5/E levels, 5/E have been consistently 4-5k sales per month cars since forever. Lexus sales goal for the GS has always been much less, the goal was 30K per year/2.5k per month when they launch the 3GS, they did more than that at 30k+ the first year, pretty good the second year too, but have dropped off since, especially after the economy tanked ...

 

If you look at the sales of the CLK it replaced (& priced the same), it could be 1500 per month when brand new. Not huge, but highly significant when you add them to the sedan sales.

 

A few notes, but most importantly, what happened to the Audi A4?

I have been scrolling through all of the sales sheets and this car cannot get close to the numbers for rivals which are at the end of their model cycles- down 20% for the month. What happened? With all of the momentum and hype that Audi has been enjoying, the A4 is FLAT.

The brand continues to survive solely on the Q5 and A5, and not much else. The refresh seems to have given a little life to the corpse that they call the A6, the A8 is all but dead, the Q7 is limping along, R8 is down despite the new V10 model, and the A4 is flat. Once the Q5 cools off Audi might be in a rough spot because the only other new product is the low volume A8 which arrives next year.

I still think that Audi's strategy with the A4 line is completely off base. For one the car is too expensive compared to it's rivals. Two, the 2.0T competes well with the base engines from other brands but there is no IS 350/335i competitor, unless you consider the S4 which is priced more like the M3 and IS F. I just don't think people are willing to drop a mid-$40K chunk of change on a 4cylinder car when there are more powerful, better optioned cars in that price range. This is probably THE second most competitive segment on the market (after family sedans) and Audi's unconventional strategy has failed, IMO.


Moving along...Genesis sales are flopping. No doubt. They are continuing to advertise the heck out of both cars in print and television and this is the second month where we have seen sales floundering. I will be interested to see how these numbers look in a year- probably quite bad.

The article about Acura on the last page is really ridiculous and displays the arrogance and foolishness that has come to define the company in recent years. Feel free to do things your way, but when you're the 8th best selling model in a class where 10 models are sold, YOUR WAY IS THE WRONG WAY. Any half intelligent person could see this, change direction, and try again but no...Acura is "strong" and in a "good position". Gotcha (cues coo coo bird sound).

As for BMW, their core products are really quite old right now. New X3 is in the wings as is a 5 series, and 3 series. The latter two continue to sell well but part of their slump has to do with the lack of new products, which just so happen to be their bread and butter. Next year and the year after should be better.

 

agree. i actually have seen quite a few e coupe around here already. of course not as many as e sedan, but it's not rare neither

 

I think Ford will continue its upward trend. Both the new Taurus and Fusion are on the sales up. Ford still has the new Fiesta coming next year. A new Focus is on its way. The redesigned Mustang will get its new engines next year. Unibody Explorer is still to come. There's a refresh set for the Edge/MKX.

Ford has been on the up with quality and still has products in the pipeline. Not taking bailout money has also given them a favorable public image.

 

And BMW is the 3, 5-series company... So what's your point?

 

Definitely agreed.

I also am tired of "auto analysts" who don't know what they're talking about.

Oh really Ed Kim? I guess it was a really bad time to introduce the new RX and new E-Class as well then since their sales are suffering ... oh wait .

A GOOD product will sell regardless of a recession or not. RX and E-Class sales right now are proving that. Even Lexus ES sales are very solid in this economy.

Completely incorrect statement by Acura executives. In terms of sales, the TL is near the bottom of the entry-level luxury segment. It outsells only a *few* vehicles in the segment. The majority of vehicles in the segment are outselling the TL.

No, the only thing absurd has been the huge uncalled-for hype regarding the Genesis.

- Fact: the Genesis is nowhere close to meeting Hyundai's sales goals.
- Fact: the Genesis is one of the lowest selling cars in it's price range, and in the entry-level luxury class. It could even be THE lowest selling vehicle in it's segment if we had a breakdown of sedan vs coupe sales.

Yes goals are just that, goals but this is not the first time Hyundai has had lofty and unrealistic goals and it is not the first time they've failed to meet their goals. This is failure for Hyundai because *once again* they have inaccurately predicted demand for one of their products and have incorrectly judged the market. If a company continually makes unrealistic sales goals and never learns from their mistakes that is very clearly failure.

"The coupe doesn't count" is a really poor excuse. When the coupe came out, there was BIG hype about it, including hype from certain CL members that shall remain nameless, but they know who they are. Now that sales have fallen flat, and the hype has died down people are using the excuse "the coupe doesn't count". Of course the coupe counts, WHY ELSE would Hyundai name the coupe the Genesis coupe and not the Tiburon? Obviously Hyundai has positioned the coupe to be part of the Genesis line, and also combining sales with the sedan makes both the coupe and sedan sales look better than they really are, despite the coupe and sedan being two distinctly different products.

Acura, Infiniti, Audi would "love" to have Genesis sales? What are you talking about? Even the Acura TL, which is struggling sales-wise right now, outsold the Genesis coupe and sedan combined and will CONTINUE to outsell the Genesis coupe and sedan most likely in the future. That shows just how BAD Genesis sales are. The Infiniti G sedan alone outsold the Genesis line, and the Audi A4 had sales almost double that of the Genesis line for October.

Also how exactly do you define "fairly consistently"? Genesis sales have been a rollercoaster really.

Here is a graph showing Genesis sales over time:



Not sure what you define as "consistent" but that does not look like consistent sales to me.

See that red square signifying March 2009 sales? That was the first full month when the coupe was on-sale.

The Hyundai Azera and Veracruz were supposed to be "great things" for the Hyundai brand too, and now their sales are at rock bottom and those models are basically invisible to the average consumer.

For the month:

- Fact: C-Class, E-Class, and M-Class accounted for 69% of Mercedes sales
- Fact: the Infiniti G *alone* accounted for 60% of Infiniti sales
- Fact: 3 Series, 5 Series, and X5 accounted for 82% of BMW sales
- Fact: A4, A5, and Q5 accounted for 73% of Audi sales

- Based on my calculations, for the month IS, ES, and RX accounted for 81% of Lexus sales, not 85%. Not sure where you got 85% from.

I won't even bring up the fact that GX inventory is almost non-existent because the 2nd-gen GX is about to go on-sale in about 2 months or so.

These are simple market facts and economic facts; less-expensive, volume models sell the most, with very few exceptions.

So in summation, what exactly is your point?

 

Each marque has bread-and-butter model(s), but Lexus has been singled out quite a bit for relying on its successful cars. In the late 90s/early 00s it was "Lexus sells more trucks than cars" which was true, at about 55/45 due to the RX. Then it was "Lexus depends on the RX for sales," even as the balance has shifted 43/57 in the car side.

The way I see it, Lexus initially had the LS as its primary hit, first few years; then the 2ES took over, and it was LS/ES; then the RX, so it became RX/ES/others, and now the 2IS, so it's now RX/ES/IS/others. The economy, model cycles have pulled the rug out from 'others', so there are 3 main hits now.

However, the perception still remains. On one of his recent Autoline Detroit podcasts, John McElroy (who also provides commentaries for Autoblog), claims that the RX accounts for '2/3 of Lexus sales'. That exaggerates by 200%--the RX accounts for 32% of sales last year. The most ever was in the first full year of sales in 1998, at less than half, but the number has trended down since.

 

Great points. I've never seen such a successful auto brand hated so much for being successful. I guess if Lexus sucked or sold poorly, then people would be happy? Then the argument would be Lexus sucks and doesn't sell well.

Last month the G37 accounted for 62% of their sales. I didn't do the numbers this month. To make matters worse, their EX and FX are newer and completely missed targets. The media has pretty much overlooked this.

One thing about the RX. The price is higher and its selling better than ever. I cannot lie I was SHOCKED when I loaded a RX to over $60,000!!

 

It was amazing to see the recriminations when BMW was nipping on Lexus' heels...arguing the lineup is out of date, owners are old, its just an overpriced Toyota etc. Dozens of articles (I especially liked the one stating "Hooray! Lexus can be beaten!"). Also the comments on Edmunds forums where "Lexus is hurting so bad, they are desperate blah blah blah." When the dust is settling, and Bloomberg reports "Toyota’s Lexus Expands Lead Among U.S. Luxury Models" as I linked above, how many sites pick that story up? None.

Of course, the year is not over, but Lexus has put some distance between itself and BMW, Mercedes, et al. And according to the numbers Gojirra99 has provided, without the same high incentives, and probably with less favorable lease terms. I was wondering if the floor mat recall would affect things (and ABC News just ran pieces last night), but ES sales were up 4% last month.

So we'll see what happens next--I wonder whether they will use the same upper-class "December to Remember" Lexus gift ads for this tough economic environment--but I think that Lexus has the possibility of closing strong with their holiday sales event. And the possibility of a new 3/5/etc next year vs. the new RX/HS/GX. But it ain't over till it's over.

And to the point, although there has been harping about the Tier 1 declines, the fact remains that they are still at the top of the class, and it's the lesser brands that have been suffering just as much if not more. I for one wonder if the idea of switching to SUVs/cute-utes was the right decision for Acura/Infiniti.

 

Then there is the fact that the average age of Mercedes owners is over 60, but that story has not been picked up either .

 

Whoops you're right. Thanks for the info.
Acura/Infiniti should have gotten the top right (successful V8 flagship sedan) before expanding into cute utes and SUVs.