Wow SUV Lexus sales jumped big in Canada...

 

Well the Canadian car market is a magnitude smaller than the US market so the gain there doesn't quite make up for the loss here. Still a great news though.

 

Any breakdown on IS-F sales for April? I didn't see it this month like previous months.

 

Lexus now bunches everything together on the report by model. Only if they state it in the report will we know.

Or we can maybe call?

 

Obviously they do this because they can brag about the sales of specific model variations in the PR when the numbers are looking good, and choose not to do so when they aren't so hot. And now BMW is catching on to this same trick.

 

Well that and no one else was breaking it down by model. I really enjoyed it broken down by specific model.

Its harder to establish trends with them bunched.

 

Me too. It's a shame really. We used to be able to deduce so many finer details from BMW's sales reports particularly since they have so many variations for one model, but now they're just bunches of useless big numbers.

 

1st quarter car sales in Canada strongest in 10 years « » 10:38 AM 5-16-2008 Reply to this post

Quote »

The Canadian Press
Friday, May 16, 2008

OTTAWA — Sales of new motor vehicles closed the first quarter of 2008 with their strongest gain since 1998, despite a slight decline in March.

An exceptionally strong January powered a 9.1 per cent gain in unit sales in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2007 — the strongest growth rate since mid-1998.

Statistics Canada attributes the gains to lower prices, additional rebates and incentives, such as better financing, and a one percentage point reduction in the goods-and-services tax.

The quarterly increase was driven almost entirely by strong sales of new passenger cars, which were up 17.8 per cent, the largest increase since 1976.

Consumers bought 148,796 new vehicles in March, down 0.5 per cent from February.

Sales of new trucks — including minivans, sport-utility vehicles, light and heavy trucks, vans and buses — fell 0.6 per cent in March while passenger car sales slipped 0.3.

The agency says preliminary industry data for April suggests the number of new motor vehicles sold will remain relatively unchanged.

 

Acura is offering a subsidized lease on the '09 TSX already... signs of slow sales?

$329/mo. for 36 months, 30K miles
$2588 drive-off includes down payment and security deposit

 

It is looking like this is a great time to get a fabulous deal on a new car

Some of the showrooms I've been to recently (Acura, Audi, Lexus) have
been completely empty

 

Honda Overtakes Ford as #3 Brand in the US; Gunning for Chevrolet's #2 Spot
The Ford and Chevrolet brands are drastically revamping their lineups in the face of record-high gas prices, but that North American turnaround could be coming a few years too late. Toyota is already the number one selling brand in the U.S. — followed by Chevrolet — and, as of April, Honda has bumped Ford out of the number three spot.

According to Automotive News, the Honda brand tallied 437,102 retail sales through April, while the Ford brand has only managed about 421,000 retail sales during the same period. If you include fleet sales — which makes up 35 percent of Ford's business and virtually zero percent of Honda's — Ford still has the overall lead on the Japanese automaker.

However, that 16,000 unit lead will likely widen over the next month as Ford continues to rely on larger vehicles for the volume of its sales. Thanks to economical vehicles such as the Fit, CR-V and Civic Hybrid, Honda sales are up 3.6 percent this year while the overall industry is down 9.2 percent. On the other side of the coin, Ford recently announced that it will be slashing production by as much as 20 percent this year as demand for its vehicles continues to sag.

Ford admittedly doesn't have enough small or medium-sized vehicles in its current lineup to compete in today's economic environment.

Chevrolet still has about a 30,000 unit lead over Honda, but industry experts say that margin could evaporate by the end of the year. "Chevrolet should worry," Lonnie Miller, an analyst for R.L. Polk & Co., told Automotive News.

 

Lexus ES lease
$399, 36 months, $3500 down

 

It's getting hard to justify pouring gas in the GS4. Today's total was $67.80 for a fillup. BMW, MB, and Lexus have been really cutting prices around here and I see Audi now has some attractive leases going. Should be interesting to see the May sales numbers.

 

My Miata fill-up is still about $38!
Explorer is near $80 but I don't drive it much.