speedflex

Neither is Porsche or Jaguar. And how can it be proven that the JX is cannibalizing cars sales as stated fact?

GS69

Mercedes Leads BMW in US Luxury Sales after 24% Gain

Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz regained the U.S. luxury-vehicle sales lead for the year over BMW Group's BMW brand with April deliveries rising 24%.

U.S. sales of Mercedes vehicles rose to 22,336 last month while BMW deliveries increased 12% to 21,062, according to statements today by the companies.

Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus brand fell 0.1% to 17,551. Mercedes and BMW, which overtook Lexus in 2011 to become the top-selling luxury brand in the United States, are competing for the 2012 sales crown.

BMW finished the 1st quarter ahead with 36 more deliveries than Mercedes.

April results lifted Mercedes sales for the year 17% to 83,849, giving the automaker a 1,238 vehicle lead after four months over BMW, which had a sales increase of 16%.

Lexus deliveries rose 2.6% to 66,647 during the 1st 4 months of the year. The results exclude Daimler's Sprinter vans and Smart cars and BMW's Mini brand, which aren't luxury vehicles.

GS69

Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Tops Plug-In Sales Chart in April 2012

Without much fanfare, Toyota started selling the plug-in version of the Prius a couple of months ago. But the power of the Prius brand—plus a base of loyal customers and a small-battery approach—has put the PIP at the top of the plug-in car sales charts in April, surpassing the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt.

As we reported yesterday, Nissan LEAF sales came in at only 370 units in April. Meanwhile, the Chevy Volt fared better with sales clocking in at 1,462 units in April.

But the the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid passed them both, logging 1,654 sales in April. The entire Prius line of cars did amazingly well, more than doubling in sales from a year ago. The Prii was the 3rd most popular passenger model in the United States in April, beat only by the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

The success of Prius shows what a 10 - 15 year commitment to a technology can produce, if given time to mature. But is Toyota also showing the way to getting adoption of plug-in technology, by offering a plug-in hybrid with a smaller more affordable battery—even with more limited all-electric range—rather than a large-battery plug-in hybrid or pure electric car. Is this the secret to making plug-ins accessible to mainstream buyers? A smaller battery plug-in also means quicker recharge times, even when using standard 110v outlets rather than expensive dedicated charging equipment.

speedflex

I've said it before and will say it again. The Prius line seems to be a stronger brand than Scion. I wish Toyota would spin Prius off as a sub brand and absorb the Scion cars back into Toyota.

LexFather

People really hate cars I can't believe how well the Passat and Jetta are doing. I see them all the time now, driven by what looks like robots.

New RX should hopefuly bump sales up.

spwolf

why would you spin Prius? Prius customers are Toyota customers.

Point of Scion was to bring in customers who would never ever buy Toyota previously, and they succeeded...

Problem is with young people not employed these days, they now need more mature customers. Currently Scion has lowest customer age in the industry.

speedflex

Exactly why the cars Scion sells should be Toyotas. Toyota has awakened and realized that they want a less-stodgy, conservative and more youthful image and the cars which cater to that crowd are sold under a different brand. Scion cars are exactly what Toyota should be selling under the Toyota brand. As it is, Toyota is still the conservative arm while Scion is the fresh, hip arm.

Only a decade and a half ago Toyota was selling coupes and funky little cars like Scions back before the brand became all gentrified. Prius as a brand makes sense. It stands for something more distinctive than "we're for the youts".

spwolf

i still dont understand what would toyota gain by taking prius away from Toyota... less brand recognition? Wouldnt that be bad?

With Scion you have a problem that people when think Toyota, they immediately think Corolla and Camry.

You can not make Corolla and Camry popular with 20 year olds... they will never be cool cars. But Scions can be cool cars and lead to introduction to the Toyota brand.

It is pretty simple idea... worked well for them.

speedflex

I guess I always thought Scion was a weak concept to start with. Prius is a wired thing as it is a both a product which is also becoming its own brand. It's a brand within a brand which, pound for pound has more recognition than Scion. It's the same sort of goofy thing that Hyundai has going on with Genesis. Is it a product or a line?

spwolf

It is a product line and thats fine... Scion was also Awesome before crisis hit in mid 2008. Scion has the lowest average age in the industry and 70% of buyers were non-Toyota... problem was when youth became unemployed, it was too much of funk for older people who think it as too funky.

speedflex

I wonder if Scion would have been created if Akio Toyoda were leading the company at the time it was introduced. Something tells me he would have simply added some of these more youthful, exciting cars (such as the FRS, possibly a Supra successor, and some of the small, fun, Scion-type cars) to the Toyota line-up and wouldn't have considered a youth brand as the way to freshen Toyota's image. Even now he says he aims to inject more emotion and style into Toyota.

Trexus

Porsche and Jaguar are niche bands. For the longest time Porsche only produced two door sports cars. Only recently have they introduced an SUV and even more recently a four door sports sedan.

Same thing with Jaguar. All they ever produced were sedans and coupes and no SUV yet.

speedflex

Which just goes to prove that a company's product line can be whatever they make it. Many companies have gaps in their line-up, areas where they don't offer a competing product. That's neither here nor there. In time they do develop products that fit their business strategy. For example, Lexus doesn't offer a sport coupe of any kind... at least for the moment.

-J-P-L-

I LOL'd

Just a non-hyped side offering of the Prius line, and it outsells the over-hyped, dedicated plug-ins from Chevy and Nissan. Haha.

Trexus

Correct. I'm sure you understand why Porsche is able to survive. Porsche is able to survive because their profit margins are very high whereas Infiniti I'm sure is lot lower and has their parent company Nissan to fall back on. Just like diamonds. Diamonds are a low volume product but has high profit margins as oppose to chewing gum is a high volume product but low profit margins. So yeah any company can create any product they like.

Lexus did offer a sport coupe for a quite some time.

SC 300
SC 400
SC 430

IS 250C/350C coupe/convertible

LFA

Infiniti did have some coupes and discontinued some as well.

M 30
G 35/37 coupe