asoksevil

Great month for Lexus, ahead of Mercedes-Benz and BMW by a significant margin! Here's the breakdown by segments.

Lexus 29,792
BMW 24,761
Mercedes-Benz 24,523

CT 1,784
1 Series 626

3 Series 10,357
ES 7,628
C Class 6,701
IS 4,432

E Class 6,523
5 Series 4,359
GS 2,234

7 Series 924
LS 900
S Class 716

X1 2,278

RX 11,423
GLK 2,372
X3 2,146

M Class 3,816
GL 2,722
X5 2,480
GX 1,056

LX 335
G 238

Guy Legend

I wonder if the new CLA cannibalizes sales from the C class. A Lot of C class sales probably stem for it just being the cheapest MB to get into. While fwd, the CLA looks great from the outside and becomes the new entry model.

The car has one more carry over year (now as Q70) before a significant refreshining.

ydooby

Great month for Lexus and the new IS. Wish they'd report the number of hybrids sold though. Really want to make a case for the IS300h.Thanks for the summary. The S-Class sold just 450 not 716 though.

RXSF

I believe the RX was the best selling luxury vehicle this month

spwolf

they do report hybrids, what number do you want to see? 20% of ES sales, 18% of Avalon sales.

ydooby

Where do you see these figures? I only see "Nearly 20% were hybrid models" mentioned in the briefing of the Avalon. I mean they should publish the hybrid sales figures regularly, particularly for the GS450h, the RX450h and the ES300h, just so we can get a better idea of whether the IS300h would make a business case or not.

spwolf

they often do publish them... but i think they know about business case more than us? :-)

anyway, latest full report can be found here, i guess august will be published soon:
http://www.hybridcars.com/market-dashboard/

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

Auto sales boom: But is the party about over?

Automakers sold new cars and trucks so fast in August they blew past even the most optimistic forecasts.

The month's annualized sales pace was 16.1 million, Autodata reported, a rate not seen since November 2007 before the Great Recession. A year ago, the pace was 14.5 million, and that didn't seem bad at the time.

The raw numbers: 1.5 million new vehicles sold in August, up from a bit fewer than 1.3 million a year ago.

Year to date, car companies have sold 10.6 million new vehicles, up from 9.7 million a year ago and a difference enough to keep three or four big auto factories running full blast.

The people buying all those cars and trucks are making big ones their favorites — as if there'd never been $4 gasoline — and are paying higher prices. TrueCar.com said the average transaction price in August hit a record $31,252.

And the Japanese brands — so beloved before the recession, then somewhat out of favor — have roared back. Toyota displaced Ford in the No. 2 U.S. sales spot in August; Honda inched past Chrysler into fourth.

But just as the party seems unstoppable, the high times might, in fact, be about over. If retired Fed chairman Alan Greenspan were noodling the auto business, he might be muttering "irrational exuberance."

"We expect September to retreat a little," cautioned Volkswagen Group of America CEO Jonathan Browning, a master at understatement, after VW announced sales Wednesday, foretelling the tone of others.
"Some might say we're back to the heady days of 2007 with the same kind of sales rate as in the pre-Great Recession era. To that we might caution 'Not so fast,' " says Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and market analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

What's up, why it might go down:
• Trucks, big and profitable, boomed in August. Ford sold more than 70,000 F-Series pickups, only the second time this year. Chevrolet's big-pickup sales rose 24.3% even though it's just now getting the redesigned 2014 models fully launched. Chrysler's Ram standard-duty pickup jumped 31%.
Commercial users buy a lot of the trucks, so that's a vote for optimism on the economy. But big pickups also are an indulgence among gentrified truckers, who fled their size and costs when the economy turned down. And just because business users hope the economy's got legs — and helps pay for their new pickups — that's no guarantee they're right.
• Interest rates still are low, though in some arenas — home mortgages are obvious — they've begun to rise, slowing purchases. If the Federal Reserve decides the economy's sturdy enough to let them go higher, they could make car loans too expensive for some buyers. Or, the higher-interest loans could mean buyers take less-expensive cars, still bad news for automakers' profits.
• Automakers are in tall cotton. "Incentives are down and transaction prices are up," says Fred Diaz of Nissan. More cars are selling because of "the age of the vehicles out there" and a boost in consumer confidence.
But so-called marginal buyers will start to re-enter the market, probably next year, GM execs pointed out. They won't buy such expensive cars and might demand bigger rebates.
• Pent-up demand isn't satisfied. Not everybody who nursed a car through the recession has traded the old buggy for a new one yet. Some might never, deciding to keep the old one running or worrying about their jobs. It's not clear yet just what's the true, free-market level of auto sales and what's still a wave of leftover demand.
Sales rose last year, for example, even though the average age of vehicles on the road increased. Not a bad sign, but confusing.
Says Nerad, "The overall economic recovery is weak and fragile, so another shock could send sales back. The short-term outlook for the industry is good, but a more robust economy and better employment figures would turn caution into full-blown optimism."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...onomy/2764205/

LexFather

THANK YOU!!! Had a long day, Ill try to finish what I started

84Cressida

Yep. And I like the Q50 too, but that's quite sad. They also had plenty of time to build inventory since they've been building inventory and just weren't selling the cars until last month.

If you include the G coupe and Convertible into the sedan sales, it's even more dramatic.

Mr. Burns

Q50 sales are obviously going to be affected by the dirt cheap leases on G37s in the same way that the current CTS is eating into ATS sales.

LexFather

Nationally there is a $299 G37 leave with around 3k down and $399 lease for the q50 with around 4k down. September will be a better gauge of q50 performance since the sales date was august 7th

It's just confusing they made all this change to Q hoopla then decide to sell the G37 at te same time and I'm assuming for volume as they were scared q50 performance by itself would not be as good as the previous g37.

cino

iTrader: (1)

Cadillac is back. Lexus is number 1 again.

TRDFantasy

Wow those are some unreal numbers!

F-Series over 70K, simply unreal!
Civic at 39K, crazy!
CR-V at over 30K, unheard of!

Crazy increase as well for Subaru!
Toyota had just a mind boggling month! Camry, Prius, and Corolla together reached almost 100K sales! Very strong month for Camry and Prius, Corolla of course in the middle of a model changeover but sales still fairly strong.

Toyota fleet sales for the month were only at 2%! That is astounding !

What an AMAZING month for Lexus.
[screed deleted.........................]
That was a GREAT month for the GS, considering the crazy ES sales and strong IS sales. This is rock hard proof that the 4GS *can* and will co-exist with the ES. The GS only has TWO engine choices as of now, so these are GREAT sales for the GS, all things considered.
Even the CT is picking back up again, RX was a monster as usual.

As for the not-so-great performers, Koreans continue to lose huge marketshare, and total LOL at Acura and Infiniti. What a bunch of sad, horribly mismanaged brands. The Q50 is turning out to be a disaster, worse than I even expected it to be. Selling the G37 alongside the Q50 is truly mind-boggling. Acura with its big drop in car sales is just laughable.

ydooby

No one ever said the GS and the ES can't co-exist. What I said, however, was that the existence of the ES limits the potential of the GS, both in sales and in model variants (i.e. the GS will never achieve anywhere near the sales volume of the E and the 5, and therefore can never make a business case for nearly as many model variants as the E and the 5, as long as the ES exists). It also limits the growth potential of Lexus's brand image when Lexus's bestseller continues to be a car that's based on a platform not designed for premium cars. Again, look at the JDM sales and see why the GS is the volume leader of Lexus there (hint: there's no ES in Japan). It really can't be any more obvious.

I try not to bring this up every month but since you start the implicit name calling I feel the need to respond again.