But I grant you, no matter how the numbers are parsed, sliced, diced and their entrails examined, March was not a great month for anyone. Maybe a “good month” relatively speaking for Hyundai, Nissan, Volkswagen and Honda, and quality small cars in general. (Of course, I can’t work out how “quality small cars” and “Volkswagen” can be in the same category, personally).

And, yeah, there was a total bloodbath in full-sized pickups. Both Ford and Chevy were down by about a quarter, although Toyota was up (due to the fact that the new Tundra was just coming out last March), and the GMC Sierra was basically flat (for no reason I can figure out). Finding sales figures for privately owned Chrysler (for the Dodge Ram) is a pain in the butt and I haven’t bothered.

Chevy light and heavy truck sales figures indicate a bloodbath in March…

Escalade triplets: Eek! Escalade down 25, ESV down 25, EXT down 41; and SRX down 20 percent over Feb.

Gm was down only 13%. Compared with sales last year

Here is the raw data from GM (PDF). Total disaster. No need for mistruths, the truth is bad enough.

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/84/84530/sales_production/GM_Mar2008Deliveries.pdf

GMC Sierra was actually up 4%.

So no “Ribbons of Shame.” Unless you count the mistruths.

“Interestingly, Toyota Yaris was up over 80% and Honda Fit was up something like 78%, Toyota Prius sales were up too. ”

Interesting? Only if you’re interested in buying one for each foot.

I’ll stick my neck out and guess that Chrysler, when they announce, will be down 25% or more.

I think GM was down almost 17%, Ford down 14%.

Interestingly, Toyota Yaris was up over 80% and Honda Fit was up something like 78%, Toyota Prius sales were up too.

There’s a big movement to small cars and away from Stupid Utility Vehicles. At long last.

I’ve never understood why so many people in Tokyo, Hong Kong or other super-dense, super-expensive, excellent-public-transport Asian cities even bother to own cars. I guess it’s a status thing; interesting to note that cultural trends may be starting to work against this.

Hard to sell more cars to fewer people, especially fewer people of greater age.

Kind of reminds me of the “get everyone into a house” attitude in the U.S. for the past ten years. That didn’t work out well for the market, either.

While their parents looked at owning a car (instead of a bicycle or scooter) as “stepping up” the current generation has a tendency to skip that idea and use mass transit, go on vacations to Banff or Hawaii, get more gizmos for their (very small) houses, etc.

The onerous costs of ownership (being forced to scrap cars at 10 years of age, high fuel taxes, high parking fees, the near impossibility of parking at all, and sheer impracticality of owning even a kei car in such a crowded environment) is also taking its toll.

Thus, it isn’t a damning condemnation or sign of failure of the Japanese automobile companies to see sales waning in Japan. That would be the case if the Japanese were buying American F150’s and Dodge Ram Cummins Diesels (tongue in cheek).

This has evaporated in the past ten years or so, and so have new car sales. People are keeping cars longer, or realizing that they actually never drove those like-new garage-queens.

On a GDP per head basis, which affects purchasing power, Japan’s economy is doing fairly well.