Honda Sales Slide 33.7 Percent
Have Honda sales hit bottom? Their March sales press release sure wants you to think so. The 33.7 percent drop in sales last month “appears particularly steep when compared to last year’s strong first quarter,” admits Honda’s NA sales honcho, John Mendel. Compared to January’s 35.4 percent slide, though, March’s are a slim improvement, and maybe (just maybe) a tipping point in Honda’s sales results. Breakdowns reveal that, in general, the bigger the Honda the worse the sales decline. Ridgeline (-66 percent), Element (-70 percent), RL (-69 percent), RDX (-50 percent) and MDX (-47 percent) were the big losers, while only the new TSX increased its sales compared to last March, posting a 16 percent increase. The new Insight Hybrid suffered from limited availability in its first partial sales month, posting only 569 sales. Given the larger sales trends, however, there’s a good chance that the new cheapest hybrid in America will help boost Honda sales in its bread-and-butter small, efficient car sales.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Let's keep in mind that Honda spent about 1/4 of what GM & Cryco, and 1/3 of what Ford did on incentives. For this market their showing is pretty solid. Bunter
wsn-Straight on. Anyone that thinks GM, Ford and Cry wouldn't LOVE haveing a 33% drop with only $1200 on the hood of each is not paying attention. Gm alone would have moved about 30k more vehicles and saved 1/2 Billion of our money. Ya', it's a difference. Bunter
Sales drops are not "right in line with the D3" It's year-to year. Honda didn't start dropping until about Sept last year (they were down 3.7% last March from 07). Ford and GM were down 14.5%. What that means is that Honda's drop is in line or slightly behind the drop in the whole market, which hurts, no doubt about it but isn't near as big. Ford is essentially down 50% from two years ago (the last of the 16 million years), 100, 86, 52. GM and Chrysler are even lower. Eventually, they will hit a reduction in reductions before their competition (the D3 were losing big by last summer), which will be a bit of a false dawn. This is why market share numbers matter, the kingdom of the blind and the one-eyed man and all that.