Honda March Sales Rise 22 Percent
Honda’s sales bounced 22 percent, as the normally incentive-adverse firm broke out financing, cashback and lease deals to keep up with Toyota and GM’s incentive war. Accord and Civic were 23 and 4 percent, with 29,120 and 22,463 units respectively. Odyssey, Pilot and CR-V all broke the 10k mark, with Pilot growing sales the most (48 percent). Fit was down slightly from last March’s recession-fueled sales, managing only 4,670 units. The Insight sold a pathetic 1,652 units.
Acura grew 25.2 percent to the Honda brand’s 16.9 percent, driven by 15-18 percent gains by TL, TSX and RDX. MDX hit 3,281 units, nearly matching the TL for best-selling Acura. The new ZDX is rolling out slowly with only 264 units sold. Though the Civic and Accord are still Honda’s bread-and-butter, weak Fit and Insight sales show how far Honda has come from its days of small car dependence… and excellence. Though sales are still improving over last spring, Honda looks more and more like an automaker without an identity all the time.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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I've actually been looking at new Hondas for the past couple of weeks. I like the flexibility of the Fit, but the Civic was a lot quieter and more comfortable on the freeway. In comparison, the Fit felt really underpowered at freeway speeds... tapped-out really, at about 70. The fit was also really noisy. Since I have a decent freeway commute of about 20 miles, this was a big factor for me even though I found the interior packaging of the Fit pretty mindblowing. One thing that was clear to me, as well, is that Honda must have started the month with a lot fewer Fits on the ground. The dealers I visited literally had dozens and dozens of Civics lined up and perhaps 4 or 5 fits, all automatics. Perhaps because of this inventory, the salespeople were eager to deal on Civics, quickly offering me a car for a few hundred below invoice without much effort on my part. Online searches turned up deals for a thousand below invoice... making an LX manual both cheaper and easier to find than a Fit Sport with the manual.
I wonder about the Element. Anyone know the sales trend here? So few units sold, yet such a practical car.