Toyota Sales Decline 6.8 Percent In July, Honda Drops 5.6 Percent

Toyota pulled back on incentives last month, and paid the price with a 6.8 percent decline in sales compared to July 2009. Between this and the fact that year-over-year comparisons are skewed by July 2009‘s Cash-For-Clunkers effect, it’s almost no surprise that Toyota’s smaller and value-oriented models were almost uniformly down on the month. But a look at last July’s report shows that the Yaris, Corolla and the Scions actually lost volume during the first month of Cash-For-Clunkers. A similar situation is playing out at Honda, where the Fit has fallen for the second July in a row, and the Civic dropped hard after gaining only three percent last July. Stranger still: both firms, which earned their US market spurs on the back of efficient cars, beat their July 2009 “truck” numbers but failed to match car volume. My, how things change!

Of course, there are good explanations for elements of this phenomenon. Prius had a huge July last year, thanks in part to C4C, and it came down hard last month by comparison. Camry is roaring back compared to some of its post-recall performances, but still added only about 1,000 units of volume compared to last July. RAV4 also matched its strong July 2009 performance, boosting Toyota’s “light truck” performance. Lexus cars dropped about 1,000 units of year-over-year volume, nearly all of them from the IS line, while GX added about 600 units. Tacoma dropped about 3,000 units, but Tundra made back about the same volume.Among Toyota’s crossovers, vans and SUVs, only Highlander dropped significantly compared to last July, when it had a hot month.

At Honda, no single car nameplate experienced year-over-year growth. Had the Accord or Civic experienced a hot July last year, this might make some sense, but this was demonstrably not the case. For example, last July, Accord dropped nearly 30 percent compared to the July before, and last month it fell another 18 percent despite adding the new Crosstour variant. Meanwhile, every “light truck” in the Honda stable saw volume growth with only the Element and the CR-V failing to make major gains. To an even greater extent than Toyota, Honda is watching its Car and “truck” volume move closer together… and probably wondering what happened.

Full numbers below… please note that Toyota and Honda use Daily Selling Rates to calculate percentage changes.