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

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

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.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Russycle Russycle on Aug 04, 2010

    Who makes these charts? Honda Element, July 09: 1516 Element, July 10: 1551 Honda sold 35 MORE Elements this July, but the chart shows a decrease of 1.5%. Camry July 09: 33,974 Camry July 10: 35,058 Toyota sold 1084 more Camries(sp?) this July, an increase of 3%, but the chart shows a decrease of 0.6%. The delta for the Toyota Dom Pickup is wrong too. Haven't these people ever heard of spreadsheets?

  • Mjz Mjz on Aug 04, 2010

    The sheeple may finally beginning to awake from their dull car induced comas to realize they actually have other viable choices!

    • GarbageMotorsCo. GarbageMotorsCo. on Aug 04, 2010

      "Sheeple"? Wow, I haven't heard that one since I cruised the Cheersandgears site back in 2005! Even they have moved on.

  • Lorenzo Are they calling it a K4? That's a mountain in the Himalayas! Stick with names!
  • MaintenanceCosts It's going to have to go downmarket a bit not to step on the Land Cruiser's toes.
  • Lorenzo Since EVs don't come in for oil changes, their owners don't have their tires rotated regularly, something the dealers would have done. That's the biggest reason they need to buy a new set of tires sooner, not that EVs wear out tires appreciably faster.
  • THX1136 Always liked the Mustang though I've never owned one. I remember my 13 yo self grabbing some Ford literature that Oct which included the brochure for the Mustang. Using my youthful imagination I traced the 'centerfold' photo of the car AND extending the roof line back to turn it into a small wagon version. At the time I thought it would be a cool variant to offer. What was I thinking?!
  • GregLocock That's a bodge, not a solution. Your diff now has bits of broken off metal floating around in it.
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