Hyundai Beats Toyota In Europe
Hyundai could have timed this announcement a bit better. Wouldn’t the following announcement have been a fine crowning of TTAC’s Korea week? Instead, the week ended unceremoniously with a reflection on thee shitboxes. From shitbox to market leader: Hyundai has kicked Toyota from the pedestal as the largest Asian carmaker in Europe. In a way.
Bloomberg reports that Hyundai and Kia “boosted Europe sales 4 percent in the first 10 months to 521,369 vehicles, according to data released last week by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association” ACEA. Toyota sales, including its Lexus premium brand, plunged 17 percent to 511,754.
If you have followed our story about the October numbers, you could have come to the same conclusion. But you needed to perform a little math.
What threw people off is the fact that Europe’s ACEA counts Hyundai and Kia separately. The world organization OICA has begun counting Hyundai and Kia as one for its 2009 numbers, but ACEA insists that they are different.
“Hyundai and Kia have clearly benefited from Toyota’s massive recalls,” said Ahn Sang Joon, an auto analyst at Tong Yang Securities Inc. in Seoul.
Not true. They benefitted from someone adding one and one together. According to data released last week by ACEA, Hyundai still ranges behind Toyota, followed by separately counted Kia. But if you add the two (which ACEA did not do) Hyundai-Kia wins.
Sure, Toyota’s European market share dropped from 5 percent in the first ten months of 2009 to 4.4 percent in the same period of 2010. At the same time, Hyundai added 0.2 percent in market share, Kia also added 0.2 percent.
Kudos are deserved by Nissan. They gained the most amongst Asian brands. They grew their European business by 13 percent in the first 10 months and added 0.5 percent of share.
All Asian brands together hold a rather unimpressive 17 percent share of the European market, divided up amongst 10 players.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Europeans are smart shoppers. Toyota has no unique selling point. So if you just want reliability and an appliance Europeans will go to other Asian makes. Only in the US does Toyota (and to a lesser extent Honda) have this hold on none interested car buyers.
According to ACEA numbers, Skoda's share of the European PC market is flat at 3.4% for 2010 YTD October (volumes down 23K). Renault's low cost Dacia brand has increased share from 1.6 to 1.9% (volumes UP 23K!) but Renault has themselves taken their share up from 9.2 to 10.0%, so along with Nissan, the Alliance is doing pretty good in Europe this year. Fiat and Toyota have been taking a kicking as volume keeps disappearing to low cost and premium segments. Most Japanese brands are badly impacted by the high value of the Yen (thanks to undercover phoney currency devaluation policy by US gov't trying to stop itself getting owned by China). ;-)