Things Get Chilly In The Great White North. For One Car Maker
The Vancouver Sun reports that pretty much, across the board and across the border, Canadian sales rose. GM’s sale rose 11 percent year on year, Ford’s sales rose 8 percent and is now within a whisker of taking the number one slot from General Motors. Honda’s sales grew 14 percent. As did Nissan’s at 4.5 percent. And Hyundai-Kia who reports rises of 8.6 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Even the smaller players had reasons to celebrate. VW went up 21.5 percent. Mitsubishi has a stonkingly good month with sales rising, YOY, by 27.2 percent. Even Volvo’s sales grew 13.9 percent. Yep. Life is good, north of the border. Except for one.
The world’s largest car maker, Toyota, saw sales decline 22.7 percent. Over the year of 2010, Toyota Canada’s sales have dropped 12.4 percent to 150,119 units. This is bad news for ToMoCo. But wait, there’s less! What made this sales decline even worse was the fact that Toyota had just introduced their youth brand, Scion, to Canada in a bid to breathe life into their Canadian subsidiary. In its first full month of sales, Scion could only clock up sales of 247 units over a dealership network of 46. If Toyota has a secret weapon to boost sales, they might want to think about activating it sometime soon.
And while we are at it: Toyota’s sales dropped in another country also. Starts with a C also. But is a bit bigger than Canada: China. Toyota sales in China fell 6.0 percent in October to 61,600 vehicles, marking the first year-on-year decline in 18 months. That hurts.
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I was shopping minivans in September. I looked at the new 2011 Sienna and the 2010 Odyssey and went with the Odyssey...Honda was offering $6000 off, and the Sienna seems to be afflicted with Toyota's cheapo interior construction all their models have been displaying over the last few years. Since the Sienna's all new, they're offering nothing in incentives. I did sit down in an LS400L at the adjoined Lexus dealer...they need to bring a little more of that to their downmarket lineup.
I live north of Toronto, and in my travels I probably see thousands of cars per day. And I have never seen a new Scion around here. Honestly, given how few I've seen I thought they hadn't got round to launching that brand. If they are going to try and hit the Canadian market, methinks they are in trouble. The main reason? The Kia Forte...I see droves of these. As for Mitsubishi...well I'll be damned.
v65magnafan1, we must practically be neighbours. Ah yes, the Landcruiser...friends of mine in BC (i.e., no salty roads) had two of these and the worst North American 70s clunker never rusted that fast. That Ford dealership at Yonge and Steeles is weird...it went tango uniform (the cars were repossessed at night), then was vacant, then was open again. They are doing well? That's a surprise. Yes, that Toyota dealership REALLY splashed out. (Never understood why dealerships need to look like shopping centres now.) A Kia franchise might have been a better investment.
Glad to see Mitsubishi doing so well. It's about damn time they got some recognition for their good cars, their image of the "bad japanese car" or "proof japan's quality is a myth" was never really deserved, despite the cars being more reliable than both their European and US counterparts.