Chart Of The Day: Auto Brand Market Share In America In March 2015

by Timothy Cain

April 2nd, 2015 9:00 AM

GM’s U.S. market share declined from 18.4% in February 2015 to 16.1% the following month as the automaker’s sales slid 2%, year-over-year, in a market which expanded marginally. GM earned 16.7% of the U.S. auto industry’s volume in March 2014.

Compared with February, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai-Kia, and the BMW Group all produced market share improvements worthy of mention. Honda’s share fell slightly from 8.4% to 8.2%; FCA was down from 13.1% in February to 12.8% in March.

The industry’s 1.55M new vehicle sales represented the best March since 2005.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures.

#AutoSales #ChartOfTheDay #March2015Sales #MarketShare #SalesCharts #U.S.AutoSales

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14 of 35 comments

Burgersandbeer on Apr 04, 2015

Maybe this has been the case for a while and I just noticed now, but Hyundai-Kia has passed Honda?

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- 28-Cars-Later on Apr 04, 2015
  
  Subprime works wonders.
  
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- Elimgarak on Apr 04, 2015
  
  @28-Cars-Later This. Forget Hyundai, I am consistently flabbergasted how high Nissan's share is. I would love to see the geographic breakdown on a zip/county level nationwide as to where Nissan/infiniti owners are.
  
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- SCE to AUX on Apr 04, 2015
  
  @28-Cars-Later I have a Hyundai, two Kias, and a Nissan. No subprime here.
  
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- Tmport on Apr 04, 2015
  
  @28-Cars-Later I have a Kia, and I paid cash. I've heard that Mitsubishi and Nissan cater to "subprime" buyers, but I hadn't heard that about Hyundai-Kia. Do you have stats to back that up? (On a side note, both of my parents own Nissans, and they pay cash too.) I would submit that the success of Hyundai-Kia is that they offer compelling products for a reasonably good value (they've raised their prices as the brands have gone mainstream, though). Nissan, for its part, offers decent cars at a compelling price. Honda offers compelling products, but charges too much for them.
  
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- Dave M. on Apr 05, 2015
  
  @tmport You are correct. Hyundai-Kia at one time were subprime, but once they got serious about improving the reputation and drive-ability of their cars (2000ish?), they've been on a march that has only recently cooled down. If anything has hurt Mazda, its been H-K - well designed cars with a great warranty. Sure they're not to Honda-Toyota levels yet at NVH...but they match Mazda and Nissan easily. Mazda's halo car only sells tens of thousands a year. They need to rethink a lot of their line up.
  
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- Bd2 on Apr 05, 2015
  
  @Dave M. Nowadays, H/K have passed Toyota for NVH (the Soul gets better mark for that than the Corolla). And aside from the misunderstanding about subprime (there are people with good incomes but poor credit scores), the whole subprime argument would have made more sense a few years ago, but even then the Elantra was selling, on average, $500 more than the Civic and $1,500 more than the Corolla. And the Optima not only has a higher ATP than the Sonata (much less the Camry), but beat the Accord a no. of times last year on average transaction price; not to mention that Kia's top sellers are the Optima and Sorento (in addition to the Soul which attracts a wide range of buyers) and not the Rio and Forte. Actually, Honda and H/K both have the same problem - both have limited CUV lineups and no SUVs and no pick-ups (or in the case of Honda, no real pick-ups) in comparison to Toyota and Nissan which both have a larger offerings of CUVs, as well as trucks/SUVs. In addition to the falling Yen (which has also helped Honda), Toyota and Nissan have been very aggressive on discounting on their cars since they are getting higher margins on their CUVs, SUVs and trucks. Honda has increased discounting, but not nearly to the extent of Toyota and Nissan and then there's fleet sales. The uptick in Kia sales is pretty much attributed to the new Sedona which doesn't come cheap. As for Hyundai, there was probably an attractive deal on the Elantra last month and/or greater fleet sales as Hyundai is getting ready for the new model (Honda is offering pretty attractive deals on the Pilot as it is at the end of its life cycle).
  
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28-Cars-Later on Apr 04, 2015

GM: 16.2%. Wow. Think it was close to thirty around 1990 and near fifty percent by the late 70s. I'm sure half of that figure are truck sales (Ford's is prob 2/3rds truck sales)

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- Dave M. on Apr 05, 2015
  
  Sadly you're right. GM, Ford and ChryCo have gifted away their passenger car markets in the past 20-30 years. Toyota and Honda have become the default choices for millions of people...and I don't see that shifting back. Both of them make a decent car, and even several that are hella fun. But that market is small and matures quickly. God forbid is there is a seismic shift in pickup truck loyalty. It hasn't happened...yet. But if my FIL, a dyed-in-the-wool good ol' boy frustrated with niggling reliability issues, can throw up his hands and switch his small fleet over to Toyotas as he did in 2005...anyone can.
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Apr 05, 2015
  
  @Dave M. I suspect they were simply chasing margin, volume, or both much to the detriment of their customers who largely defected to Toyonda as you point out. But in the case of Toyota and Honda owning the market allowed them to become complacent. Honda has introduced a number of flop models (Ridgeline, CRZ, Element, S2000, Crosstour off the top of my head) and then incurred the ire of its customers with a lackluster Civic in I think 2012 (which they fixed to their credit). Toyota ran the Corolla unchanged forever until recently and still runs the Camry and most of their other models off of a circa 2002 based platform.
  
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Speed3 on Apr 05, 2015

Yeah GM's market share is pretty bad. Maybe with a whole slew of new Chevys they will improve? I mean a new Malibu, Volt, Spark, and Cruze in about a year has to do something for their volume right?

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- Bd2 on Apr 05, 2015
  
  GM should be helped a good bit by the new Malibu, Cruze, Spark, LaCrosse, etc. - esp. since the new models increase passenger room. But GM has been too slow in redoing its CUVs.
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Apr 05, 2015
  
  Maybe. I suspect it won't though, in order to gain volume you have to retain your base and attract new customers. The new models may help to retain the base, but as for adding new customers I don't see it. The models being refreshed are just improved versions of what was already out there (in some cases correcting glaring issues with the current models). Only the magic of subprime is going to increase their volume, IMO.
  
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Buickman on Apr 05, 2015

world's worst marketing led by the completely incompetent Gerosa protege' Steve Hill. for years I have continuously claimed reduced share ahead as GM refuses to listen to their top salesman of all time. I predicted 15% NA share and by all indications, I will again be proven correct.

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