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

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

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.

Timothy Cain
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  • Burgersandbeer 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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    • Bd2 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).

  • 28-Cars-Later 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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    • 28-Cars-Later 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.

  • Speed3 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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    • 28-Cars-Later 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.

  • Buickman 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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