#Inventory

The New York Times carries a long story today that chronicles changes in the Chinese car market. Written by Reuters automotive specialists Norihiko Shirouzu and Fang Yan, it is a story of China where you now get a discount and instant delivery for a BMW instead of having the option to pay 20 percent more, or wait a few month for delivery.

The car market in China, says the article, is becoming more like that in the United States, where most of the money is made in financing, insurance and maintenance. Indeed it is.

Browsing TrueCar’s top lease deals for July, 2012 yielded an interesting find; a lease deal on the Chevrolet Volt that specifically excludes HOV-lane qualified versions.

This list, compiled by Edmunds.com shows America’s 50 hottest and fastest cars. They are so fast that dealers can’t keep them on the lot. Off the truck, out of the door.

It’s been a fascinating year for the compact car, as all six of the segment’s leading competitors brought out new or updated models over the last 18 months. But as our Chart Of The Day shows, the competition has hardly sent the segment into overdrive, as after an early-year boom, compact car sales have slackened considerably. Intriguingly though, Honda and Toyota, which lost sales early this year due to supply interruptions in the wake of the Japanese Tsunami, seem to be the only brands with recovering compact sales. What’s especially interesting about this is the fact that Toyota’s modest refresh and Honda’s poorly-received new Civic were once widely considered by automotive pundits to be under threat from the resurgent competition. Indeed, Honda’s Civic has been especially hard-hit by media criticism, earning a harsh review from TTAC’s Michael Karesh, losing its coveted “recommended” rating from Consumer Reports, and engaging in some ugly media-bashing. But now that the Civic seems to be one of the only compacts to enjoy a late-year sales rebound, Honda’s announcing that it will be upgrading the Civic for the 2013 model-year, just one year after the new model was introduced.

Ever since emerging from bankruptcy, the Chevrolet Cruze has been something of a symbol of GM’s rebound. Widely hailed by the automotive media as General Motors’ strongest effort to date in a compact segment that has become increasingly important in recent years, the Cruze seemed to show that the “new” GM was capable of selling smaller cars on their merits, rather than as afterthoughts to more profitable truck, SUV and large car offerings. And indeed, through the first half of this year, it seemed that the Cruze was something of a roaring success, regularly outselling its segment competitors. But then, in June, when production shifted from 2011 models to 2012 models, something changed: sales started to slow, and inventories started to rise. As Cruzes began piling up on dealer lots, GM trimmed production moderately, but still, inventories began to grow out of control. Clearly something was going wrong.

UPDATED: “Big Six” compact sedan monthly sales graph (Jan-Nov, 2011) added to gallery after the jump.

With all the attention being paid to Volt sales, production and turn time in the wake of recent congressional criticism, I thought I’d update our recent chart of Volt sales versus production to see how GM’s wonder car is doing a month on. As you can see, there’s not much obvious change on the year-to-date chart, with both sales and production trending upwards. But if we zoom in on the most recent months, we can see something strange happening…

When we reported sales on Monday our conclusion was that “big is big again,” as full-sized pickups dominated growth in a surprisingly up month. So, how do you sell a ton of trucks in a month where gas was still hovering around the $3.50/gal mark? Easy: just throw some cash on the hood. Edmunds Autoobserver reports

From a low that generally occurred around April, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and the Chrysler Group LLC have markedly hiked incentive spending on full-size pickups. In April, the average TCI for the full-size pickup category – which also inclaudes the almost statistically insignificant Toyota Tundra, Nissan Titan and Honda Ridgeline – was $3,261 per vehicle. At the end of September, the average incentive for full-size pickups ballooned by more than 30 percent to $4,281 per vehicle.

Executives from the Detroit automakers insist that this was not simply an inventory-clearing move (because, by industry standards, having three times your monthly sales on the lot is “acceptable”), but manufacturers have been trimming truck production all year and with Days To Turn rising, clearing off the lots makes sense. Especially going into the traditionally slow truck sales months of October and November. Hit the jump for more September incentive and transaction price data…

With Honda and Toyota struggling to catch up after months of tsunami-related supply interruptions, Nissan’s been passing its major Japanese competitors in sales volume, and they apparently want to keep it that way. As Bertel has reported, Nissan was able to walk away from the tsunami’s devastation practically unharmed, and it’s leveraging its strong supply of vehicles to make hay while the sun shines (or while its competitors are struggling to catch up). This ad, which is a simple reminder to consumers, is only slightly tinged with competitive feist in a scene depicting a frustrated Honda customer. Overall though, there’s not much messaging needed: Nissan has cars, other Japanese competitors don’t. And right now, that could be one of the most effective marketing messages out there. After all, as Autoobserver points out, folks trading in Japanese cars still overwhelmingly buy another Japanese car… so simply having Japanese cars on dealer lots is a huge advantage at the moment.

When we wrote about dealer lots overflowing with trucks, especially of the GM kind, there were a lot of nods, but also many flames. Some commenters said it can’t possibly be true. Mainly because the charts were the product of financial analyst algebra that was not readily transparent to the common high school graduate. Then, we received messages accusing us of sleeping, because other more esoteric blogs supposedly “called the GM bulls.. months ago” ago. (Or two days later.) Can’t please them all. However, today, Automotive News [sub] confirms that “Big pickup trucks are clogging many U.S. dealer lots, causing headaches for General Motors and other automakers, and raising concerns about price wars and lower profits later in the year.”

OK, so it’s a somewhat facetious headline: as an auto manufacturer, Saab either builds and sells cars or it disappears. But in the aftermath of Saab CEO Victor Muller’s pledge that “We will definitely ensure that this [production stoppage] will not happen again,” Saab’s most recent shutdown sent shockwaves of concern through the Saab community. After all, Saab’s official line is that “we knew this would happen,” a position that’s more than a little at odds with Muller’s now-broken promise. And though the just-signed Youngman deal could mean more cash with which to get production at Trolhättan back up and running, there’s a bigger question that remains unanswered: why restart production at all?

With all the news about earthquakes and tsunamis, you would think that the lots of your favorite ricer retailer are bare. They aren’t. But some dealers hang on to what they have got and sell it at healthy mark-ups, assuming that the pipeline will run dry. Both Honda and Nissan are unhappy with this perception and tell their dealers to move the metal. “Honda told its U.S. dealers Friday that July vehicle deliveries would increase by 11% from June levels and accelerate in August as the auto maker ramps up production after the March 11 earthquake in Japan,” says The Nikkei [sub].

Forget about Europeans complaining about missing parts. Over in America, there is an acute car shortage. Dealers blame who they always blame: The manufacturers. “They’ve cut back production so much that we’ve run out of cars,” Boston dealer magnate Herb Chambers tells his hometown paper, the Boston Herald. He says he had to “beg, borrow and steal” Cadillacs from dealers in other parts of the country. Down at the South Shore, dealer Dan Quirk loses 60 to 90 sales a month. “The Big Three just don’t have enough manufacturing capacity any more,” kvetches Quirk. “Some of the automakers, particularly General Motors, closed a lot of their plants when the meltdown hit.” Supposedly it’s not just a Bostonian phenomenon. Supposedly. At closer look, it might be a fire breathing, rip-snorting chimera.

Ford’s President of the Americas, Mark Fields tells Automotive News [sub] that production of its full sized SUV’s are being ramped up as demand has unexpectedly outstripped dwindling inventories. Due to sales of the Ford Expedition rising 45 percent in December and the Lincoln Navigator jumping 60 percent, Ford see this as a good opportunity to take advantage of this new customer confidence. Fields didn’t disclose details about the production bump, but given long term trends in full-sized sales and oil prices, we’re thinking it shouldn’t be too dramatic.