#Top10

Strong results from its best performers pushed a pair of Toyotas to familiar positions atop 2020’s third-quarter best-seller lists.

Q3 was a rollercoaster ride for automobile manufacturers as low inventory plagued dealers who enjoyed better-than-expected demand. Following COVID-19’s late-Q1/early-Q2 outbreak across the United States, mass shutdowns and severe economic hardship produced catastrophic results. Total U.S. auto sales between April and June plunged by one-third, year-over-year, a 33 percent collapse worth 1.5 million lost sales.

The third quarter, however, was markedly different, especially as the weeks wore on and pent-up demand was married to timely incentives. By September, Acura, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Lexus, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota, and Volvo were all reporting year-over-year improvement, along with General Motors and Ford Motor Company.

At the top of overarching vehicle categories, strong September results pushed typical top Toyota contenders – the RAV4 and Camry – to the top of the quarterly sales charts. While the Honda Civic had held America’s best-selling car lead as recently as the end of August, Toyota Camry sales jumped 22 percent to 28,362 during the month of September. Camry sales remain down by more than a fifth year-to-date, but Q3 volume was off by just 4 percent.

The U.S. auto industry is shrinking. But only by a little bit.

Auto sales through the first five months of 2017 are down just 2 percent, a drop of roughly 140,000 sales across the entire industry. Aside from high inventories and rising incentives, it’s not all doom and gloom. 2016 was the highest-volume year in the history of the American auto industry — a 2-percent drop is hardly catastrophic.

This is therefore not 2009, when virtually every new vehicle suffered decreased volume. Many new vehicles are surging, selling significantly more often this year than last.

But in a declining market, many other nameplates are in fact losing sales. Many sales. We’ve compiled a list of the 10 volume nameplates losing U.S. sales most rapidly.

After 35 consecutive months of year-over-year sales improvements, including an all-time monthly record of 90,545 reported sales in May 2016, Jeep’s streak came to an end in September 2016. Last month, U.S. Jeep volume slid 3 percent because of declines across much of the brand’s lineup.

Yet Jeep continues to sell more SUVs and crossovers than any other automotive brand in America, topping second-ranked Ford by 118,328 sales through the first three-quarters of 2016.

Together, Jeep, Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda — the five highest-volume purveyors of SUVs/crossovers in the United States — own 52 percent of America’s utility vehicle market. That leaves less than half the available utility vehicle sales for more than 25 brands to divvy up.

It was nearly 15 years ago that Honda was touting their magic number — 118.5 hp/L. This was the specific output for the U.S.-spec Honda S2000 powered by a high-strung, 237-horsepower, 2-liter engine and it was a marvel of engineering, trumping the Viper and many other more expensive machines.

Fast forward to today and there are only a few naturally aspirated vehicles that top Honda’s claim to fame, but many that easily beat it with some form of forced induction. Yet, even with this plethora of new high-output, small-displacement engines, the average specific output of gasoline and flex fuel vehicles in the United States is still below the record set by Honda back in 1999.

Video o.k. for network TV in Brazil, but NSFW in certain jurisdictions. Do not click if naked derrieres offend you.

The numbers for the first eleven months of the year have been consolidated. The first fortnight of December has been basically more of the same. It’s now quasi-official: Fiat is the biggest pig in the sty for the eleventh time in a row. They already have an ad out celebrating the fact. Last year the Italians waited until January to commemorate. This year they had no such compunctions.

Curious is the theme they chose to celebrate their victory. Don’t think a green-eyed spermatozoon, masturbation and bodily functions would be GM’s choice to celebrate their market dominance in stodgy America. Oh, those racy Italians!