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Sweet Gsus
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« on: May 27, 2008, 01:04:06 PM » |
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Honda just overtook Ford in overall car sales during the month of April. Is anyone surprised by this?
The Ford and Chevrolet brands are drastically revamping their lineups in the face of record-high gas prices, but that North American turnaround could be coming a few years too late. Toyota is already the number one selling brand in the U.S. — followed by Chevrolet — and, as of April, Honda has bumped Ford out of the number three spot.
According to Automotive News, the Honda brand tallied 437,102 retail sales through April, while the Ford brand has only managed about 421,000 retail sales during the same period. If you include fleet sales — which makes up 35 percent of Ford's business and virtually zero percent of Honda's — Ford still has the overall lead on the Japanese automaker.
However, that 16,000 unit lead will likely widen over the next month as Ford continues to rely on larger vehicles for the volume of its sales. Thanks to economical vehicles such as the Fit, CR-V and Civic Hybrid, Honda sales are up 3.6 percent this year while the overall industry is down 9.2 percent. On the other side of the coin, Ford recently announced that it will be slashing production by as much as 20 percent this year as demand for its vehicles continues to sag.
Ford admittedly doesn't have enough small or medium-sized vehicles in its current lineup to compete in today's economic environment.
Chevrolet still has about a 30,000 unit lead over Honda, but industry experts say that margin could evaporate by the end of the year. "Chevrolet should worry," Lonnie Miller, an analyst for R.L. Polk & Co., told Automotive News.
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