April Auto Industry Sales: Chrysler Sebring, Up 207 percent
That headline pretty much sums up one of the most random sales months I've ever seen. April found the Chrysler and Dodge nameplates atop the industry in sales advances, with both brands up more than 60 percent. This was no close call, either, as the third-place marque trailed the two Chrysler divisions by about 12 percent. And just as shocking were the vehicles leading the way. Sales of the Chrysler Sebring shot northward by 207 percent, a number that was comfortably outdone by the Dodge Avenger, which scored a 340 percent April sales boost.
On ye olde other hand, a closer look at the numbers for all automakers shows customers took a relatively scattershot approach to their buying last month, likely resulting from a combination of incentive hunting, relatively low gas prices and perhaps a bit of pent-up demand.
So, while the car side helped Chrysler, which also benefited from a 40 percent increase for the Chrysler 300 and a 90 percent leap for the Dodge Charger, the company's Ram Pickup slipped 24 percent. Yet for Honda, the numbers showed an opposite trend: Car sales were off 1.4 percent (down 1.3 percent for Honda proper and 2.3 percent for Acura), while the automaker's trucks move ahead by a combined 40.7 percent.
At first glance, one might think this is because Honda's "trucks" are actually more fuel-efficient crossovers, and that customers are simply continuing to migrate out of body-on-frame trucks to softroaders and the like. But that idea is put to the test when we take a look at the other big players in the industry.
Ford kept the momentum going with its fifth consecutive month of +20 percent sales jumps, with April numbers up by 25.5 percent for the company as a whole. But while the Ford Taurus ratcheted up its sales by another 99 percent compared to the same month last year, and the Ford Focus chipped in a healthy 20.7 percent bump, the Ford Fusion ran into a brick wall; Ford's mid-sizer grew sales by just 3.5 percent in April.
In fact, Blue Oval car sales increased just 9.5 percent over 2009's terrible April, while the division's crossovers/SUVs moved up 32.7 percent and its truck sales took a 38.3 percent leap. And the best performers were "real" trucks like the Ford Explorer, 42.2 percent for the better; Ford Expedition, tallying a 105.4 percent improvement; and the Ford F-150, finding its way into the hands of 42.4 percent more drivers than in April 2009.
On the other hand, a fuel-efficiency narrative could be used to explain GM's nearly 20 percent core-brand sales improvement in April. Well, that and the ongoing success of the Buick LaCrosse, which captured a robust 272.7 percent April sales increase. Outside of that car, though, the biggest winners were crossovers like the Cadillac SRX up 587.3 percent and Chevrolet Equinox, good for another 190.4 percent sales surge, along with the fuel-efficient Chevrolet Aveo and Chevrolet Cobalt, both moving ahead by more than 28 percent.
Now, two of the mainstream's big boys did find some broad-based improvements in April: Toyota and Nissan.
Quality woes be damned, Toyota's decision to crash the incentives party seems to be working out pretty well, catapulting the company to an overall 24.4 percent sales jump and a 23.8 percent bump for the Toyota division proper. True, this puts Toyota down in 14th place on the April sales charts (when sorted by separate nameplates), but it's still an impressive performance when you remember the Toyota recall-athon continues. It was just days ago another 50,000 Toyota Sequoia SUVs from 2003 were added to the company's growing recall list.
So sure, Sequoia's April sales fell more than 17 percent, but both the Toyota Prius and Toyota Corolla rang up sales boosts of around 50 percent, while the Toyota Sienna and Toyota Tundra both crested 40 percent. All of which pales before the performance of the Toyota 4Runner, garnering an astonishing boost of more than 204 percent.
But it was Nissan's April product mix that was mixed most thoroughly, with the company's car side (including Lexus) seeing a 37.3 percent sales improvement, and trucks and crossovers (again including those from Lexus) good for a 31.3 percent rise. Products from the Nissan Versa (up 43.9 percent) to the Nissan Maxima (up 25.4 percent) to the Nissan Rogue (up 38.3 percent) to the Nissan Armada (up 87.5 percent) all showed gains.
As for the South Koreans, Hyundai set yet another monthly sales record, with numbers up around 30 percent, and the Hyundai Sonata, Hyundai Santa Fe and Hyundai Tucson drove most of that gain. It's significant that these are the company's newest products, and that the Sonata again outsold the Fusion on a retail basis, but to put things into perspective, Hyundai as a whole sold about 44,000 vehicles in April; during the same period, Ford moved nearly 41,000 full-size pickups alone.
And Kia, despite growing some market share, actually underperformed the industry last month. The marketplace was up nearly 20 percent, but Kia sales bumped ahead by just 17.3 percent.
All told, the April numbers show an industry essentially treading water, with a few automakers graduating to the doggy paddle. And with a flood of both incentives and new products on their way, I'm thinking we can expect a wave of better numbers come May.