There are some very interesting things about car sales for the year 2006. The first may be that Japanese manufacturers almost sold more cars in the U.S. than the Detroit 3. The numbers are 3,373,290 to 3,371,639. That's awfully close to a tie as far as I'm concerned. Last year the totals were just 160,000 in Detroit's favor. Note that these numbers are for cars. Trucks are not included.
Starting at the bottom of the sales figures, not surprisingly you find the exotics. Which manufacturer has the least sales is Oldsmobile with 67 cars. Oh, yes, that isn't an exotic, but Oldsmobile stopped selling cars in 2004, so it is pretty surprising that there were still 67 cars to sell. Well, maybe not.
The real holder of the "least cars sold" is Maybach with just 146 cars sold in the U.S. in 2006. Rolls-Royce sold almost three times as many with 336 cars sold. Maybe that why rumors are flying that DaimlerChrysler will discontinue the Maybach, and really believe that Mercedes is "engineered like no other". Aston Martin is next up with 443 cars sold. That's an awful lot for Aston Martin. Before 2000, they probably sold that many in the entire production of the factory. Lamborghini sold 704 cars in 2006. The "competition", Ferrari, sold almost twice as many at 1392. Lotus sold an amazing 2522, which is a huge number for them. Maserati sold 2108, which makes a lot of cars when combined with their brother Ferrari. But then, hold on to your hats, Bentley sold 3856 cars in the U.S. in 2006. That an awful lot of dollars when you consider that every single Bentley sold for over $150,000 -- and some of them for over twice that figure. I'm sure BMW is envious of Bentley when they consider the sales of Rolls-Royces.
Those are really the marques that sell few cars. Next in line from the roughly 3000 that Bentley sells is Jaguar with 20,683. That's a lot more cars, but really very few for a "mass" manufacturer like Jaguar. Their sales are down from 30,424 in 2005. Something needs to be done there. Even Porsche sold more cars than Jaguar with 23,658 sold (that doesn't include the additional 34,227 Cayennes they sold).
Looking at the other luxury marques than Jaguar -- and just cars here -- Audi comes up with a rather anemic 80,113 which is slightly down from 2005. Even Lincoln sold more cars with sales of 81,206 in 2006. Infiniti sold a few more with 86,795 sold. It's a pretty big step up to the next luxury marque, Acura, with 137,938 sold. That's disappointing for Honda, because Acura sold 151,662 cars in 2005. Cadillac is a few steps up with 142,765 sold, but that's also down from 160,859 in 2005. Mercedes-Benz is the next step up the luxury marque ladder with 178,771 cars sold in 2006, and they are disappointed too because they sold 183,017 in 2005. Lexus is in the same ball park as Mercedes with 183,037 sold in 2006. That's an improvement for them as they sold 151,226 cars in 2005.
You can pretty easily guess which marque sold the most luxury cars in 2006. Yes, it is BMW with sales of 216,343 -- and that's an impressive improvement over 2005 when they sold 197,833 cars. That is "just" a 9.4 percent increase in sales whereas Lexus had an increase of 21.0 percent. No wonder you see a new BMW on every corner and BMW dealers are building such big fancy new buildings.
It should be really a no brainer to guess who sold the most cars in the U.S. in 2006. You would think it would be Toyota with sales of 1,102,806. Chrysler-Dodge sold just 676,477 cars in 2007 in comparison. Ford-Lincoln-Mercury sold 1,004,502 cars. But Chevrolet-Pontiac-Buick-Cadillac-Saturn sold 1,692,244 cars in 2006. Even if Scion sales of 173,034 cars in 2006 are included, the total number is 1,275,840. GM should be looking over their shoulder, though, because both Toyota and Saturn had double-digit percentage sales increases, and all GM divisions but Saturn had sales percentage decreases. That doesn't bode well for 2007.
What are the biggest sales increases and decreases? The biggest sales increase by percentage was, surprisingly, Saturn (of the volume sales marques) with a 23.0 percent sales increase. Porsche actually beat them with a 29.1 increase in car sales, due mostly to the Cayman. The biggest decrease? Unfortunately for Ford, it's Jaguar with a decrease of -32.0 percent. No wonder they thought about selling Jaguar. The problem is that Jaguar is very well connected with Land Rover and their units are more profitable per unit than Jaguar and their sales were up 3.5 percent, though they are entirely trucks so that really doesn't belong in this discussion.
What are some other interesting sales figures? Hyundai and Kia sold a bunch of cars at figures of 327,316 and 148,947 respectively. Those are good sales, but increased very little over 2005. Has Mitsubishi turned the corner? They sold 83,843 cars in 2006 with was down just 3.0 percent from 2005. On the other hand Volvo sold even fewer cars at 82,607, which was a decrease of 5.7 percent. That's another piece of bad news for Ford. Even Mazda with sales of 186,881 cars in 2006 was down 3.3 percent from 2005. It is surprising, though, that Volkswagen sold 224,77 cars in 2007, which was an increase of 9.1 percent. Who would have thought that VW sales would have increased? They did sell just 235 Phaetons.
An interesting comparison is that BMW sold 39,171 MINIs last year and sold 39,082 BMW-branded cars that were made in the U.S.
How does the small convertible war go? Well, Mazda sold 16,897 Miatas in 2006, but Pontiac sold 19,710 Solstices and Saturn sold 8671 Skys. I guess GM is winning that one. Stepping up in the market, BMW sold 12,284 Z4s, Porsche sold 4503 Boxsters, and Audi sold 954 TTs. BMW wins that one by a much larger margin than I would have thought. The retractable hardtops can't be figured out because the sales figures for the Pontiac G6 convertible aren't broken out from the standard G6 versions. For the record, VW sold 3394 EOSes.
Did moving Nissan's headquarters from Southern California to Tennessee hurt Nissan? If sales figures are any indication, the answer is yes. Infiniti car (-8.5%) and truck (-17.2%) sales were down as were Nissan car (-2.2%) and truck (-6.8%) sales. Both Toyota and Honda car and truck sales were up.
It may be too early to tell in the "little car" race, but Honda sold 27,934 Fits in 2006, Nissan sold 22,044 Versas, and Toyota sold 70,308 Yarises. Either Toyota had the production running and ready for the demand in the U.S., and Honda and Nissan weren't ready -- or it is just another example of Toyota being more successful than everyone else. Oh, I suppose I should include the Chevrolet Aveo in this contest. It didn't do badly at all with 58,244 sales.
Total car sales in the U.S. for 2006 were 8,129,582, which was a small increase of 2.1 percent over 2005. As can be seen, some manufacturers can be happy with their performance and others not at all happy.
