Cleveland, Ohio – Continuing January’s trend of flat with lots of churn, February’s auto sales were down slightly with odd pockets of strength and weakness scattered throughout the industry. The long-running trend line – trucks/SUVs/crossovers gaining, cars falling – continued in February and shows little sign of abating any time soon. As has been the case for months, sales numbers are showing who has the healthiest lineups of larger vehicles.
Breaking down results by company:
- General Motors – 237,388 4.2%. A big jump (17%) for Silverado pickups pulled Chevrolet into positive territory last month, a key sign that GM is finding the right balance between cars and trucks. Car-heavy Buick and Cadillac declined during the month, but Chevy posted a 3.4% gain and truck-centric GMC leapt 17.2% higher. Small car sales are still a problem, with Sonic subcompact results down 49.5%. Fun fact – GM sold about half as many new Bolt EV electric cars (952) as Sonic subcompacts (2,140). The Bolt isn’t yet a significant portion of GM sales, but it’s already challenging some of the company’s lagging gas-powered cars.
- Ford – 208,440 -4.0%. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott is saying, “I’m giving you all she’s got, Captain,” but Ford’s truck and van lines just didn’t have enough left in February to make up for a more than 16,000-vehicle drop (25.7%) from the car side. Ford’s best-selling cars, the Fusion mid-sized and Focus compact, were responsible for almost all of that decline, and unlike earlier months, there was nothing to offset the drop. The biggest change came from commercial vans. A nearly two-year run of booming sales for Ford’s Transit and E-Series vans ended with a 10.6% decline. F-Series pickups, on the other hand, were up 8.7%.
- Toyota – 174,339 -7.2%. Toyota is having some success in expanding its truck/SUV/crossover offerings, but its gains on the larger side aren’t keeping pace with steep losses on the car side. Big-vehicle sales gained only 4% in February, while combined Toyota and Lexus car sales plunged 17.2%. Toyota’s big-3 cars – the Corolla compact, Prius hybrid, and Camry mid-sized – fell by nearly 10,000 units (13.5%). A year ago, those three vehicles represented nearly 40% of Toyota’s sales. This year, they’re down to about 36.5% of overall sales.
- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles LLC (FCA US) – 168,326 -10.1%. By far the worst performer of the major automakers, FCA US did have some highlights worth noting. The declines were extreme throughout its brands, but much of the damage was self-inflicted and intentionally, and there are signs that the steep drop-offs could end in the not-too-distant future. Jeep, the brand that kept FCA US in positive territory for much of last year, fell 15%, but the bulk of that came from the Patriot and Compass small SUVs, vehicles that FCA US is phasing out. A new Compass heads to dealerships in the next few months, replacing the two fast-declining models. So Jeep sales probably have another few months of declines, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The story is similar at Chrysler where the 28% drop can be blamed mainly on the outgoing 200 sedan. The new Chrysler Pacifica minivan isn’t keeping pace with the outgoing Town & Country, but it’s getting closer. Those planned declines are especially apparent at Dodge, a brand made up almost entirely of cars. Still, Dodge was only down 7% – numbers that Ford and Toyota would lovingly embrace this point. With the discontinued Dart and Avenger nearly out of sales reporting, the remaining vehicles in the Dodge lineup are performing better against year-ago comparison numbers.
- Nissan – 135,740 3.7%. Growth slowed a bit compared to January, but the Rogue small crossover continues to post strong gains, and the numbers could get even better in the coming months when Nissan adds the slightly smaller Rogue Sport to its lineup. The Rogue’s 53.7% sales leap (nearly 12,000 vehicles) single-handedly made up for a 9,500-unit decline for Nissan-brand cars. Another bright spot for Nissan – a near tripling of Titan full-sized pickup sales. At about 3,000 units, the Titan isn’t in the same sales league as Ford’s F-Series (about 66,000 sold in February), but the gains in the highly profitable segment are positive for the automaker.
- Honda – 121,686 2.3%. Within the cars bad/trucks good automotive market, the best of the good trucks are small and mid-sized crossovers, so Honda’s timing was impeccable in launching the HR-V small crossover in late 2015 and updating the CR-V last year. With both vehicles gaining about 27% last month, Honda is successfully transforming itself into a company that can drive growth from the truck side of the business – something it failed to do a decade ago when truck sales boomed at the expense of cars. Honda’s car sales fell 6.9%, but the 12.2% increase from crossovers, SUVs, and the Ridgeline pickup, more than picked up the slack.
- Hyundai/Kia – 95,693 -6.9%. Let’s start with the good news. Hyundai posted record sales for February with 53,020 vehicles sold, exactly 11 more than 2015’s February (despite 2016’s February having 29 days). The problems are with Kia. Going against industry trends, Kia was weakest with their biggest vehicles – a 10.7% drop for Sportage crossovers, 15.5% decline for Sorento SUVs, 47.1% plunge for Sedona minivans. Kia’s new Niro small crossover sold 2,143 units, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for the sharp declines elsewhere.
About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of Today’s Motor Vehicles and a contributor to Today’s Medical Developments and Aerospace Manufacturing and Design. He has written about the automotive industry for more than 17 years at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.