And the Best-Selling Automobile of 2009 was…

January 7, 2010 by Madison · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, Honda, Toyota 

…the Ford F series pickup…again.

The honored F was redone for ‘09.  But once the shining child of the American auto market, the F is far from its prime.  The pickup achieved its high-point in ‘04 with almost 940,000 units sold.  The number for ‘09?  Well under 414,000.  With all the cash, advertising, and labor put into it, the F couldn’t break out of the recession’s pull.  The Chevrolet Silverado (#3) was well behind it with 317,000, and Dodge Ram (#10) came in with a rather weak 177,000 units.

The big truck losers?  The GMC Sierra came nowhere near the Silverado’s numbers (112,000), making the argument for us that it’s time to assimilate the damn thing into the Chevy line.  The Toyota Tundra, Nissan Titan, Honda Ridgeline, and Ford Explorer were nowhere to be seen.  The smaller Tacoma, Escape, and RAV4 all did well, however.

The Toyota Camry was the top car and #2 overall.  The sale decline with the Camry was small, as the sedan managed to push out 357,000 units.  Behind it were the Corolla with 297,000, the Honda Accord with 290,000, and Civic with 260,000.  The only American car to break into the top ten was Ford’s Fusion.  That came in at #9 with 181,000.

Toyota Becomes a Loser in America

July 22, 2009 by Madison · Comments Off
Filed under: Toyota 

Looks like all that factory money that went into NASCAR didn’t pay off.

Toyota’s US operations, long a bastion of profit, have now sunk to a new low.  Toyota is now losing a fortune in its American investment: sales losses for the first half of this year are down 38%.  That’s actually three percent more than the national sales average.  Even worse, the NUMMI factory, a joint-effort with American industry, may shut down due to the rapid losses the company is suffering.

(Let’s see Thomas Friedman promote Toyota now.)