Latest Headlines on OCRegister.com
[x] Close
Auto Motion ~ Car news, reviews and events

Archive for the 'Sales figures' Category

« Previous Entries

Irvine’s Kia debuts first American-made car

November 16th, 2009, 6:11 pm by Matt Degen

Irvine-based Kia Motors America has officially built its first car in America.

Kia announced that a white 2011 Sorento crossover was the first vehicle to roll off the line at Kia’s new manufacturing plant in Georgia today.

The West Point plant, called Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, cost $1 billion to make and sits on 2,259 acres.

The site employs 2,500 workers, and Kia says it has created an additional 7,500 jobs in the region when including suppliers.

At full capacity, the plant is expected to produce 300,000 cars annually.

Kia Motors America is a unit of the Korean automaker that is also part of Hyundai.

While other automakers have had a terrible sales year, Kia has continued to grow. The automaker has seen 14 years of consecutive market share increases in the U.S., and recently recorded its best sales quarter ever, thanks in part to selling its smaller, fuel-efficient cars under the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

Through September of this year, Kia sales were up 79.6 percent in Orange County and up 4.6 percent in the U.S., according to data from AutoCount.

Through October of this year, Kia has sold 261,060 vehicle sales nationwide, a 7.2 percent increase from last year.

“The start of production for our first manufacturing facility in the United States further demonstrates our commitment to growth in North America and we are proud to be adding 2,500 jobs to the local economy” B.M. Ahn, group president and CEO, Kia Motors America and KMMG, said in a statement.

In related news:

Posted in: New cars • Sales figures • • | Post a Comment »

GM posts $1.2 billion loss, but sees progress

November 16th, 2009, 10:47 am by Matt Degen

General Motors today said it lost $1.2 billion from the time it left bankruptcy protection on July 10 through Sept. 30, a loss which is actually better than it has reported in previous quarters.

For example, from 2006 until the first quarter of this year, GM lost $78 billion, ultimately leaving the iconic American automaker into Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 1 of this year.

In today’s report, the Detroit automaker also said it will begin repaying the U.S. government $6.7 billion in loans that helped keep GM afloat earlier this year. GM said it will repay the debt over the next eight quarters. But, AP reports, “the money will come from funds loaned by the government.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Sales figures • • | Post a Comment »

VW-Porsche is now world’s biggest automaker

November 10th, 2009, 11:25 am by Matt Degen
Volkswagen Tiguan

Volkswagen Tiguan

German automaker Volkswagen, which recently gained majority ownership of Porsche, is now the world’s biggest car maker, according to new data from IHS Global Insight.

According to an article in U.K.’s the Guardian that cites IHS’ latest auto sales statistics, Volkswagen has overtaken Japan’s Toyota to become the world’s largest car manufacturer.

The article goes on to say, though: “The estimates by IHS Global Insight reflect the benefit on the German manufacturer of government measures in China, Germany and Britain to prop up their automotive industries and stimulate consumer demand in the wake of the worldwide economic downturn.”

Read the full Guardian story on Volkswagen.

So far this year, Volkswagen has made 4.4 million vehicles, vs. Toyota’s 4 million. Volkswagen has gotten a boost from a cash-for-clunkers type programs in Germany and the U.K., while Toyota has eased production, as it prepared for a dip in demand.

Last year, Toyota overtook General Motors to become the world’s biggest automaker.

In addition to making the Volkswagen brand, the company operates subsidiaries Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti.

In other news:

Posted in: New cars • Sales figures • • • | Post a Comment »

O.C. auto sales see mixed results in 3rd quarter

November 5th, 2009, 4:16 pm by Matt Degen

Orange County auto sales took another tumble in the third quarter of this year, but the quarterly decline was the smallest in what has been the worst year for auto sales in decades, and actually increased from second quarter sales.

Compared with the same period in 2008, new-vehicle registrations in Orange County fell 24.9 percent, with a total of 26,826 cars sold, according to the Orange County Automobile Dealers Association.

But that number is a 28.5 percent increase from the second quarter, in which 20,875 new-vehicle registrations were recorded. For the year through September, local sales are off 32.7 percent with a total of 71,790 vehicles sold. For the U.S. as a whole, auto sales were off 10.2 percent in the third quarter and are off 27.4 percent year to date.

While some of the boost is attributed to the government’s Cash for Clunkers program, which ran in the summer, OCADA Executive Director John Sackrison thinks there’s more behind the boost since last quarter. He also predicts that sales will continue to rise into next year.

“From what we are seeing now through the end of this year, if people’s confidence in their jobs continues to grow I think we will see sales uptick ,” he said. “People can only hold off that purchase for so long. It has gone from a want to a need. People will need to get a new car. Based on the downturn in sales from two years ago, we are going to see that need.”

In the third quarter, Toyota and its Scion sub-brand remained the top seller in Orange County with sales of 6,479. That was off 22.7 percent from the same period last year.

The biggest gainer by percentage was Irvine-based Kia, which saw sales increase 98.9 percent with 553 cars sold.

View OCADA’s full third-quarter report.

Also see:

Posted in: Dealers, deals and for sale • Sales figures | Post a Comment »

Report: Cash for Clunkers traded old gas guzzlers for new ones

November 4th, 2009, 4:39 pm by Matt Degen

clunk1

Remember Cash for Clunkers, last summer’s government-run program that spent $3 billion on giving car buyers incentives to trade in their old, gas-guzzling cars for new, fuel-efficient ones?

Turns our many a consumer took advantage of the program only to trade in an old, gas-hogging truck for a new, gas-hogging truck.

According to a months-long investigation by the Associated Press, the most common deals under the program replaced old Ford or Chevrolet pickups with new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage.

The report states:

The single most common swap — which occurred more than 8,200 times — involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers.

Owners of thousands more large old Chevrolet and Dodge pickups bought new Silverado and Ram trucks, also with only barely improved mileage in the middle teens, according to AP’s analysis of sales of $15.2 billion worth of vehicles at nearly 19,000 car dealerships in every state. Those deals helped the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado — along with Ford’s Escape midsize SUV — climb into the Top 10 most-popular vehicles purchased with the government rebates. The most common truck-for-truck and truck-for-SUV deals totaled at least $911 million.

The government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is reviewing the reports, according to a spokesman quoted in the article, and any dealers that submitted paperwork for invalid trade-ins will have to return the money.

In all, AP analyzed 677,081 trade-ins through Oct. 16.

Among the startling statistics:

  • In at least 15 deals in nine states, owners of large pickups cashed in old trucks for between $3,500 and $4,500 toward new Hummer H3 SUVs that got only 16 mpg.
  • A driver in Arlington, Va., traded a 1999 Ford Explorer with 15 mpg in July for $3,500 toward a new $28,000 Jeep Commander that weighs about 4,700 pounds and gets 16 mpg.
  • In at least 32 deals, drivers traded older vehicles for new large trucks — including versions of Toyota Tundras, GMC Sierras, Chevrolet Silverados, Dodge Rams and Ford F150 pickups — that got only 14 mpg.

Read the entire report.

Did you miss these past stories?

Posted in: Dealers, deals and for sale • Sales figures • Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Chrysler readies for a revamp: Will it work?

November 4th, 2009, 12:04 pm by Matt Degen

chryslerlogoAmerican automaker Chrysler is holding a daylong presentation in Detroit outlining its business plan for the next five years. The ailing automaker says the plan is one one of mere survival, but of growth into the future with a large dependence on smaller, more efficient cars made by Italy’s Fiat group, which rescued Chrysler this past summer after it emerged from bankruptcy.

The past couple of years have not been kind to the Detroit automaker whose brands include Jeep and Dodge.

Chrysler is projected to sell less than a million vehicles this year — 50 percent off what it did just two years ago. Its market share shrunk to 7.9 percent last month, and just yesterday the automaker said October sales were off 30 percent.

Meanwhile, October sales showed stabilization or even growth for much of the rest of the auto industry. Detroit rival GM reported a year-over-year increase of 5 percent (its first uptick in 21 months), while Ford gained 3 percent.

Since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, Chrysler has mainly been in what many are calling “survival mode.”

“We’re anticipating better things in the future, but the more important thing is what we can do immediately to improve what we have,” Paul Whitehead, general sales manager at Orange Coast Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Costa Mesa, told the New York Times last night in a late-breaking article.

Via teleconference from Italy, Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne, who now heads Chrysler, tried to make assurances that the automaker is not bleeding money.

“Some of you have been surmising we’re burning through cash,” he said in opening remarks. “This is not true.”

The company had a reported $5.7 billion in cash on hand at the end of September, compared with $4 billion when Fiat took over in June.

But Chrysler knows that if it is to survive, it needs to make major changes in the cars it makes.

To that end, Chrysler says it will:

  • Shift from larger engines to smaller fuel-efficient, Fiat-derived ones — possibly including diesel engines for the U.S. market.
  • Add 200 engineers in an effort to make improve quality.
  • Eventually bring about electric vehicles.
  • Introduce a 1.4-liter, four-cylinder gas engine in the Fiat 500 in the fourth quarter of 2010.
  • Have some Jeeps  use Fiat platforms starting in 2013
  • Eliminate the Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot after 2012.
  • Apply fuel-saving Fiat technology to its Pentastar V6.
  • Launch a hybrid Dodge Ram 1500 pickup in 2010.
  • Introduce a dual-clutch transmissions
  • Replace its logo with a new one.

The big question is, is all of this too little, too late? What do you think?

Can Chrysler return to success in the coming years?
View Results

In other news:

Posted in: Dealers, deals and for sale • New cars • Sales figures • Uncategorized • • | 5 Comments »

« Previous Entries