In a first of a monthly series of articles, we will put a spotlight on sales of green cars in the US. The term “green cars” broadly means cars which incorporate electric motors in their drivetrains, in varying degrees of importance: Hybrid describes cars where the electric motor plays second fiddle to the primary internal combustion engine, [Read more…]
After discussing the US auto brand sales ranking for January, let’s zoom in on the models ranking.
January was a month of big changes in the Top 10. While Ford F-Series held steady at the top of the segment, its closest rival Chevrolet Silverado saw its sales rise by 14.5%, continuing its good run from December, and suggesting that the model may be “priced to move” ahead of the market debut of the new generation model. By comparison, Ram Pickup had a poor month by its own standards, seeing its sales fall by 13.1% and falling to fifth spot [Read more…]
Sales of domestic passenger cars in China beat all expectations for January 2018 with an 11% increase to 2,4 million sales. Analysts and experts had expected a slow start of the year as the tax cut on cars with engines of 1,6 liters or less had ended. However, January 2017 was an exceptionally slow month with stable sales on the same month in 2016 while February last year suddenly showed 20% growth on the year before. This phenomenon was due to the Chinese New Year celebrations last year falling in January, as opposed to February in 2016 and 2018. This means that next month is likely to balance off the January performance with stable sales or perhaps even a small decline. This is also reflected in the Seasonally Adjusted Annualized selling Rate which is down by 1 million on January 2017 at 24,74 million. We’ll need to analylse combined January and February figures to be able to draw a thorough conclusion of the state of the Chinese auto market. [Read more…]
Like every year in January, Detroit shows off its resilience, its working-class glamour and its vitality when the doors open of the Cobo center, showing all the latest toys on wheels. Hundreds of auto executives, thousands of journalists and tens of thousands of potential car buyers assemble to look at shiny chrome, kick tires and listen to each [Read more…]
Looking ahead, even one year, can be very tricky. Last year we nominated one brand and two models as potentially doing well in 2017 and we were somewhat right with them: Honda did gain market share at +0,7% compared to -5% for the overall market, and that’s not a bad performance at all for a brand that’s not known for its huge swings in sales or share thanks to a stable product range, low fleet sales and apathetic approach to incentives. [Read more…]
From Bart and myself here at CarSalesBase.com, we wanted to wish all of you, our readership and biggest asset, an Amazing New Year 2018! [Read more…]
The first generation Mercedes-Benz CLS was launched in late 2004 and stood out with revolutionary styling for a brand that had mostly been very conservative in the design department until that time. It had simple and elegant lines, and especially the character line running from the front wheel arches to the rear lights was a great touch. However, in my opinion it hasn’t aged very well. If I see one on the road nowadays, it looks a lot older than the 7-13 years it currently is. The strange shape of the headlights is mostly due to that, but also the fact that those headlights seem to fade a bit over the years. Perhaps it also doesn’t help that some (second or third) owners have made customized “improvements” to their cars, including oversized wheels. The second generation, launched in 2011, fixed the weird headlight shape but also lost its simple and elegant design. In line with the Mercedes-Benz styling of this period, it had expressive lines on its sides and pronounced rear wheel arches. The latter actually work quite well on the CLS, simply because it was more coherent with the rest of the car, as opposed to the the E-Class, where they were ditched during that model’s facelift. The addition of the Shooting Brake version gave the 2nd generation CLS another boost in positioning the CLS as the odd one out in the Mercedes-Benz line-up. The proportions of both the CLS coupe and the Shooting Brake worked much better than those of the smaller CLA versions.