US car sales analysis February 2018 – brands

After beginning 2018 on an optimistic note, with sales rising by 1.2% in January, the market took a downward swing in February, shrinking by 2.2% and pushing the industry into the red for 2018 YTD (sales down 0.6%). It is worth noting too that this performance is not driven by Feb’18 being greatly different than last year in terms of selling days, or because Feb’17 was a particularly good month (sales fell by 0.8% back then, in line with the 0.6% fall in Jan’17) – rather, it seems that after months of throwing ever-higher incentives at buyers, automakers are now starting to scale back. The coming months will show whether this downturn marks a return to the trend observed in 2017, when the market decline was punctuated by the occasional month with a sales increase, or whether the industry will rally thanks to the ongoing economy growth and the incoming tax cuts.

Highlights:

• Only three out of the Top 10 brands recorded positive growth in February, a fall from six in January
• Luxury brands once again outpaced mainstream brands, growing their sales by 5.3%, relative to a 3.2% decline amongst mainstream brands
• By far the biggest winner was Jeep in sixth, which followed up its first monthly gain in over a year in January with a growth rate of 12.3% in February

• The other two brands that experienced positive growth were Toyota, whose sales were up a healthy 4.5%, and Subaru, whose sales were up 3.8%
• The Top 3 was much as it was in January, with Toyota once again outselling Chevrolet, although this time it did so by a considerably larger margin due to the American brand’s 8.8% drop in sales, while Ford stayed comfortably ahead of the rest despite a 6.1% sales decline 
• Nissan in fourth stayed ahead of Honda, as it has recently early in the year, helped by Honda’s larger sales decline
• Hyundai‘s misery continued as its sales once again declined by double-digits, keeping it behind Subaru in the monthly stats
• GMC continued to underperform in 2018 after a good 2017, with sales dropping by 8.0%, while Kia once again made it into the Top 10 as its sales decline was less severe then over at Dodge, whose sales fell by 8.4%, just enough to drop it out of the Top 10
• February was an unusually good month for mainstream brands outside the Top 10: sales at Volkswagen grew by 6.0%, those at Mazda once again were in the double-digits (up 12.7%), Buick managed a slow-but-steady 1.2% growth, Chrysler managed a relatively-small 3.5% sales decline, Mitsubishi‘s sales grew by 18.8%, while Mini‘s sales took off with a huge 42.3% month-on-month growth
• Nonetheless, a few mainstream brands lost out: while Ram‘s 14.1% sales decline is understandable given the imminent arrival of the new Pickup, the sales collapse continued at Fiat (down 42.1%) and Smart, whose sales were down 69.5% to barely over 100 units
• Among luxury brands, the higher-volume brands pretty much all enjoyed positive growth, with the standouts being once again Audi (sales up 12.4%), Cadillac (sales up 14.0%), Land Rover (sales up 18.8%) and Volvo (sales up 35.7%), riding high on the back of rising sales of the new XC60; only Infiniti (sales down 6.7%) and Lincoln (sales down 23.4%) lost out

• Lower down the sales chart, the fates of the luxury brands were more mixed: sales at Alfa Romeo were up over 250% times and at Tesla by 75.9% as the brands had an expanded portfolio relative to Feb’17, while those at Porsche rose by over 20%; on the other side, sales at Jaguar collapsed by almost 40%, with Genesis and Maserati too seeing their sales fall by low teens
• It was a similar story among exclusive brands, a bit of a fall after a great January, with Bentley finally back in the black and McLaren almost doulbling its sales, and Ferrari sales falling by 23.0% and at Rolls-Royce by 20.6% on the other

Brand ranking

Monthly

YTD

#	Model	Feb’18	Feb’17	Δ	#	2018	2017	Δ
a1	Ford	186,662	198,720	-6.1%	a1	340,663	361,121	-5.7%
a2 (1)	Toyota	162,929	155,961	4.5%	a2 (1)	312,071	283,361	10.1%
a3 (1)	Chevrolet	149,605	164,095	-8.8%	a3 (1)	291,552	299,265	-2.6%
a4	Nissan	117,110	122,003	-4.0%	a4	230,013	222,764	3.3%
a5	Honda	104,588	110,822	-5.6%	a5	200,222	208,000	-3.7%
a6	Jeep	70,020	62,345	12.3%	a6	129,723	120,760	7.4%
a7 (2)	Subaru	47,249	45,500	3.8%	a7 (1)	91,606	89,379	2.5%
a8 (1)	Hyundai	44,732	51,131	-12.5%	a8 (1)	84,362	95,625	-11.8%
a9 (1)	GMC	42,640	46,339	-8.0%	b10	75,698	83,663	-9.5%
b10 (2)	Kia	40,672	42,673	-4.7%	a9 (3)	76,300	78,299	-2.6%
b11 (1)	Dodge	40,187	43,878	-8.4%	b12 (3)	67,787	83,987	-19.3%
b12 (1)	Ram	36,737	42,785	-14.1%	b11	68,776	80,830	-14.9%
b13	Mercedes-Benz	27,788	27,035	2.8%	b13	55,286	54,611	1.2%
b14	Volkswagen	26,660	25,145	6.0%	b14	51,404	48,655	5.6%
b15	Mazda	25,731	22,824	12.7%	b15	50,693	44,522	13.9%
b16	BMW	23,508	22,558	4.2%	b16	42,524	40,667	4.6%
b17	Lexus	19,265	18,338	5.1%	b17	37,179	33,910	9.6%
b18 (1)	Buick	16,322	16,131	1.2%	b19	29,670	29,248	1.4%
b19 (1)	Chrysler	16,150	16,730	-3.5%	b20 (2)	26,734	30,107	-11.2%
b20	Audi	15,451	13,741	12.4%	b18 (2)	29,962	26,942	11.2%
b21 (1)	Mitsubishi	12,973	10,924	18.8%	b23 (2)	21,453	17,381	23.4%
b22 (1)	Infiniti	12,820	13,737	-6.7%	b21	23,455	25,295	-7.3%
b23 (1)	Cadillac	12,338	10,823	14.0%	b22	22,233	21,121	5.3%
b24 (1)	Acura	10,969	10,864	1.0%	b24 (1)	19,877	20,066	-0.9%
b25 (1)	Land Rover	6,828	5,747	18.8%	b25 (1)	13,274	11,910	11.5%
b26 (1)	Lincoln	6,700	8,744	-23.4%	b26 (2)	13,110	17,529	-25.2%
b27	Volvo	6,283	4,630	35.7%	b27 (1)	11,850	8,077	46.7%
b28 (2)	Tesla	4,485	2,550	75.9%	b29 (3)	7,860	4,200	87.1%
b29 (1)	Porsche	4,382	3,637	20.5%	b28 (1)	9,198	8,239	11.6%
b30 (1)	Mini	3,065	2,154	42.3%	b30	6,002	5,264	14.0%
b31 (2)	Jaguar	2,185	3,484	-37.3%	b31 (2)	4,789	6,423	-25.4%
b32 (3)	Alfa Romeo	1,568	443	254.0%	b32 (4)	3,216	551	483.7%
b33	Genesis	1,363	1,582	-13.8%	b33	2,976	3,400	-12.5%
b34 (2)	Fiat	1,241	2,145	-42.1%	b34 (3)	2,470	4,309	-42.7%
b35 (1)	Maserati	931	1,087	-14.4%	b35 (1)	1,828	1,976	-7.5%
b36 (1)	Ferrari	208	270	-23.0%	b36 (1)	417	470	-11.3%
b37 (1)	Bentley	204	155	31.6%	b37 (1)	414	303	36.6%
b38 (3)	McLaren	109	57	91.2%	b40 (1)	188	107	75.7%
b39 (3)	Smart	106	348	-69.5%	b38 (3)	211	672	-68.6%
b40 (1)	Rolls-Royce	100	126	-20.6%	b39	210	245	-14.3%
b41 (1)	Lamborghini	72	71	1.4%	b41 (1)	132	123	7.3%

* estimates