I'll keep it short: July was a grim month for subcompact sales. Nearly across the board, sales were down compared to July 2009. The reason? Perhaps it was the C.A.R.S. program, aka Cash For Clunkers, which went into effect July 27 of last year and sold a boatload of vehicles. Granted, it was only in effect for a couple of days.
The only subcompact sales increases for July, 2010 wear Kia badges. The reskinned-for-2010 Rio was way up, and the Soul was in positive territory, too. In fact, the Soul sold the most units overall for July. The Cube continues its artificially high numbers due to a slow roll out last year. Do note Fiestas and the Mazda2 are just out of the gate. Expect to see the numbers on the rise.
On the flip side—lots of red on the chart. Even the mega-selling Nissan Versa was down for the month. The furthest down was—you guessed it—the Smart ForTwo. Disappointingly, the slick-but-slow-selling Suzuki SX4 was also down 60% percent and only moved 788 units. I'll let the numbers tell the rest of the story.
| Make/Model | July '10 vs. July '09 | Units sold, July '10 | '10 vs. '09 | YTD sold '10 |
| Kia Rio | +99.7% | 3,421 | +27.5% | 17,167 |
| Kia Soul | +65.9% | 8,020 | +128.7% | 36,657 |
| Nissan Versa | -9.4% | 7,725 | +54.1% | 62,262 |
| MINI (total)* | -11.2% | 4,326 | -1.9% | 25,279 |
| Chevrolet Aveo | -14.6% | 4,238 | +46.7% | 24,715 |
| Honda Fit | -29.5% | 6,471 | -22.8% | 29,781 |
| Toyota Yaris | -46.1% | 3,069 | -40.9% | 26,058 |
| Hyundai Accent | -48.1% | 3,960 | -23.5% | 31,038 |
| Scion xD | -48.4% | 1,060 | -25.5% | 5,753 |
| Nissan Cube | -54.0% | 1,516 | +137.6% | 17,046 |
| Suzuki SX4 | -60.0% | 788 | -47.0% | 6,642 |
| Smart ForTwo | -60.5% | 560 | -60.9% | 3,909 |
| Ford Fiesta | -- | 3,349 | -- | 4,377 |
| Mazda2 | -- | 38 | -- | 38 |
5 comments:
Kia is on a roll with the Soul (no pun intended) and even the ancient refreshed Rio sold well!
Also you should include Mazda, even though they sold 38 Mazda2s. The car went on sale late last month.
Chris—thank you for that insight! I wasn't sure if the Mazda2 had hit dealers. I'll add it.
- Andy
[SARCASM]Dude with sales numbers like that no wonder Hyundai wants to close Kia.[/SARCASM]
Yeah, I was thinking about that as I was entering the numbers. Yeah, Kia's definitely going to be gone by the end of 2010.
For those that aren't familiar with this, the Web site "24/7 Wall St." predicts that Kia will be out of business by 2011. The site's previous predictions haven't been very good, either.
http://247wallst.com/2010/06/15/247-wall-st-ten-brands-that-will-disappear-in-2011/
There's one thing missing form that analysis...the fact that Hyundai/Kia has maintained a lot greater distinction between the two product lines than, say, Dodge/Chrysler or Ford/Mercury.
Hyundai hasn't given Hyundai dealers a badge-engineered version of the Soul, instead opting for the very different Elantra Touring. That's a good sign.
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