Of all the places the world has seen affected by the economic crisis, Germany’s luxury car market is one of the leading downers. Happily, their luxury car production hasn’t experienced the same fate. While their domestic market has fallen by more than a quarter in volume, exterior trade keeps their companies working.
As one of the manufacturers that seriously felt a drop in sales once word of something called a financial crisis came up, Mitsubishi just got a breath of fresh air last month. November saw Mitsubishi sales in the U.S. grow by as much as 47%.
The Koreans at Kia have started poppin’ them champagne corks and I’m guessing their uncertainty on the 2011 Optima has nothing to do with it. In actual fact, it’s got a lot to do with what’s happened to the Kia Sorento.
I guess the British have realized somewhere along the way that having just one product to live on isn’t that great business even if that one product is very expensive. So then Rolls Royce came up with the Ghost, a smaller version of their luxury barge destined to boost sales.
I’ve always referred to the Toyota Prius as the “Darling of Hollywood” but it seems that I’ve been doing it wrong. The little Japanese hybrid is actually the darling of… Japan.
Ever since the Indians at Tata took over the struggling British company things have turned around. Jaguar’s new cars were actually new. Technology was once again showed off and the big cats were beginning to keep up with the competition.
This bit of news may not seem so new but bare with me. Mercedes Benz has decided to send its baby A Class over to China. The A Class’ introduction to the Chinese market is part of a very ambitious plan the Germans have for themselves.
Ford is, by far, my favorite among the Detroit Big Three. Because of this, I’m always happy when I find they’re doing well. With the 2011 Explorer, Ford took a few bold decisions that lead to a totally different car. It was a bit of a gamble if you will.
The Americans really want to storm the Chinese… automotive market. In a recent announcement from Ford we’ve found that their assault on the Chinese automotive market has been escalated by an increase in the number of dealers available.
One would think that as an after thought of the financial crisis people would still be careful with their expenses and so on. But no, the entire automotive market is registering growth. Further more, Porsche is having an immense sales boost from last quarter.
I’ve been banging on lately about Hyundai and their coming from behind to overtake Toyota as Europe’s largest Asian car manufacturer pretty much proves me right. Kia isn’t yet best manufacturer overall but overtaking Toyota is quite an achievement.
Saab is one of the tradition brands that has been struggling for a while and one which barely survived the financial crisis. After having dodged a bullet in being bought by Spyker the Swedish are trying to avoid another one.
The Sant’Agata Bolognese company has a few worries about the short term trajectory their sales will undergo. Seeing how they ended production of the Lamborghini Murcielago just days ago they now have one less product to sell.
I, for one, have always known that the modern Korean cars sell, and sell well but it seems that some of the economy oriented newspapers think otherwise. Actually, either some people writing about money hate the cheap Korean products or have no clue about the situation as many have claimed that Kia is in serious
I have to say one thing, if there’s any brand that can sell cars without having a proud badge on them it’s VW. With such a performance with the VW roundel and, more recently, with the Skoda roundel can you imagine what they can do with a posh badge?
After quite a bit of a shock to come from the automotive industry not that long ago here’s another. A subsidiary company of GM could achieve something different, they might sell more cars than the parent company in the states.
It seems that the little city car the coolest brand in the UK was showcasing at this spring’s Geneva Motor Show will hit the production line soon. Back at the infamous motor show this was nothing more than a Toyota IQ based luxury supermini done by Aston Martin as an attempt to keep in tune
It seems that sales figures really make for celebration reasons these days, and why not because when troubled times hit and words like financial crisis, economy and other stuff like that come along selling a car is slowly turning into a bit of a miracle. So after Mazda celebrated sales figures of their iconic MX-5
That’s what seems to be happening as reports from Buick show not problems with selling cars but rather dealers stocking up. The problem isn’t with dealers trying to build up a stock but rather with them keeping a car ready for testing. They sell these things like hot cakes.
I’m not entirely convinced about Mercedes’ new policy on reliability, image and the sorts but it seems that the majority of people is. I’m only saying this because US sales of the German three point star have risen so much they over took the arch-rivals at BMW and recently even the long reigning Lexus.
