Honda slips as sedans lose favor
A good April for sales of Honda trucks and SUVs was not enough to cancel out a bad one for Honda cars, as the automaker’s total sales tumbled 7 percent from a year earlier.
The big decrease was enough to send the company’s 2017 sales into negative territory, down 0.6 percent from the first four months of 2016. The figures include the Honda and Acura brands.
On the positive side, the CR-V crossover continues to be a top seller; 32,671 were sold, more than any other Honda model and 13 percent more than in April 2016.
In contrast, the company’s two top-selling cars had a rough month, with Accord and Civic down 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
“While there seems no end in sight to consumers’ love affair with trucks and SUVs,
we continue to keep a focus on passenger cars to maintain a balanced sales mix in the retail marketplace,” said Jeff Conrad, senior vice president of American Honda, in a statement.
The luxury Acura brand was down 13 percent; all of its major models were down except for the TLX sedan, which had the support of a new ad campaign and is about to get an updated design.
Honda’s April performance was in line with that of several other automakers: Fiat Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and Toyota all reported decreases. Nissan and Mazda posted small increases.
The auto industry is coming off two consecutive years of record sales, and analysts are closely watching this year’s results to determine whether sales might have plateaued or even begun to fall.
Central Ohio has keen interest in Honda’s performance because the company is a major manufacturing employer, with assembly plants in Marysville and East Liberty, and several other offices.
Industry analysts expected April sales to be down anywhere from 2 to 4 percent but still run at a healthy annual rate of around 17.1 million vehicles.
Kelley Blue Book says it appears that 2017 U.S. sales will fall short of last year’s record 17.5 million; that would be the first one-year drop in sales since 2009.
Ford reported a 7.2 percent sales decline due largely to car demand that tumbled 21 percent, but the automaker said it’s still getting healthy prices for its vehicles as people load up on options.
Mark LaNeve, vice president of sales and marketing, told analysts and reporters that April’s decline is nothing to panic about.
“We have to let the year play out,” he said. “In a plateauing industry, you’re going to have some months that are up, and some that are down.”
Even full-size pickup trucks, which had been selling briskly, posted a sales decline. Ford, GM and Toyota pickup sales dropped, while Fiat Chrysler’s Ram sales were up 8 percent.
Toyota reported a 2 percent sales decline in April as healthy sales of the RAV4 small SUV were overcome by falling demand for cars such as the Camry and Corolla.
Fiat Chrysler’s sales fell 7 percent as it continued to exit the small and midsize car business. Sales of the normally strong Jeep brand sank 17 percent.
Among major automakers, only Volkswagen reported an increase. Its 1.6 percent gain can be attributed to 2016 sales having been depressed by the company’s diesel emissions-cheating scandal.