Car Sales New Caledonia: 2011

In this small Pacific nation, car sales are stable, with a slight increase. Kia and Dacia did well near the top of the list. Ford maintained a healthy lead, albeit reduced. The three main French brands at times have held the top three spots, but not now. Chinese brands are making a move upwards. It will be interesting to see how they go in future.

1 Ford 1,218 -8%
2 Peugeot 990 2%
3 Kia 929 21%

The European Car Crisis: GM/Ford 2012

Back in the 1990’s, Ford and Opel/Vauxhall had between them 20-25% of Western European car sales. In the first six months of 2012, only 16% and for June a mere 14%. You don’t have to be a statistician to work out there is a steady decline in market share for the two main US brands. When you also add that sales in the 90’s were similar to now, then volumes are well down. In 1999 for example,

The European Car Crisis Overview 2012

Car sales are poor in Europe and will not be improving for the foreseeable future. It is not upmarket brands that are suffering, they never do. The well healed are less affected by economic downturns. The people who pull out of new car buying in harder times are the people who purchase ‘run of the mill’ models.

When car makers of these ‘bread and butter’ models run factories at full capacity,

Toyota vs Volkswagen

Both these brands have big ambitions to be the biggest brand around. Toyota is very much ahead of VW in sales as a stand alone make, strong across the world in all markets.

So which has the better car range? Toyota wins on reliability, quite easily in fact. Many think VWs are good in this area too but they are not. Reliability surveys put the big T well ahead also. VW beats Toyota in driver

The PSA Dilemma

Peugeot - Citroen (PSA) is in a difficult situation. Getting it sorted will take time and that is something the company is running out of. PSA want to close it's small Aulnay plant and lay off employees across France. This will affect something like 6,500 workers. So what is the situation? PSA Problems: 1) Not that well run. 2) European economic downturn. 3) Too much reliance on Europe,

Car LCV Sales Pakistan: 2011/12

Pakistan car and LCV sales are for July to June 2011/12. The figures below are only vehicles locally assembled, imported models are not reported. Mind you, there wouldn't be many of the latter. The LR figure is only the Defender model. Suzuki manages to take over 60% of the sales, with Toyota just under 30%.

Suzuki 112,157 +40.3%
Toyota 50,620 +15.0%
Honda 12,119 -21.7%
Daihatsu 3,857 -35.8%

VW Vs Porsche

In an affair that is so bizarre in the extreme, it could only happen in Germany. About the year 2005, Porsche was buying VW shares, not to take VW over but to stop others from doing so apparently. In 2008, with Porshe holding nearly half of VW shares, it was revealed that Porsche was in fact wishing to take over VW. The economic meltdown in 2008 had to halt the acquisition, and Porsche was now