Who knew Subaru sales could rocket? Or that Volkswagen could win a sales increase from a lineup that runs from outdated to hard to tell form its forebears?
Overall it was a great month for auto sellers. Best November since 2001. Up nearly 5% from year-earlier sales.
But far from uniform.
Take Subaru…
Apparently the new Legacy and WRX sedans are twice as good as the old ones.
Either that, or all those Subie owners traded in theirs and bought two each, because sales of those models about doubled in November.
You probably think of Subaru as the quaint brand that serves the tweed-patch Northeasterners and snowy-road Coloradans.
But somebody must have thrown the "mainstream" switch because the newest Subies raced out of showrooms like money through a college kid's fingers.
Or maybe people just hated Subaru until right this minute, when they wept with enlightenment and swept through Subaru showrooms like grasshoppers through a Midwest corn field.
Keep in mind, those are cars, and cars mainly died where they slept, smacked down by SUVs. Subaru has SUVs, but those didn't do so great.
Something in the water?
Volkswagen pulled off a near-miracle, reporting a sales increase without anything new on the SUV side, which is where most car companies got their boosts in November.
Jetta was the boomer, rewarded, apparently, for the nice new engine by buyers who don't care that the neighbors won't know it's a new one parked in your driveway.
And that silly Buick Encore. Not only is it hard to remember because the name's so much like the big SUV, Enclave. (What next, Encircle? Ennui?). But Encore's a little-bitty machine that was stuck out there nearly alone in a segment that didn't exist, and now it's a read-hot number, selling -- as with Subaru -- nearly twice what it did a year ago.
And that's so even though the city-size utility vehicles have poured from automakers as if they were the only thing buyers want.
Jeep's comign with a Renegade, Fiat with the 500X, Mazda with the CX-3, Honda, the HR-V, Chevrolet with Trax.
OK, here's another one…Jeep Compass. Call them the third-and-a-half surprises because they surf the same wave that Encore's riding.
Compass is a dowdy, aging vehicle that's only considered a real Jeep in foreign markets, where buyers crave the name but gotta have something small. Patriot is similar underneath, but has the advantage of looking like a real Jeep.
Novedmber buyers liked Compass enough to grab 16% nmore than they did the previous November, and Patriot buyers gave that model an approval rating 47% higher than a year earlier.
How about Toyota's Scion brand…youthful; hip-slick-and-cool. Or not.
The only Scion worth its space in the showroom in November was the xB. It's the plainest one, based on the Toyota Corolla… And now that you mention it, Corolla was about the only Toyota car that didn't have to hang its head in shame when the monthly sales report card was issued.
Source : http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/12/03/november-auto-sales-surprises/19806731/
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