August Sales up 14%

:D :clap: http://www.nyse.com/interface/jsp/NHDetail.jsp?RequestID=2&pageID=NewsHeadlines&sid=ON%2009/01%201170&isdowjones=true
Cap'n

Because the Employee Discounts ended. :lol:

Canada's kicking butt too!!

Toyota Canada Sets New August and Year-to-Date Sales Records

(TORONTO) – Toyota Canada Inc. (TCI) today announced a new August and year-to-date sales records, with strong performances in both its Toyota and Lexus luxury divisions. Highlights include:
· A record August for total TCI sales, with 16,114 units ahead of last year by 9.6 per cent, contributing to a year-to-date record of 119,873 units, up 3.0 per cent over last year.
· Best August for the Toyota brand with 15,372 units which are 9.3 per cent ahead of last year.
· Best August for Toyota cars as sales of 11,861 are up 14.3 per cent.
· Toyota truck sales of 3,511 units are down 4.8 per cent.
· Best August for the Lexus brand with 742 units beating last August by 17.4 per cent.
· Lexus car sales of 307 jumped by 15.4 per cent over last August.
· Lexus truck sales of 435 units beat last August by 18.9 per cent.

”With gas prices fluctuating, Toyota is enjoying record sales, boosted by products like Echo, Prius and the Canadian-made Matrix which offer best-in-class fuel efficiency, along with our best-selling Corolla,” said Tony Wearing, Managing Director of TCI. “For those seeking the same versatility in a larger vehicle, with the same customer-friendly combination of quality, value, and outstanding fuel economy, the new Toyota Avalon, Highlander Hybrid and even Tacoma trucks are great options too.”

”The steady growth of Lexus continues to be fueled by customer demand for the popular ES sedans and RX SUVs,” said Stuart Payne, Director of Lexus in Canada. “We’re equally delighted to see the response to the new RX 400h gasoline/electric luxury hybrid, as drivers discover that exceptional luxury and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive.”

Sales highlights for August include:
· Record August for the Lexus ES luxury sedan, with 214 units up by 12.6 per cent.
· Record August sales of Corolla reached 4,772 units, up 27.2 per cent.
· Record August sales of Matrix hit 1,871, an increase of 4.6 per cent.
· Record August sales of Prius hybrid, with 222 units, up 38.8 per cent.
· Sales of Echo sedans and hatchbacks; 2,871 units are up 29.4 per cent.
· Sales of 221 Avalon premium intermediate sedans are up significantly over last year.
· Sales of 840 RAV4 SUVs represent a 12.4 per cent increase over last August.
· Sales of 495 Tacoma pickup trucks grew by 175.0 per cent.

Because the Employee Discounts ended. :lol:


Actually the Employee discounts have been going on and will continue to until at least Sept 6. I believe GM and Ford are both going to discontinue it but DCX has said they will continue to offer it indefinitely.

Yup, GM, Ford and D-C still have the employee pricing program. GM has admitted that in spite of the employee pricing they sales are less than expected.
After Sep 6th Ford and GM are going to end the employee pricing and go to what they call a "value pricing" program. It wont be as cheap as the employee pricing was, but the '06 MSRP will be signifgantly less than the previous MSRPs.
In the end, I dont think it is going to help them much. If a vehicle is a poorly designed, cheaply-made POS it wont matter how low the price is.
Cap'n

No surprise here.:D

I Personally Hate General Motors. I think they are stupid and cannot design cars. I own 2 Toyotas...A Corolla and a Sienna and i love them both. GM's stock went up about 10 dollars because of the employee pricing but now its going back down about 50 cents a day. IT was only a temporary fix. http://www.detnews.com/2005/specialreport/0502/13/A01-87977.htm Every Toyota lover should read that.

Great article, msm. :clap: Oh by the way, welcome to TN! :hi:
Cap'n

you no it is sad when the "largest auto maker" need to try gimics like employe priceing and all it dose is rasie them buy not very much. toyota, durring the employ priceing, actualy rose on the stock market gm should just give up and start makeing smart dissions like makeing cars people want. i hate gm and i think they are dumb

GM_SUCKS

Even though Toyota doesn't have a company-wide employee discount going on, dealers sure as hell are piling on the incentives. A few dealers around here are advertising it as employee pricing...it's just that you don't see it being advertised nationwide that nobody notices.

Also, all these spectacular month-after-month Toyota increases in sales could be due to increased fleet sales. While Ford and GM's fleet sales are made public, apparently you have to pay a fee to JD Powers in order to find Toyota's fleet sales. I have no doubt that there are still plenty of retail sales, but that doesn't rule out Toyota increasing sales to fleets as the reason for continuous increases every month.

Was browsing through my business major brother's Inc mag, and saw a little advertising section sponsored by DCX and Toyota (cue "Odd Couple" music).

Toyota, in discussing the Tacoma and Tundra makes some intersting comments. First, the V6 Tundra is apparently gone for good. The upcoming Tundra will apparently only be offered in V8 trim.

Secondly, they're boasting about adding capacity to get further into the fleet truck business. Now that's not such a big deal. Ford sustains a hefty volume of fleet business on the F-series without seriously impacting residuals and retail TCO. However, Toyota does not have Ford's fleet business relationships, and they probably won't for decades. There's a question in my mind about how many fleet/business sales Toyota can make with the Taco/Tundra

In this little advertising section Toyota also makes a big deal about how the Camry is becoming a popular car for fleet buyers, and that Toyota is eager to expand fleet sales of the Camry.

Now, I have no idea what's going on at Toyota WHQ, and I don't know what their target percentage for Camry fleet volume is. I'm willing to bet, however, that their target percentage is whatever it takes to keep the factories running. The next Ford Taurus, perhaps?

If this is their attitude, we are seeing a classic example of corporate arrogance playing out before our very eyes. "The rules don't apply to us" seems to be the new Toyota motto. It will be interesting to see how far into the fleet business Toyota is willing to take their Camry. Because of a reputation for reliability, resale for the Camry should still hold up well. But it will not hold up as well as the Accord, and it may (in time) not hold up as well as the Mazda6 and perhaps even the Fusion... When that happens, the TCO for new car buyers tips in favor of these other cars.EDIT

I've done a little research and found out that in 1997 about 12% of Camry sales were to fleets, but in the first 2 months 1/5 of Camry sales went to fleets. Around 390,000 Camrys were sold that year, so that means almost 47,000 went to fleets. Meanwhile, Honda sold close to 365,000 Accords with only 4% fleet sales. That means that the Accord had 5,000 more retail sales than the Camry, but Camry won the title as selling the most cars. With Toyota continuing to increase fleet sales today, how large of a lead do they actually have? Will they do whatever it takes to keep the Camry at #1, even if it means killing off resale value and their reputation?

Even though Toyota doesn't have a company-wide employee discount going on, dealers sure as hell are piling on the incentives. A few dealers around here are advertising it as employee pricing...it's just that you don't see it being advertised nationwide that nobody notices.

Also, all these spectacular month-after-month Toyota increases in sales could be due to increased fleet sales. While Ford and GM's fleet sales are made public, apparently you have to pay a fee to JD Powers in order to find Toyota's fleet sales. I have no doubt that there are still plenty of retail sales, but that doesn't rule out Toyota increasing sales to fleets as the reason for continuous increases every month.

It's called End-of-Model-Year. And every company has done that as long for decades. Dump the 2005's for whatever you can get. And all dealers, whether Toyota or Nissan or Honda or GM or D/C or Ford have always done this. Except the big-3 pushed extra hard to the point of losing money per vehicle.

Fleet sales? Hummm I don't know about that. Are you guessing or have you actually seen sales data broken down by retail and fleet?? Not that that makes a difference anyways because the Big-3 are losing marketshare in every area. :clap:

No, I don't have actual figures...I tried looking on the internet for recent fleet sales figures, but couldn't find anything for Toyota. I did however find the 1997 info that I posted above which shows Camry edging out the Accord due to fleet sales. Toyota is so marketshare hungry these days that it's not impossible to imagine them increasing fleet sales to keep their "best month ever" headlines. I guess they just don't want us to know where those best month sales are going to.

Yeah Toyota hardly has ANY fleet sales. Unlike the domestics ACTUAL PEOPLE buy their products, because they are the best, and the Camry is better than the Accord anyway so it's no suprise it outsells it. Your negative Toyota news is becoming VERY ANNOYING. Do you know that the domestics offer vehicles especially for fleets? The Classic, 4 door Grand Am, Taurus, 4 door Blazer? I joke that the local Enterprise is the other Ford/GM dealer in town because all they have are DOMESTIC JUNK.

Also, just because a few individual dealers are offering discounts that doesn't mean that it's going to have a nationwide sales increase. None of the dealers in my area have done it, and I see new Camrys, Corollas, and more everyday.

You could say the same thing about Ford and the F-150, dsmnick.
As far as Toyota being desperate to gobble up marketshare, Toyota's board of directors has stated many times that they would prefer a slow increase in sales and marketshare as opposed to explosive growth because they arent willing to sacrafice they reputation for quality and dependability.
Toyota wants to be # 1, but they arent willing to sacrafice their reputation just for the bragging rights. Theres a old saying where Im from, "you gotta dance with the one that brought ya". Toyota is well-aware that quality and durability is what got them to where they are now and they are not about to let quality slip.
Cap'n

Damn right, Captain.:)

In '97 Toyota had virtually zero fleet sales. And yes this has been an obvious target for Toyota for some time. But it's not the primary target because it's just gravy...and you can't live on gravy. :naughty:

That can explain why annually Toyota makes $9 Billion and GM makes $1 Billion. A large portion of the Big-3 sales comes from low- or zero-margin fleet sales where Toyota's sales comes from retail - where better margin's exist.

Besides...what's the difference where the sales comes from? GM/Ford/DC used to have fleet sales and that artificially pumped up their total sales numbers. Now that the Big-3 are losing fleet sales to Toyota et al, their market share is dropping. Hurrah!

In short...I don't see the negative to Toyota going after fleet sales. Yes this will mean sales records are broken...but they're being broken across all vehicle segments and not just the mid-size segment. The retail business is already heavily saturated with many players...yet the fleet business has been limited to the Big-3. Where better place than to pickup market share and increased visibility.

FYI, Toyota runs on the pull system of JIT (just in time). Cars are built to dealer orders and not the other way around like GM/Ford/DC. Hence why Toyota can produce several vehicles at each plant. This limited risk that a plant could over produce vehicles (like the big-3). All TMMNA plants are now like that and have been like that for quite some time. The only arrogance here comes from the Big-3 who think they can buy (incentive) their way out of their pending doom. Mark these words - if GM/F/DC don't do something to significantly turn around their business model, one will fall before 2010. For what it's worth, perhaps Ford should go first because that will shake up the pencil necks in the other 2.

hehe...nice one Rolla! :lol:
Here's some stats for the pundits:

Sales Last year vs This Year

retail || fleet
Toyota +0.7% || -0.7%
GM -31.9% || +4.3%
Ford -2.4% || +3.5%
Chrysler +49.0% || -16.5%

Don't know what to infer from these numbers 'cept looks like Toyota hasn't yet focused on fleet sales. But look at those negatives at GM!! :lol: :clap:

Mark these words - if GM/F/DC don't do something to significantly turn around their business model, one will fall before 2010. For what it's worth, perhaps Ford should go first because that will shake up the pencil necks in the other 2.I dont think it will be Ford, I think if anyone it will be GM. Ford is reducing their capacity to avoid the huge inventories that make huge price cuts neccesary and they are coming out with some great new vehicles. I think Ford will be fine.
D-C is kind of iffy. They have done well in the past few years but their designs are getting kind of stale and dated and the whole "Hemi" thing is fading.
GM is the one Id be worried about. Too many models/brands/platforms, dated designs and huge price cuts that are likely to continue. To the best of my knowledge GM has no plans to reduce their production. Apparently they think they can build and build and build and just cut prices every summer to get rid of their inventory.
Cap'n

hehe...nice one Rolla! :lol:
Here's some stats for the pundits:

Sales Last year vs This Year

retail || fleet
Toyota +0.7% || -0.7%
GM -31.9% || +4.3%
Ford -2.4% || +3.5%
Chrysler +49.0% || -16.5%

Don't know what to infer from these numbers 'cept looks like Toyota hasn't yet focused on fleet sales. But look at those negatives at GM!! :lol: :clap:So what little fleet sales Toyota had, just went down even further.:thumbup:

Yup looks that way. But I'm sure they will edge that back up. Toyota is kicking it into high gear over the next year as it seems almost every model is due for a change.

I agree with Captain_Toyota. GM would probably be the first to go. All of their vehicles are smilair. Ex: An Escalade is a Tahoe with a nice front end, a $60,000 emblem, and a nicer looking interior. It would also be the worst for them to go too. That would bring down Chevy, Cadillac, Saturn, Saab, Pontiac, Buick and whatever else I may have missed. Thus, the 120,00 or so employees are all laid off. The bad economy we have would get worse. And all those other chain reactions that would occur in the process. It would be a sad day in Detroit.

GM and Ford are not going down anytime in the near future. Volkswagen and Mitsubishi are in a lot worse shape and still in existence. Remember, GM is still the largest automaker...you guys seem to forget that often.

As for the fleet sales, you can give me percentages...but I want actual numbers. -.7% means nothing to me as it could be a huge or small number depending on how many fleet sales Toyota has. Part of the reason Ford and GM still have large fleet sales is because they sell a large portion to civil service like police departments and municipal governments, which have to buy from American companies. Even if Toyota were allowed, they have nothing to offer police departments that would be suitable...the old BOF RWD Crown Vic is one of the few cars that can handle police duty (the Charger will also come in a police version as well, but I don't think it will be nearly as popular with police departments due to the higher price and smaller dimensions). I'm not sure about GM, but Ford has been cutting back fleet sales drastically on its new models; models like the Taurus and Crown Vic are almost exclusively fleet, which means that other cars will retain higher resale values. The resale value of the Five Hundred is 48% higher, putting it slightly below the Camry and Accord. I have no doubt the Fusion will do the same thing.

I believe GM is doing the same thing, as they have the Grand Am, Cavalier, et al made exclusively for fleet. Cressida, I don't understand why you think that is a bad thing since it means little fleet sales for new models? Less fleet sales = higher resale value = good thing.

The police around here drive Impalas (front-drive). If Toyota offered the Avalon with a stripped-down "police package", they might buy them.
Considering that cop cars often run 20 hours a day, the Toyota durability reputation would be very tempting.
The only thing I could see preventing that from happening is the branwashed mindset by a lot of the municipalities that because theres a GM plant nearby, this is a "GM town", so the municipalities MUST buy GM products.
Dsmnick, GM almost went bankrupt in the '80s, with all the price cuts and other cost problems they have, it could easily happen again.
Cap'n

The police around here drive Impalas (front-drive). If Toyota offered the Avalon with a stripped-down "police package", they might buy them.
Considering that cop cars often run 20 hours a day, the Toyota durability reputation would be very tempting.
The only thing I could see preventing that from happening is the branwashed mindset by a lot of the municipalities that because theres a GM plant nearby, this is a "GM town", so the municipalities MUST buy GM products.
Dsmnick, GM almost went bankrupt in the '80s, with all the price cuts and other cost problems they have, it could easily happen again.
Cap'n
When I worked for the Federal Government, we had specific rules on what vehicles we could purchase and they HAD to be a US Manufacturer. All Air Force cars and trucks I've seen were either Fords, Chevy's or GMC. I suspect local and state governments have similar rules.

Bah, I don't care what the police use, as I don't want smelly criminals in a Toyota.:lol:

actually i've seen black and white squoias here in socal.:D:D:D

The police around here drive Impalas (front-drive). If Toyota offered the Avalon with a stripped-down "police package", they might buy them.
Considering that cop cars often run 20 hours a day, the Toyota durability reputation would be very tempting.
The only thing I could see preventing that from happening is the branwashed mindset by a lot of the municipalities that because theres a GM plant nearby, this is a "GM town", so the municipalities MUST buy GM products.
Dsmnick, GM almost went bankrupt in the '80s, with all the price cuts and other cost problems they have, it could easily happen again.
Cap'nThe reason that some departments use Impalas and Intrepids is because they save on gas and are good for routine patrol, but for actual chases and highway patrol Crown Victorias are the standard. Crown Vics are some of the most durable vehicles out there, mostly because Ford has tweaked them for so many years. Government agencies aren't allowed to use fleet from foreign manufacturers, but if they were, I can guarantee you a unibody Avalon would not hold up as well as a body-on-frame Crown Vic. The ladder frame in the Crown Vic will keep going long after the body is rusted through. Unibodies are not as durable as BOF. Not to mention that the Avalon is wrong-wheel drive for police duty. Most police officers will tell you that they would take a Crown Vic over a FWD Impala or Intrepid any day. In fact, I know a police officer from my hometown that got switched to an Impala and he says that the car is too cramped and doesn't seem to hold up as well as the old Vic he used to drive.

They may prefer Crown Vics, but the fact is that all the local police around here use Impalas and some have Explorers and Tahoes. The only ones I see with Crown Vics are the state patrol, and even they are getting away from them. Im sure the risk of fire upon a rear collision was a factor in this.
If its true that they arent allowed to use foreign vehicles thats just plain dumb. They should use the best vehicle for the money, regardless of who its made by.
Cap'n

An Avalon, Impala, Intrepid, et al would not hold up as well in a rear-end crash as the BOF Crown Vic. The ladder frame gives it structural strength that none of the others can even dream of having. The ladder frame also allows them to run up 300,000 miles of hard duty without worrying about it getting bent or cracked.

It is true that government agencies can't use imported vehicles...have you ever seen a Toyota or a Honda vehicle used by a government agency before? Ford and GM are American companies...the government is going to support its home-based corporations. If you ever talk to a law enforcement official about what they prefer, they will tell you that nothing beats the Crown Vic. The only reason Impalas and Intrepids are being used is because they save the department gas during routine patrol.

By the way, the courts found Ford not liable for the fires. No car can be designed to resist 100-mph rear end crashes without major damage or injuries. Since most police cars are Crown Vics, people out looking to make a quick buck decided to gang up on Ford.

My Cressida is a RWD vehicle, and If I were a cop that's what I would be driving.:D :thumbup:

My Cressida is a RWD vehicle, and If I were a cop that's what I would be driving.:D :thumbup:And when your (four? six?) cylinder Cressida has been left in the dust by a late model Camaro and the unibody frame is starting to rust out and getting bent hopping curbs, will you still want to use it for police work? Especially when your life is on the line?

My 6 cylinder Cressida that has the legendary 5M-GE, doesn't have any rust, and was involved in a minor-major accident has been chugging away for 22 years. It was built in September of 1983, and recently turned the 150,000 mile mark. That car is barley worn in yet. Of course I wouldn't want smelly criminals in my car, but for chasing someone, you better hope I don't call off the pursuit. My father and I went for a ride in it about an hour ago, and we were on the highway, and that thing is a fast car. When my grandfather bought it new, he was stunned, and impressed with how fast that car was.:smokin:

Specs
1983 Cressida specs

The Cressida's engine for 1983 produced 143 hp @ 5200 rpm and 156 ft.lbs. of torque @ 3000 rpm. It has a 0-60 time of 10.1 seconds.10.1 seconds is not that fast....many old 80s boxy sedans could blow past that. A 1987 Grand National did 0-60 in 5.5 seconds with a turboed six. Even 1981 Chevy Citation is faster than your Cressida with a 0-60 time of 9.2 seconds.

That's for an 83 Cressida. Toyota did a minor engine upgrade for the 84 model. My engine puts out 150 hp, and trust me that engine is like a rocket. It's 0-60 time probably didn't change much, but it seems fast enough on ours, and once you get to high speeds the power is amazing. If you ever get the chance to drive one, you won't be let down.:)