jaje

Woes mount for frazzled industry
Carmakers pump fleet sales as retail traffic cools

http://www.autonews.com/news.cms?newsId=5525

Fleet sales in the United States,
January to March 2003
The following chart lists first-quarter fleet and retail sales by make. The brands are ranked according to fleet sales as a percentage of total sales.
Make Total Retail Fleet Fleet %
Jan-Mar Jan-Mar Jan.-Mar
TH!NK 1,857 582 1,275 68.70%
OLDS 29,595 13,302 16,293 55.10%
MITSU 78,683 45,162 33,521 42.60%
SUZUKI 15,775 9,679 6,096 38.60%
BUICK 95,753 61,200 34,553 36.10%
PONTIAC 117,241 81,686 35,555 30.30%
MERCURY 53,875 37,834 16,041 29.80%
FORD 714,203 502,099 212,104 29.70%
CHRYS 110,724 80,398 30,326 27.40%
DODGE 297,193 216,570 80,623 27.10%
LINCOLN 38,857 28,850 10,007 25.80%
DAEWOO 2,872 2,247 625 21.80%
CHEVY 594,806 473,647 121,159 20.40%
CADILL 50,438 41,390 9,048 17.90%
RLLS RYC 6 5 1 16.70%
LND RVR 9,014 7,547 1,467 16.30%
JAGUAR 12,102 10,356 1,746 14.40%
LOTUS 14 12 2 14.30%
VOLVO 30,694 26,858 3,836 12.50%
NISSAN 155,326 135,952 19,374 12.50%
GMC 124,850 109,959 14,891 11.90%
JEEP 103,225 91,452 11,773 11.40%
HYUNDAI 93,544 83,274 10,270 11.00%
SAAB 11,960 10,672 1,288 10.80%
SATURN 73,008 65,928 7,080 9.70%
TOYOTA 374,365 339,153 35,212 9.40%
KIA 57,589 52,267 5,322 9.20%
FERRARI 253 230 23 9.10%
ISUZU 10,151 9,346 805 7.90%
MAZDA 54,926 50,633 4,293 7.80%
ASTON 119 110 9 7.60%
HUMMER 9,445 8,867 578 6.10%
MASRTI 215 202 13 6.00%
SUBARU 47,212 44,517 2,695 5.70%
BENTLEY 106 100 6 5.70%
BENZ 52,944 50,120 2,824 5.30%
LEXUS 58,662 55,948 2,714 4.60%
BMW 56,020 53,861 2,159 3.90%
PORSCHE 4,389 4,223 166 3.80%
VW 70,903 68,310 2,593 3.70%
AUDI 19,684 19,057 627 3.20%
ACURA 37,193 36,316 877 2.40%
INFINITI 26,035 25,469 566 2.20%
HONDA 285,498 281,532 3,966 1.40%
MINI 8,834 8,727 107 1.20%
-------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 3,990,161 3,245,651 744,510 18.70%
Source: R. L. Polk & Co.
Note: The chart is based on new-vehicle registration data compiled by R.L. Polk. Commercial fleets include any customer who buys ten or more vehicles per year.

98CoupeV6

Great find, Joe. Honda has less fleet sales than Ferrari :lmao:

I'm shocked at how high the Mitsubishi number is.

jaje

I want to find #s on models sold to fleets and see how taurus, focus, camry and corolla inflate their numbers as "best selling car" which most people link to mean to retail consumers

asianautica

I wonder what constitute fleet sales and how much the discount is compare to retail prices. Infiniti is the lowest in the luxury market, pretty nice find jaje.

98CoupeV6

Fleet sales are zero or very little profit mass sales. Fleet sales can be to limo companies, rental car agencies, or business corporations.

asianautica

Why would anyone sell car @ 0 profit? That just doesn't make sense to me.

98CoupeV6

Because they win on financing most of the time. And it's better to sell on 0 profit than to not sell them at all, which would be the case.

jaje

what it does if you sell a car that at least covers a factories fixed costs (such as taxes, depreciation, etc.) and use it to get the factory running a speed that maximizes production with cost you get economies of scale

for instance of the 350k tauruses sold 50% (it is actually more than that) are fleet sales...the cost of building 175k tauruses would on average cost more per car than building 350k of them as ford has several factories and gets cost breaks for high volume from parts suppliers...if you plan accordingly and get it so that your marginal cost of building a car is at its lowest you make money even off "0" profit rental car fleet sales as you recoup it on your resale sales as your cost of selling those cars are cheaper

jeffphx

I'm so glad to see H/A is near the bottom here and I hope they stay that way. All those fleet sales just kill the resale value for retail customers and I don't want to mess that up. That is one of their strong points along with reliability. This is off topic, but I'm also glad H/A doesn't do much rebating too for the same resale reason.