Episode 903 – You Don’t Mess with the Johan, Roewe E50, Ferrari GTO Sets Record
June 4th, 2012 at 12:06pm
Runtime: 8:32
Audi’s North American CEO, Johan De Nysschen, has resigned from his post. Chinese automaker SAIC announced it will offer its first electric vehicle for sale this October, the Roewe E50. A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold last month in a private transaction for $35 million, a new record. All that and more, plus we take a deep dive into last month’s car sales.
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Hello and welcome to Autoline Daily for June 4. I’m John McElroy and here’s what’s happening in the world of automobiles.
MAY SALES MEDIOCRE
New-car sales in May in the American market were up 16 percent over a year ago. And they were up nearly 4 percent compared to April. But the SAAR, the seasonally adjusted annual rate dropped to only 13.7 million vehicles. Most analysts were expecting the number to hit 14.4 million. You don’t want to read too much into one month’s numbers, but this could be a sign that the new-car market is slowing down amongst other signs that the global economy could be headed for a downturn. We’ll have a full sales report later in the show.
VW SHAKES UP MANAGEMENT
Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn is leaving no stone unturned in a quest to shake things up. He just replaced the top executives in charge of China and in charge of trucks and added three new members to the Audi board. Bloomberg reports the moves are part of Winterkorn’s drive to make the Volkswagen group the world’s largest automaker. In other news, Audi’s North American CEO – and a personal friend of mine – Johan De Nysschen, has resigned from his post. No reason has been given for his departure but I bet he ends up in the top spot at another big car company.
ROAD & TRACK MOVES TO MICHIGAN
Speaking of surprising changes, Road & Track magazine will be leaving its long-time home in Newport Beach, California and is moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. The magazine is also getting a new editor-in-chief. Former honcho Matt DeLorenzo will be replaced by Larry Webster, a veteran journalist who had been working at Popular Mechanics. Road & Track’s move will make Ann Arbor home to three of the industry’s big car magazines including Car and Driver and Automobile. Hearst Publishing owns both Road & Track and Car And Driver and this sure reeks of consolidation. I just hope this is as far as they try to consolidate it.
FORD PARTNERS WITH STATE FARM
Ford’s Sync infotainment system lets you do a lot of things with your vehicle and now it can help you save money on insurance. According to Motor Trend, State Farm Insurance will offer Ford and Lincoln owners with Sync a 5 percent reduction for signing up and if they drive fewer than 1,000 miles a month they can save even more. But you have to allow State Farm access to your Sync system to verify the numbers. State Farm already offers the same program to GM customers with OnStar.
ROEWE E50
Chinese automaker SAIC announced it will offer its first electric vehicle for sale this October. It will be a production version of the Roewe E50 concept that was unveiled at this year’s Beijing Auto Show. It will have a range of 135 kilometers or about 84 miles and it can be recharged to 80 percent capacity in 30 minutes. No official price has been announced but it’s expected to cost less than 200,000 yuan or about $31,000.
FERRARI GTO SETS RECORD
The biggest, the highest, the longest, the coldest – humans love extremes, and in the world of cars a new record has just been set. According to Bloomberg, a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold last month in a private transaction for $35 million! This green beauty was one of just 39 copies produced between 1962 and 1964. It was made for famed racing driver Stirling Moss. The previous record for world’s most expensive car was held by Peter Mullin, a private collector in California. He paid between $30 million and $34 million for a 1936 Bugatti Atlantic. I interviewed Peter a number of years ago. Follow the link in today’s show notes for a peek at his astonishing collection.
Coming up next, we’ll take a deep dive into the sales numbers because there are definitely some surprises that turned up last month.
MAY CAR SALES
Here are more of the details of what happened with new car sales in the American market for May. Total sales came to 1.3 million vehicles, up 16% from the 1.0 million that were sold last year, and up nearly 4% compared to April. But as we pointed out at the top of the show, the SAAR only hit 13.7 million vehicles, down sharply from the 14.4 that most analysts were expecting.
The Japanese automakers really came roaring back, since a year ago they were still reeling from the effects of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Toyota’s sales shot up a jaw dropping 73%. Subaru and Honda jumped over 36%. But Chrysler also had a great month, with sales up nearly 20%. Nissan did not move nearly as much, up 11%, but that’s because it was not impacted by the earthquake as heavily as the others.
The best selling car was the Toyota Camry which hit 39,000 units, up 94% from a year ago. Second place went to the Honda Civic with 33,000. Rounding out the top five were the Corolla/Matrix, the Honda Accord and a big surprise here, the Chevrolet Malibu.
On the truck side the Ford F-series easily topped the list with over 54,000 units sold. The Silverado came in at 34,000 and the Ram had a pretty good showing with 24,000 units sold.
One interesting development is that the Ford Mustang outsold the Chevrolet Camaro for the first time in quite a while. Mustang came in at 10,000 units, up 45% from a year ago, the Camaro at 9,000, down 12%, and for comparison purposes, the Dodge Challenger hit nearly 5,000 sales, up 30%.
At the opposite end of the product spectrum, hybrids, e-assist cars and electrics were up a whopping 90%. But that big increase is due to Toyota restoring inventory levels of the Prius and Camry. Take them out of the equation and the alternative vehicle segment grew about the same as the overall market. But adding those e-assist cars, such as the Buick LaCrosse, to the total means that the alternate vehicle segment now comes to 3% of the total market, up from the 2.5% it’s been hovering at. And just because people like to keep track of the electric car segment, the Chevrolet Volt sales came to 1,680 cars, the Toyota Prius plug-in came in at 1,074, the Nissan Leaf came in a 510, BMW sold 251 of its Active E’s, while Mitsubishi could only sell 85 of its electric i’s.
As I said earlier, sales were up strong versus a year ago mainly because Toyota and Honda were back in the game. But that SAAR rate of only 13.7 million units should be a big concern to everyone involved in the automotive industry.
And that wraps up today’s show, thanks for watching, and please join use again here tomorrow.
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Comments (36)
June 4th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
de Nyschen to Infiniti? Asia is calling
June 4th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
What a shame about Johan De Nysschen leaving Audi North America. To me, he was the true face of Audi in America and I always found your interviews with him fascinating. He’s a real class act and a great loss to VW.
June 4th, 2012 at 12:25 pm
Among the top 40 selling vehicles in the US, there isn’t ONE single subcompact on the list, despite $4.00 + gas in most places, despite the critical bashing of the Civic and Corolla, the people still keep buying them over the much ballyhooed Korean and US stuff that has popped up in the last year or so.
June 4th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Johan running BMW? Hmmm.
June 4th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Did anyone else notice in the sales numbers that the Lexus RX outsold all Lexus cars combined?
June 4th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
I’d sure like to know how these uber-expensive collectible automobiles get insured.
I mean, I think it’s pretty obviously that no one plunking down $35mil on a vintage Ferrari is EVER going to drive it. (Well, not unless their son’s best friend happens to get the keys to it, get it joy-ridden in by a couple of parking lot attendants, then try to take the miles off by spinning the tires in reverse.) So there’s no automobile insurance in the traditional sense.
But how does one convince an underwriter that their purchase is really worth what they just paid for it? Especially via a ‘private sale’. Lloyds of London?
June 4th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Not BMW….Infiniti!
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120604/CARNEWS/120609933
June 4th, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Definitely a surprise to hear R&T is moving to Michigan, but maybe it shouldn’t be considering they’re owned by the same outfit that owns C&D. I’m definitely with you in hoping they don’t merge the two magazines. Are they going to be in the same building? Also, I wonder if some R&T old-timers, like Dennis Simanaitis, will decide to retire.
June 4th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Where ever there’s a screen , there’s a
commercial
June 4th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
I think this will still be a good year for cars sales, although I expect election year jitters will drive down the SAAR even further. I see a number of trade-ins which are older cars with catastrophic failures, multiple problems, or accidents which push people to buy new (or newer) cars. If you are PUSHED into buying a new car for the above reasons, many people try to get more (comfortable) car for the 48 0r 60 months of financing, not the smallest car.
I am surprised that the Ford F-series outsold the Toyota Camry. The Malibu is one of GM’s bright spots in terms of value and quality so I am not surprised at it being in the top 5.
June 4th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Considering the mediocre auto articles from Popular Mechanics, I hope the additional crossover from the R & T will improve their articles. Hopefully this will strengthen all of their magazines.
June 4th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Off topic a bit, but did anybody see the fiasco on Belle Isle yesterday? I was working, so I DVRd the race, leaving an extra hour on the end “just in case”.
My local ABC station says they will be back after the break. Well they went to local and national news. No mention on where I could find the race. Nada.
I was at Daytona when the track broke up a few years ago, but I was nowhere NEAR Detroit, so ya can’t tag me for this mistake.
Indycar on broadcast TV seems to be doomed. I hope not, but this didn’t help. And they had a great Indy 500 to build momentum from….
June 4th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
#12
http://www.freep.com/article/20120604/NEWS06/206040417/1001/NLETTER09/Grand-Prix-hits-a-speed-bump–Potholes?source=nletter-news
June 4th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
12 I fell asleep for most of the race until I woke up for the crash and debris news. Jeez is this racing boring. It is just over. (still, I will sit like a demented cat to watch hour after hour of ALMS and WEC, because multi-class racing has action. A C T I O N
June 4th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
#6,
If you can afford to pay $35 million for a used car, you probably self-insure for comp and collision. You should be able to get liability insurance pretty cheaply for the ten miles a year you might drive it.
June 4th, 2012 at 2:45 pm
I know that at the Simeone Collection, only Simeone and his curator can drive the cars due to their insurance arrangement. There’s probably 200+ million in cars there, if you accept that a price can be put on the Bugatti ‘Tank.’
June 4th, 2012 at 3:01 pm
On Belle Isle yesterday, they should’ve done the usual Michigan thing of put up orange barrels, and signs “Speed Limit 40 when workers present” and had about 5 people with shovels or something standing around for about an hours.
June 4th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I wish SPEED would be the broadcast venue for major race events other than NASCAR…However, if NASCAR would be “stock car” racing in some form, they would have a real fan in this house!! Sadly, it has become the NASCAR network, and NASCAR is just fake cars with a lot of high-tech that they are allowed to use…Oh how I miss the good old days of real stock cars and other races like the sports cars (many Brit MG, Jag, Tr, etc) of years ago…Anyway, #12 and #13, you made me think about racing today…I do wish things like Indy cars and ALMS, etc, were covered more on SPEED…
Ok, back to real life… It is interesting that the Camry and Accord contiune in top sales spots…Guess there is a real spot in the market for well built, dependable, and efficient cars…
Subaru is a small complany that also just seems to hit a cord with the market…The Subarus do fill a lot of needs in one car with all-wheel drive, comfort, cargo carring in wagons, and good build; however, they need to add at least another gear in the auto transmissions…We love our ’12 Forester, but it seems to pull just a little too much when another gear would be nice like on highway hills…It would help mileage a little, as well…
Finally, the Ford pickups continue as the top sellers…Wow, they have dominated for a long time, and even through various changes…
Kudos to Ford!!
June 4th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
The SAAR drops below 14 million…. February sales stolen from April…..
June 4th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
@ Pedro: My guess is that most people prefer a mid-size car that gets 30-ish mpg rather then a econo box.I know I do which is why I have the Equinox.But don’t despair,my new better half has a 08 civic that almost never needs filling up,lol.
June 4th, 2012 at 4:09 pm
So..De Nysschen was once an Audi…and is now an “Innie”!
I crack myself up.
June 4th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
21 cracked me up too, Tony!
June 4th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
This is kind of off-topic, but I just received my July CR; it was forwarded, so some of you may have already seen it. Anyway, they didn’t like the Prius C very well. The found it to be slow, noisy, ride bad, and to have poor rear visibility, poor fit and finish, and a small trunk. Other than that, they liked it. It got, by far, the best mpg in their “city” test of any car they have tested. The C got 37, and the regular Prius 32 mpg in their rather severe city test.
I wasn’t too surprised that they rated it low overall, since it is based on the Yaris which they really bashed, even more so than the new Civic. Still, I suspect the people who buy the Prius C to use as a “city car” will like it just fine. It gets great gas mileage, drives decently, and has substantially more back seat room than some cars, like Fiesta.
June 4th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Wow the Mustang finally caught the Camaro. However you can probably attribute that to earl release of the 2013 redesign. Expect the Camaro to be on top again once the 2013 comes out.
June 4th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
U.S. car sales may keep a sort of constant for a month or so,but it is becoming more evident that,due to a global slow-down,our car sales will follow suit. As of now,only the most in need and the blind will buy a new car unless they can afford cash!
June 4th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Another interesting and positive tid-bit are Volt sales. At months end,the total sales have exceeded the total of last years sales. Me thinks GM intends the Volt to be in for the the long haul!
I also believe the enormous monthly sales increases made by the Japanese auto makers are misleading and meaningless,to a point. Indications are that they are recovering those brand loyal,but any predictions towards product improvements remain a guess at best. Just remind youselves that Asia is hurting,they share global economic doubt and the yen is increasing,so most gains will be had from models made in the US,but only for a while.
June 4th, 2012 at 5:50 pm
pedro
I just took a better look at your son’s car. It is very,very eye catching!!
June 4th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
#25,
The percentage increases from a year ago by the Japanese companies are kind of meaningless, but the actual sales numbers are not. Camry continues to outsell all other cars, and Civic continues to sell very well, no matter what CR or other magazines say. It be be interesting to see how the new Fusion sells. It should be a styling winner, but time will tell if it’s any good, and if mainstream buyers are ready for myford touch and such stuff. The new Malibu is now at the local dealer, and while not very “exciting,” it has some things going for it, like simple, intuitive controls. What a concept.
June 4th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Kit,I agree. The Camry and Civic are coming back to their normal levels,yet the reasons remain unclear. I share your curiousity about how well the new Fusion sales will be. The future hyb. sales are on my radar now that gas prices are declining. But,I checked one out and I found that my wants increased the total cost great enough to make me have doubts. Many people at my work place drive a Malibu and I applaud the use of simple controls. But I get this feeling that those who have tham are content but don’t seem estatic having one and I’m not sure why!
June 4th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
@28
The Malibu and the Camry are popular for much the same reasons (imho) good looking without being over the top, reliable, good value. The Malibu and Camry are not exciting, but what they are is great value for the money, and comfortable. They are the early 80′s Olds Cutlass for the “10″ decade (so far).
June 4th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
#23 what do these auto journalists expect from an economy car? quiet, comfortable, luxurious with all the latest gadgets if that was the case there would be no reason for anyone to spend more money to get more car, right?
June 4th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Gotta point there,pedro. How many of the imperfections noted by CR will be noticed by the avg. “Joe” running errands around town?
Say sub-compacts are not wanted? Guess Fiat didn’t listen,cuz all their 2012 Abarths produced sold out in a months time! Just goes to show; don’t take a journalists word as gospel,listen to the buyers!
June 5th, 2012 at 6:27 am
pedro fernandez
Why be surprised at all that subcompacts don’t sell in the USA?
It makes every sense to me.
First, their MPG is lousy compared to their size, weight and HP. Frequently, compacts and midsized cars get the same or much better MPG.
Second. their price is not much lower than that of many compacts.
Third, we don’t need them in the USA as they do in Europe, no narrow streets and no parallel parking every day like they got over there.
see?
June 5th, 2012 at 6:32 am
Kit Gerhart
I agree with your assessment of the Prius C.
WHat did they get for HWY MPG? 37 city for the very hard CR test is great.
Toyota is selling all the Prius C it can make, the inventory ios a ridiculously low 3 or 6 days vs the average 60 or more, but cannot spare too many for the US market, the C was developed mostly for the Japanese Market and its very different conditions where small size is a plus, not a minus as it is here.
June 5th, 2012 at 11:01 am
#33,
The Prius C got 48 mpg in CR’s “highway” test, vs 55 for the regular Prius. It looks like the aero shape wins out over the smaller car/smaller engine in the highway test.
Here are some numbers for other cars in the CR highway test:
Prius C 48
Prius Liftback 55
Insight 45
Focus SFE 43
Golf TDI manual 49
Jetta TDI auto 45
Passat TDI 51
That’s enough numbers for me to list. It’s significant that a number of non-hybrids get very good highway numbers. It should be noted, though, that the best of the non-hybrids are way below the hybrids in city mpg. The Focus SFE is among the most fuel efficient of gas non-hybrids its size, but only got 21 mpg in CR’s city test, vs 32 for the similar size Prius liftback.
June 5th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Yikes, first Progressive Insurance with their spy gear marketed under the pretext of saving us money. Now State Farm wants to intrude your Ford via Sync. Who is worse, the Government or the Insurance companies? Regardless, they’re both averse to consumer privacy, the latter for the sake of their own profit.