Top 10 Best-Selling Cars: January 2012
After capping 2011 with four decent months, the auto industry hit 2012 running. Analysts expect auto sales to outpace 2011 figures anywhere from 6% to 10%, which could make 2012 the best sales year since 2007.
January enticed consumers with total incentives — including financing offers, automaker and dealer cash, and trade-in bonuses — amounting to 16% off the average car’s MSRP, CNW Marketing Research reports. That beats January 2011, when shoppers saw only 13.5% off the average MSRP.
Shoppers took advantage. January sales jumped 11%, beating Tuesday’s expectations. This marks the best annualized month since 2009, Automotive News reports. Chrysler, Nissan and Hyundai-Kia saw double-digit sales gains, with GM the only top-seven automaker to post a loss.
With higher incentives to start the year, Nissan Altima sales ballooned 35.9% off of a slow January 2011. The Altima would have been January’s top-selling sedan, had the redesigned Toyota Camry not jumped 55.9% — a Mitt Romney-size smack-down to keep the title of best-selling sedan, though we doubt the Camry demographic includes guys like Mitt. (For the record, though, Romney’s cars during his ’08 campaign don’t exactly smack of privilege.)
We digress. Small cars are selling well: A lukewarm reception has had little effect on the redesigned Honda Civic, whose sales are up nearly 50%. The Ford Focus and Chevrolet Cruze fell less than 1,700 units off the Top 10, with the Ford up some 60%. Focus ended January just 649 sales short of the Cruze, a car that trounced Focus last year. Ford may close the gap yet, but it comes at a cost. Shoppers in January enjoyed up to $1,000 off the 2012 Focus — a big discount for a redesigned compact — while Chevrolet kept its narrow lead with no cash incentives on the Cruze.
Both are looking up at the Toyota Corolla, which is down 12.6%. Rounding out the list are the redesigned Honda CR-V, the ever-popular Ford Escape and the age-old Chevrolet Impala, a popular alternative to the defunct Ford Crown Victoria for police fleets.
Despite sales falling 6.1%, GM keeps its 2011 crown as America’s best-selling automaker. Ford, Toyota, Chrysler and Honda follow. Hard-charging Hyundai-Kia improved 20.3% in January sales to come within 1,102 cars of Nissan, but the Japanese automaker gained 10.4% to keep sixth place.
Here are January’s 10 best-selling cars.
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so its starting to look like the Accord really will drop from the #2 slot in the midsize segment for the long term. This is more than a tsunami related aberration.
Looks like fleet sales are slowing down for the Cruze.
Where is the complete list?
LOL...the Impala outsold the Accord.
I don't think anyone keeps a complete list, but you can see a cars-only list at
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2012/02/top-20-best-selling-cars-in-america.html
Note that Malibu and Sonata outsold Accord, too, and Fusion came really close, so Accord's new place might not be #3 in the midsize segment. Accord was up slightly, though.
Better outsold a 5 year old model by now...
I'm not quite sure what you're saying K, but it should be noted that for many years, nothing but Camry outsold Accord, no matter how old it was. The point it the market has changed.
Folks, remember that Honda got a double whammy last year with natural disaster.
The flood in Thailand pretty destroyed its entire parts manufacturing factory. Thus, it's slowly recovering at this point.
Neither Nissan nor Toyota was greatly affected by the Thailand flood.
That's nice, but we're talking just for January of this year and as of right now, there are 26K+ Accords in cars.com inventory. That's less than the almost 30K Camry models and 39K Altimas, but far more than the not quite 18K of the Sonata, which outsold the Accord, and more than the 22K Fusions in stock, which came with a few dozen cars of the Accord. These cars didn't arrive in stock this morning. They were there for most of this past month. Supply is just not the issue here.
where's the Ford Fusion?
K:
Malibu is same age as the Accord. Impala is older. Altima is older. What's your point? Altima is oldest mainstream midsize car on the market- came out in 2006.
As for inventory- Civic and CR-V sales were way up. Time to stop with the tsunami excuses for Accord- that was almost a year ago.
Rick,
The Fusion had a very weak month -- 13k sales, 17th place.
Toyota WAS drastically effected from the tsunami. I am in sales for them.